How to handle those difficult reviews!

[Robin4]

I have posted this comment on another thread but have felt that, due to problems experienced by new hosts when it comes to how they should handle the review of difficult guests I would open a new thread.

This is a long post but a lot of time and thought has gone into it....We all learn every day, and as you continue to host you will become very proficient at sorting out 'the wheat from the chaff' but if you take note of these points I am sure this post will stand you in good stead!

Reviews cannot be taken frivilously because they are the centrepiece of the ABB platform. But on the other hand we are reminded at every opportunity that anything less than that 5 stars is not good enough...and for that reason we 'pussyfoot' around issues for fear what we say may come back to bite us in the bum!

And if we start rating our guests as per our experience.......ABB will find a way to remove it!

From seeing thousands of these posts I think I have come up with a protocol for reviewing.

There will be some hosts and guests that will fall outside of the common boundaries of accepted behaviour! There are times when police will need to be involved and even more times when help from Airbnb is required and these incidents will require immediate action, but this will only ever be the case for a handfull of bookings over your hosting experience, particularly as you become more experienced in spotting problem guests before accepting! So what I am saying will not be relevant to those situations. What I am talking about are those hostings where rules were broken, personality clashes existed, and there may have been a different perspective between host and guest. If you are concerned about what to write, try the following! And if the reviews do differ wildly keep these points in mind for your review response:

1/. Never write a review until you have had two nights sleep after the departure of the guest! There are many little things that will annoy you enough to make a comment when they are a fresh experience, but which, with time, will mellow and can be appraised in a more objective way.

2/. Always write a review as though you have been asked to do it for someone else. 'YOU' will see things as being 'bleedin obvious' because it's your 'turf'! Another set of eyes will see a legitimate reason why the guest did (or felt) what they did!

3/. As I have said before, make yourself a nice drink, leave your emotion out in the garage, or out in the barn before you sit down at that keyboard. What you write at this point will stay with you long after you have forgotten about that belligerent 'turkey'! It will stay with you as long as you host and....it cannot be removed! We have all said things we wish we could take back! When it's in a review it is 'set in stone'....there is no going back!

4/. Tell the community what you feel about this guest, but don't give the guest a reason to resent you. As I said in a comment in another thread, you can make them feel guilty by carefully selecting your words but still finish by wishing them well in future. This way the balance of nature is restored....you made your point, but you have also said 'no hard feelings'!

And if their review is a stinker:

5/. Never get into a 'he said/she said' slogging match with a guest. You will always loose, and you will make yourself look petty and a difficult person, in yourself, to deal with. Remain aloof and always assure the guest you value their contribution because after all, the only way you can become a better host is to take notice of what others say. Don't apologise, but tell the guest some things are beyond your control.....like, how much cloud cover may have been present on the day! But tell them that their comments will be taken on board and acted on.

Many guests will form an opinion of you by how you carry yourself in the review process....you can be seen as a diplomatic person with great hosting skills........or you can be seen as a 'tough nut to crack' !

Sorry this is so drawn out but, it is a major issue on the forum ....I am not saying I am the review sage but I have had a lifetime dealing with people....I took a mechanical services company from 3 employees to 27 in 6 years......and I don't think my people skills are all that bad!

Cheers.....Rob

[Robin4]

@Leckie0 @Jack70

Leckie, be very careful with that post of @Jack70 because if what is stated in that post is correct, it is a change that must have happened in the past week and a change that the rest of us are not aware of!!

The review system works in the following way. Once a guest has left a hosts listing, both the host and the guest are offered the opportunity to post a review of each other. As the host you post your review of the guest at anythime over that 14 day period and you will be offered email prompts to fulfill that obligation. The guest will get the same. Once you have posted your review, if the guest has not posted theirs you will be given 48 hours to edit that review. If the guest posts their review before yours you will not have the opportunity edit. When both reviews have been received by Airbnb they will be posted simultaneously on each others review page.

This where I suggest you be carefull with the advice Jack left in his post. If you choose not to review your guest but your guest reviews you, their review will appear on your page after 14 days and the reverse is also true. If you review your guest but they do not review you after 14 days your review will appear on their review page.

