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> Response was a resounding no, then threats from the person who was doing the renting that they would post negative reviews of my wife as a renter so no one wo

> Response was a resounding no, then threats from the person who was doing the renting that they would post negative reviews of my wife as a renter so no one would rent from us again. Umm, are you sure? You can leave reviews only if you actually rent from someone. It's not like Yelp, where anyone can write reviews for any place. On AirBnB, the actual rental transaction has to happen. Secondly: you don't see each other's reviews until after the review period has closed. So you could leave a negative review, but the owner would not see it until their time to review has passed.

mgkimsal 11y ago
yes, I'm sure. "you post a negative review of us, we'll say XYZ about you" XYZ being completely not true, but unprovable. We had vids/pics and contradictory email messages, which should be proof enough of fraud, but what they threatened to write was pretty bad. One neg review against them - with multiple dozens - could be ignored as "meh" whereas one against my wife would have been 1 out of 2 (actually, not sure she had a first one from the year before) and would probably have hurt her chances of people renting to her in the future. So... - hey, airbnb, great job. You've made it much easier to just not use you at all. Yes, we're a small one-off exception. Fine. I bet there's a whole lot more of these exceptions that are unknowable because there's little recourse to escalate your case. We possibly could have taken this up to the credit card company, but IIRC there were some mediation clauses in our terms of service which I thought at the time meant we couldn't. The 'resounding no' justification was "well, you decided to stay there the whole time, it couldn't have been that bad". Hrmm... we paid up front, and told us to try to work things out - even after sending in pictures/videos of non-working stuff. How do you walk away from having splashed out $2k already, then try to find another place in the middle of a trip, with no guarantee you'll see a dime of this back? $100 reduction, while symbolic only, would still have been symbolic enough for me to not have such a bitter/negative experience that I'm talking about years later.
- dalore 11y ago
  It's an empty threat. They can't see your review until they have left their review or the time is up to leave a review. So you can say you won't give a negative review but give one anyway.
- discardorama 11y ago
  At the risk of repeating myself: you cannot see the other party's review until you have left your own! So they won't know what kind of review you left until either (a) the time window of reviewing closes, or (b) they have submitted their review. So there is ZERO chance of them knowing that you left a bad review before writing theirs. ZERO.
  - mgkimsal 11y ago
    They didn't care. Basically, the threat was they'd post something negative regardless. If we posted anything, we'd get a negative review.
    - discardorama 11y ago
      I have to shout now: THEY DO NOT KNOW IF YOU REVIEWED THEM OR NOT! You have a time window to review; after the window closes, you can see their review (if they reviewed), and they can see yours (if you did). UNTIL THE WINDOW CLOSES, BOTH SIDES ARE BLIND.

mgkimsal 11y ago

yes, I'm sure. "you post a negative review of us, we'll say XYZ about you" XYZ being completely not true, but unprovable. We had vids/pics and contradictory email messages, which should be proof enough of fraud, but what they threatened to write was pretty bad. One neg review against them - with multiple dozens - could be ignored as "meh" whereas one against my wife would have been 1 out of 2 (actually, not sure she had a first one from the year before) and would probably have hurt her chances of people renting to her in the future. So... - hey, airbnb, great job. You've made it much easier to just not use you at all. Yes, we're a small one-off exception. Fine. I bet there's a whole lot more of these exceptions that are unknowable because there's little recourse to escalate your case. We possibly could have taken this up to the credit card company, but IIRC there were some mediation clauses in our terms of service which I thought at the time meant we couldn't. The 'resounding no' justification was "well, you decided to stay there the whole time, it couldn't have been that bad". Hrmm... we paid up front, and told us to try to work things out - even after sending in pictures/videos of non-working stuff. How do you walk away from having splashed out $2k already, then try to find another place in the middle of a trip, with no guarantee you'll see a dime of this back? $100 reduction, while symbolic only, would still have been symbolic enough for me to not have such a bitter/negative experience that I'm talking about years later.

dalore 11y ago
It's an empty threat. They can't see your review until they have left their review or the time is up to leave a review. So you can say you won't give a negative review but give one anyway.
discardorama 11y ago
At the risk of repeating myself: you cannot see the other party's review until you have left your own! So they won't know what kind of review you left until either (a) the time window of reviewing closes, or (b) they have submitted their review. So there is ZERO chance of them knowing that you left a bad review before writing theirs. ZERO.
- mgkimsal 11y ago
  They didn't care. Basically, the threat was they'd post something negative regardless. If we posted anything, we'd get a negative review.
  - discardorama 11y ago
    I have to shout now: THEY DO NOT KNOW IF YOU REVIEWED THEM OR NOT! You have a time window to review; after the window closes, you can see their review (if they reviewed), and they can see yours (if you did). UNTIL THE WINDOW CLOSES, BOTH SIDES ARE BLIND.