REVIEWS REALLY DON'T PROVIDE INSIGHTS ON BAD GUESTS

Priscilla22
Level 6
Hermosa Beach, CA

REVIEWS REALLY DON'T PROVIDE INSIGHTS ON BAD GUESTS

I just finished hosting a stay with a very bad guest. He smoked in my home and lied about it, when through my pantry and ate my food, drank my beer without even bothering to ask. I have a no shoes in the house policy and he simply ignored it. He stole my community parking pass which requires a police report to replace. When I asked him if he was helping himself to my food/drinks he then proceeded to become irrate, proclaiming that he has stayed in hundreds of Airbnbs and hosts alway accomodate guests helping themselves to their pantries/refigerators.  He even went as far to accuse me of entering his room and taking money, then accusing the housekeeper when he previously told me he was home the whole time she was cleaning. I've had my housekeeper for over a year with no issues before this bad guest. In the end I had to call the police for him to finally leave the property. My neighbors even called to ensure everything was safe in my home. Although this situation has been resolved with Airbnb, for the safety of hosts, we need to be more preventative rather than reactive!

 

Having stayed at so many Airbnb's I would expect him to have more than 2 reviews from January 2015 and October 2015. I believe we can better protect hosts if they can submit guest reviews without fear of retribution on the affect of our own listings. We should have the ability to submit a true and honest account of guests that do not adhere to house rules and make us feel uncomfortable! In order to avoid one off events, if a guest has a number of hosts with complaints, the information should be relayed to future hosts so that they may use their descrection when opening their HOME to guests.   This experience really has made me rethink whether or not I want to continue hosting! Although I have never had any issues in the past. This was an extremely stressful experience.

41 Replies 41
Cynthia-and-Chris1
Level 10
Vancouver, WA

You DO have the ability to submit an honest review about every guest without fear of retaliation.

 

Airbnb's review process is double blind - meaning the other party can't see what you wrote until they write their own review.  When you write a review about your guest, your guest receives an email saying "Your host wrote you a review!  Write your review now to see what they said!"  Then the guest has to write their own review without having any clue what you wrote.  This encourages hosts and guests to be completely candid and honest.  Reviews become public after each party has written their review or 14 days, whichever is sooner. 

 

Does this explanation help?

Also, I thought I would add - nothing stops a guest from canceling their account and creating a new account if they receive a terrible review from a host - so this could be the reason your terrible guest has no reviews even though he claims to have stayed in so many Airbnb's.  So, obviously, the review process isn't failsafe - there will always be those bad eggs that circumvent the system.

I absolutely understand what you are saying however, this guest is bound to write something negative as I had to call the police! And in turn he lied about smoking in my house and his lack of respect with likely result in a dishonest review on his part. I'm sure he is very aware that any review I write about him will be negative when I had to ask him to leave before his stay was completed. How are hosts protected from this??

 

In regards to creating new accounts to circumvent poor reviews - there should be better monitoring of this especially for VERIFIED guests! Just like how mobile companies won't let you sign on again for promotions using a customers SSN to verifiy their previous accounts.   As a host I feel that more can be done to PREVENT bad eggs from being repeat offenders.

@Priscilla22  I would definitely Contact Airbnb and have them actually CANCEL his reservation so he can't leave you a review at all.

@Priscilla22

 

How awful - accept the fact that he will leave you a bad review, or perhaps none at all. However your review can be brief and professional. Say something like: After hosting x number of guests and enjoying the experience, it was very disappointing to have to ask for a guest to be removed from my property. This guest is more suited to a hotel environment.

 

In that way you avoid the details, both guests and future hosts will absolutely read through what this means - and your other reviews show that you are not the one at fault here. 

"In that way you avoid the details": But I think this is the point Priscilla is trying to make. One sometimes needs to be honest and frank and not fear **bleep**-for-tat reprisals.

 

 

wveiwkjbedmn

 Quite right

Cory

This sounds so much like a guest that I had in October 2016. He ignored my no smoking policy, left cigarette butts all over my entry steps and sidewalk, drank everything in the fridge... Also, I found drugs and a syringe left behind when I was cleaning up the room. luckilly my little dog didn't find it before I did.

 

Vanessa

Philadelphia, PA

It would help me a lot if I could click on one link and see all the reviews the guest or potential guest has left for other hosts.

hi @Leslie0, in a round about kind of way you actually can, maybe you are doing that already: so when you click on the profile of a potential guest you are considering hosting, you see the reviews other hosts have left for that person, right ? ( provided there are any reviews..) . I then click on the latest one, on that host's profile, go to that host's page and most likely scroll down a bit and  find the review this potential guest has left, identifying it by the profile picture. Most of the time, if there is a review by a host for that guest, then there is also a review by that (potential) guest for that host. works fairly well for me when I try to get a feel for the guest, from both angles. Good luck!

I know, but I'd like something a little more streamlined where it's sorted for me.

 

Reivews are so important....but we had 1 guest last summer that went onto other vacation websites and wrote horrible reviews -- after 17 years of hosting -- we never had such a bad experience.....

No one is perfect and we know that guests will not always be perfect, but this guy went over the top and posted totally out of bounds falsehoods about our home....

so they may not retaliate on Airbnb, but if you are listed elsewhere, the guest can do damage on those site..

Cormac0
Level 10
Kraków, Poland

@Priscilla22

 

Put quite simply they need to be "blacked balled"

 

Regards

Cormac

 

The Explorer's Club Krakow