Now, when you both review each other, when the reviews are posted you will be offered the opportunity to leave a public feedback on their review page. But if the guest reviews and you do not review the guest when their review appears on your page you will not be given the right to a public response to their review as would be the case if you had reviewed them.

As I said this is the format the review process has taken over the past 5 years  and if Jack is experiencing something else then there must be some sort of glitch in the system that the rest of us sure would like to have available.

Cheers.....Rob

[Jack70]

Rob I have heard your explanation a few times, but from my experiences, it has worked as I explained to Leckie, I have 60 reviews and not one bad one, the folks I had issues with, I just did not do a review. That is how I have 100% 5 star reviews.

[Robin4]

@Jack70 OK, then you are definitely operating under a different set of rules to the rest of us! Lets spell this out!

Here is a screenshot of a recent guest. I gave her a review which is now showing up on her review page, but she , although she said she would, did not get around to reviewing me in the 14 day time limit! So I do not have a review by her on my page but she does have my review on her page! Here it is.....

And exactly the same happens in reverse, if I choose not to review a guest but they review me then their review will show on my page. If you are not getting a review in response to a guest which you chose not to review, all that indicates is neither of you saw fit to give a review of each other, and to be honest that is just plain selfish! Not only does that make your rating completely false by attempting to rid yourself of the 'prickly' ones, there is a duty on a hosts part to inform other hosts of guests whom they would not recommend, and if your attitude is 'bug*er the rest of the world, if I just keep quite about it I can avoid some bad press' that is not an attitude that I would aspire to! But if your comfortable with it, well so be it!

Cheers.....Rob

[Jack70]

Robin, sorry that you feel that way, but I am not going to let some SOB give me an uncalled for bad review and then get penalized by ABB and also lose our Super Host rating. 

[Annette33]

@Jack70, plenty of other hosts have now confirmed that your assumption of not leaving a review for a guest will prohibit that guest from leaving a review for you is just plain wrong: any guest that you don't review can review you anyways, it will show up on your page after 14 days. So your "system" of preventing a potentially bad review is faulty. 

And you don't even know that "some SOB would give you an uncalled for bad review". where does that come from? Also, Airbnb does not punish you for giving a guest a bad review. In fact, other hosts would only appreciate to be forwarned about a certain guest. We hosts do have it in our hands to weed out bad guests by writing an honest review on them! Airbnb might not immediately react, but your fellow hosts certainly will, and will decline such a guest.There certainly is no correlation between surpressing a bad review and therefore not getting a bad review yourself: guests and hosts aLike do NOT get to see the other's review before they post theirs, so retaliation is impossible.

you also say that leaving a bad guest review would make you lose Superhost status: not true either: the reviews you write are NOT factored into Airbnb' calculations of superhost status. Just read up on the requirements.

I would hope that as superhost you'd be more familiar with Airbn rules, not so mistrusting of potential reviews, and all around more open and flexible to help your fellow hosts.

[Jack70]

You understood me wrong, I am not saying that if a host writes a bad review it would affect my Super Host status, it is the other way around, if the guests writes a bad review on the host then you can lose your Super Host Status

[Annette33]

@Jack70, no I did not misunderstand you: I challenged your logic of saying you don't write a review because you don't want to  get bad reviews , and that you prevent bad reviews from happeneing by not writing a review on questionable people yourself - we all told you that those two are unconnected. YOU connected those two - making a straight line from your review (which you are not doing) to the potential guest's review, so it is minor detail if you clarify now again that your bitching is the other way around, of course we all got that from the get go! 

Therefore, getting one or two "bad" reviews can happen to you at anytime, you don't have the power to prevent it. I understand many hosts are overly concerned with ratings and superhost status, but read up on Airbnb superhost status: as long as you are at the 80% level, you are fine, it takes a few bad reviews to drag you down there, not just one.

I would think any superhost who takes his/her job of hosting seriously , concentrates on being the best host he/she can be and doesn't defensively look at guests as potential SOBs  has absolutely nothing to worry about! I don't - check my reviews 🙂

[Robin4]

@Annette33

Probably have to let this go Annette!

I have said it before, you can show someone an ocean....that doesn't mean they will see water!

