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Airbnb removed my positive review and accused me of being in cahoots with the host to leave positive feedback. They said they have found an existing relationsh
by elmerfud 4y ago
Airbnb removed my positive review and accused me of being in cahoots with the host to leave positive feedback.
They said they have found an existing relationship between me and the host. Mind you have no social media accounts, this was my first stay at an Airbnb, I'm from USA and this was in Medellin Colombia, I usually stay at Marriott hotels and I only went with Airbnb because the girl I traveled with suggested using it because it was cheaper.
It was awesome place, host was great, so left a fantastic review. It was taken down and I was called a liar. When I asked to speak with someone about why I'm accused of being a liar in my review customer support promised me many times I would get a call back. Never once did I receive a call back from anyone at Airbnb instead I would get an email that they had conducted a thorough review and their position still stands that I am a liar. I'm not sure what thorough means in their mind but since they asked me zero questions or confirmed no information with me directly it's impossible that they conducted any kind of thorough review.
Airbnb is a horrendous company along with all of these gig economy companies. They need to be regulated in the same manner as they're non-gig counterparts are. I can't imagine that any Airbnb executive actually stays at Airbnb places not with the kind of customer service that Airbnb offers.
- whitemandingo 4y agoPlease email me at laforza@yahoo.com. I'm starting a class action lawsuit against Airbnb . I had reviews removed from my place because Airbnb claims I had a relationship with the guest, and they failed to provide evidence. We need to determine how Airbnb is obtaining it's data to access these relationships. Huge violations of data protection and illegal practices to act based on unsubstantiated evidence.
- danuker 4y ago[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mynameisvlad 4y agoYou are skeptical that someone who has what appears to be otherwise great grammar and spelling is not from the US... because of one mistake? That everyone and their grandmothers has made at least once in their lives? Have you seen the 45th president? Have you seen the average American? Are you actually serious right now?
- dazc 4y agoLots of UK native people make the same mistake, never mind the US. Give him a break.
- joshgachnang 4y agoThere/their/they're is a very common mistake among people born and raised in the US, same as too/to/two. Your third line is entirely unnecessary.
- xeromal 4y agobro, I have family from the southeast US who write sentences that don't look like english. lol. Chill. The US is a big place with people who have varying degrees of DGAF when it comes to spelling/grammar.
- post-it 4y agoEnglish is not the official language of the US. :^)
- medellin 4y agoIf you judge people based off of grammar online then the US just lost 99% of its population.
- John23832 4y agoOh please. Move on. The internet is full of bad grammar by native speakers. It's the nature of speech. Who speaks the Queen's English?
- _Algernon_ 4y agoConsidering how often Americans write "could of" instead of "could have" I believe there is a correlation between poor grammar and being from the US.
- oliwarner 4y ago> have no social media accounts, this was my first stay at an Airbnb See what happens if you ask a bank for a loan with no credit history. Of course these are only tangentially alike, but public history is an important way to distinguish organic reviews from AstroTurf.
- atleta 4y agoThey mentioned not having social media accounts to show that AirBnB couldn't have any information about them or them being related to the host. (OTOH, their namesake may have a social media account and that may be linked to the host. In theory.)
- mynameisvlad 4y agoSince when is a social media account required to do online business? You also don't need a social account to login, so how would Airbnb even know that user named "John Smith" on Twitter is you?
- admax88qqq 4y agoDon't exaggerate. There is a difference between doing online business and leaving an optional review. OP was still able to use Airbnb, they just removed one positive review possibly because they have no online history making it hard to distinguish them from a bot or puppet.
- mynameisvlad 4y agoI'm not the same person, and the question still applies. If you're so pedantic, then, > Since when is a social media account required to leave reviews? It's just as absurd when written this way. But, please, show me the exact place where Airbnb (or any other big company) says that a social media presence is required to leave a review. I'm waiting.
- admax88qqq 4y agoShow me where Airbnb promises to accept every review? I'm waiting. Edit: furthermore spam prevention takes all sorts of random signals in to account. Having no online presence other than a single stay in Airbnb certainly looks suspicious. Nobody writes their spam detection algorithm as policy.
- cycrutchfield 4y agoWhy do you care so intensely about this? Edit: I should have expanded on my post a bit. It's quite obvious that the review was flagged by some ML model, most likely not because the reviewer is a liar but probably because the host has a high prior for shenanigans. Combined with the lack of social signals for the reviewer, I could see why an ML model might be overzealous. But back to my original question: nobody is being called a liar, why take it so personally?
- prettyStandard 4y agoBecause we can't trust the systems we need to live our lives.
- thefounder 4y agoYou can always book a hotel. AirBNB will not and cannot provide you a 100% care free experience because some guests are indeed liars and there are all sorts of scams both on the guest and host side. It's a kind of ebay. It's always a hit or miss.