I do agree with you with the SOB comment! I have never had a guest I would clasify in that fashion! Whole thing is really strange coming from a 'Superhost', but there you go, that's life!

I just didn't want @Leckie0 getting the wrong information.

Cheers.....Rob

[Annette33]

@Robin4 , don't worry about me - I know when to give up. this was between @Jack70 and me, nobody else, and I just answered him and set him straight  when he told me I misunderstood. That was all. 

[Bruce43]

@Robin4 sorta like "back to the future"

[Robin4]

@Bruce43....Gee, you are on the ball Bruce...yeah it sorta is isn't it.....glad you have been following!!

Cheers.....Rob

[Annette33]

@Leckie0 , you say, "In the future, I am going to wait to write my review until I see what the guest writes." : That is not possible, Airbnb set it up such that you cannot see the review a guest writes and only then decide to write yours.

reviews are either posted  simultaneously (if both parties did a review) or, if only one party choses to review, then that review will only get posted after the review period of 14 days is over. All you can do is post a public response under that review.

[Jack70]

No what I am saying that if you have a troublesome guest, that you think is going to leave a bad review on you, just do not write a review on them, that way you will not get penalized by ABB, since no review will show on your listing.

[Emily145]

I'm afraid that's not correct, @Jack70. If you don't leave a review, the guest's review can still post on your page.

I had a guest last month who gave me a bit of trouble and I didn't review her because I didn't want to trigger any additional email prompts reminding her to review me, she ended up reviewing me and after 14 days it appeared on my listing. Luckily because I had gone out of my way to accommodate her she still ended up leaving a 5-star review despite the trouble! Nevertheless, her review sits there on my profile despite the fact that I never reviewed her. 

As @Robin130 says, if you decline to review a guest and their review never appears on your page, it is because they never wrote you one, either. 

[Emily145]

I'm torn about what to do about a review I just received. The guest did not communicate with me at all during her visit, but had been cheerful and polite leading up to the visit and left the place very tidy, so imagine my surprise when she gives me a 3-star review!

In her public review, all she wrote was that "the experience is what you pay for" (I charge a very low rate of $36-56/night including off-street parking as the unit is quite small and I'm in a close-in suburb, not the city proper) and that she spent most of her trip out of the house but "for the few hours I was there it was not very satisfactory," with no further details. However, in her private feedback she listed a bunch of weird or unfounded complaints. She said the place was not as big as she expected - it is advertised as a cozy one-room studio and there are photos of every corner of the room, so I do not understand what more she was expecting. She was disappointed to learn that other people live on the property (my single family home is divided into 3 units) which meant despite being a separate unit with its own entrance it "not too private," but what kind of one-room studio, repeatedly referred to as a "unit" in the listing, is a free-standing structure without any other units around it? She also didn't like that it was on the basement/ground floor - something that is not only mentioned in my listing, but half of my reviewers refer to "Emily's basement studio" or "the basement of Emily's home."

She complained that the toilet paper and hand soap were "half used" - the roll holder contained 2-1/2 rolls, and there was a full hand soap on the counter next to the one that was nearing empty, apparently she expected me to throw everything out and give her brand-new unopened everything for her 2-night stay? This really indicates to me that she does not understand the difference between AirBnB and a hotel. Finally she claimed that one of the blankets smelled like urine - I had laundered as per usual it the night before her arrival and I gave it a good whiff myself after reading her review just to double-check and I couldn't detect any scent other than the faint trace of my unscented laundry detergent, so I don't know if she just made this up or if my laundry detergent smells like urine to her or something? 

My question is whether I should write any sort of public or private response to her. My page is full of great reviews, so since her review is so short and vague my inclination is to just let it lie and let my other reviews speak to the quality I provide. (With the way she worded it, if you're reading in a hurry you might even think she meant to say the place WAS satisfactory, which is what I initially thought before I read more closely!) I also am not really interested in arguing the points with her as what's done is done and who's gone is gone. But am I opening myself up to any liability with AirBnB if I don't respond to her in some way, either publicly or through the messaging system? Would they cite the fact that I didn't respond to her feedback as some kind of admission of guilt if she tried to get a refund from me?