- _vertigo 4y agoIf that’s the case, all the more reason to be mad at Airbnb for removing legitimate reviews.
- thefounder 4y agoPerhaps they rely on some flawed signals to make their decisions such how many positive reviews you have (the buyer) vs seller's reviews(i.e who is more likely to lie). There could also be bad faith from Airbnb as some comments frame it but I believe most of the time it's just a tricky business. Check ebay and you see the same issues or even worse.
- seattle_spring 4y agoI'd much rather have one legit review removed for every 20 fake one, rather than have to wade through 20 fake reviews just to find a single authentic one.
- dmix 4y agoI'm confused, you think AirBnB should pay random people as employees to let them host short-term stays in their house? And this will help make AirBnB's moderation of reviews more honest?
- blairbeckwith 4y agoI think based on context it's clear they mean "regulated like hotels".
- dmix 4y agoHow exactly do you regulate it like hotels without changing the legal structure? Hotels either directly run their various locations (aka run by their employees) or franchise it. That's a totally different business model. So just saying "regulate it like hotels" doesn't mean much.
- blairbeckwith 4y agoYou would do it by changing the legal structure, but not by requiring any employees of Airbnb to manage the properties themselves, any more so than TripAdvisor employees manage hotels today. Require Airbnb hosts to pay for a license, have regular inspections, etc.
- dmix 4y agoRight, so you're not regulating AirBnB directly really, you're regulating the local AirBnB hosts. And how does this help with reviews on airbnb.com?
- madaxe_again 4y agoThat’s what Airbnb plus was - vetted properties, annual inspection. They utterly failed to market it properly.
- blairbeckwith 4y ago
- irjustin 4y agoTo be fair, gamifcation of reviews is a very real problem. There's no good answer to this. Anyone that allows/relies on direct consumer feedback is at risk for one of the hardest problems that exist. Personally, I want to know people's great and real experiences, or terrible ones, who wouldn't!? But, once you tie it to money, it's over.
- grugagag 4y agoIt seems like Airbnb is doing the gamification and manipulating it as well. I’d rather all reviews stay, good and bad and let the consumer decide for themselves. As soon as some reviews get promoted and others hidden I stop paying attention to them
- irjustin 4y ago> I’d rather all reviews stay, good and bad and let the consumer decide for themselves That's not a realistic solution. If all the reviews were fake 5 stars but it's just the property's friends always leaving reviews then when you got there, you feel there's no way it's 5 stars. But less obvious is property manager says, hey i'll give you a 5% discount for 5 stars, when really the place was a 3-star at best. Those shifts in star ratings are material in your personal decision making process.
- edmundsauto 4y agoIs there anything currently in place that prevents the 5% off situation? Seems like nobody is able to solve that one. Or wants to tackle it. Airbnb is incentivized to have higher scores because lower ratings might not push people to other properties - it might discourage them from booking all together. They need them to not be totally worthless, but score inflation is definitively in their best interest.
- progval 4y agoI left a negative review on a product on Amazon whose seller was doing this (but much higher than 5%). Amazon deleted the review.
- spacemadness 4y agoThis is why I went back to hotels. Airbnb is a scummy company and can’t seem to survive without out of control “gotcha” fees added by either itself or its hosts which now make many hotels cheaper. I also am not obligated to do work for the host with a hotel. Some of the hosts have become super entitled over the years due to Airbnbs policies. It’s a shame as using Airbnb was an excellent experience when it first began but that obviously was on borrowed time much like the rest of the gig economy.
- seattle_spring 4y agoI’ve stayed in 100+ Airbnbs and literally never have paid or been asked to pay an extra fee. I have, however, been surprised several times by hotels charging an extra “resort fee” upon arrival.
- prepend 4y agoYou’ve never had to pay a cleaning fee?
- ornornor 4y agoThese are so egregious and can be 50% of a night cost. I’ve had so many bad experiences with Airbnb. It’s never like in the pictures. It’s always noisier, low quality mattress and furniture that looks good on pictures but isn’t functional or breaks if you touch it. I also feel like I’m living in ikea showrooms around the world. And given how expensive the cleaning is, it’s rarely passably clean. Moldy corners in the bathroom, dirt under the bed, chipped dishes… And good luck trying to get Airbnb to help you. Best they can usually do (after you explain your case over from scratch because it’s always a new customer service person) is “alright we’ll check you out, you get a refund, and good luck finding a place for tonight out of pocket” Never again. It’s hotels for me every time as well.
- JacobThreeThree 4y ago>It’s hotels for me every time as well. I like to search for newly built hotels as they usually offer the nicest accommodations.
- kingboss 4y agoshhhh... you are on pg's forum. 'Member when he was shilling for this new billion dollar unicorn that was airbnb and how it would revolutionize the hotel industry? Pepperidge Farm remembers....