Hours later they filed fake complaint to Airbnb that I rated poorly as I wanted late checkout and asked money to remove review. Airbnb removed my review post that. I had a flight to catch so I couldn’t checkout late anyway. I shared even flight details with Airbnb but they didn’t reinstate review and added a strike to my account. I expect host did this previously as well to improve their rating.
Wouldn't go back anyway.
I had an Amazon review removed because apparently mentioning that a competing product is more effective goes against their TOS.
I had a WordPress plugin review removed because apparently a critical vulnerability that got our site hacked isn't a valid reason to give it one star.
I had a local BBQ chain offer to give me a free bottle of sauce if I let them watch me give them a 5-star rating on Google.
I've seen tons of video game and app websites apply "anti review-bombing" measures to factor out thousands of low ratings for being supposedly off-topic, often for major games that they're financially affiliated with through sales or advertising.
And that's just for third-party websites. If a company's website has customer ratings/reviews for their own products, then the conflict of interest is too great to even pretend that they might be legitimate.
- leave unemotional matter-of-fact reviews so they can't complain for slander
- leave them days later so they can't link them to you
- leave them for businesses that provide incentives for 5-star reviews
- leave them when multiple reviews already complain about unethical actions taken by the owner
A 4-star HIG hotel in Bangkok once proposed I leave a good review to fix one of their mistakes. I firmly said I wouldn't and then mentioned the request in my 2-star review. The mistake was assigning "free breakfast" to the wrong room in a 2-room booking. Had to fight 3 days to get it fixed.
I think it would be interesting to be able to see an Airbnb place directly on Google maps (via a direct link), to compare reviews there; I'm working on a simple Tampermonkey script to do just that, will post it when ready.
Hopefully goes without saying that all communications should happen in the app.
It is technically possible to add a delay or whatever such that the land lord doesn't know who gave the review.
And there are social problems too. It is like you never give anyone anything but 5/5 if some app make you rate someone, unless maybe the worker try to murder you. A 4 is a 1.
But I think landlords are in a way better position vs AirBnB than gig workers are versus their employers.
The last time I ever directly gave Airbnb money the host accused my female work colleague of blocking the toilet with menstrual products and charged us 400CAD for a plumber to "fix" it. My colleague was incensed -- she angrily stated that the chronology was wrong, demonstrated that no aforesaid items were in her possession, but the host didn't believe it. We ended up with my card being billed before claiming successfully on travel insurance. I can't believe that happened in Toronto -- Canada is one of the nicest places on the planet -- but (US) Airbnb support took the hosts side instantly and wouldn't budge. We had a shitty toilet for a week!
The last time I stayed in one was in a urine soaked crash pad with cardboard covering the broken windows in Montréal. We spent five hours there around the unsafe electrical unit before they did actually sort something else out. The host didn't reply to emails and it later turned out had been arrested, explaining both his silence and the less than salubrious people we'd previously been sharing with.
I deleted my account and refuse to go in airbnbs now. Booking.com is far from brilliant but at least it's scatologically free so far...
I never said that! He was not.
What services like Airbnb would need would be direct partners actually testing the listings in person. But that costs money and requires hiring staff, which is antithetical to the business model of "gig economy" apps which exist in order to avoid the overhead of running a real company in that industry by instead offloading all the work to "gig workers" as independent contractors.
bribes or people just commenting "great" on avg or below avg offerings
If someone rents a place with scheduled roof repairs, not informing AirBnB or customer, they should be eternally banned. I couldn't even get a full refund. I can't imagine actual hospitality places with a long tradition around Mediterranean to ever do something like that.
I feel like it's very similar with everything:
* suitcases without nice silent rubber wheels, even premium suitcases have loud plastic ones,
* airplanes are a chore, descending into madness over time,
* eternally inefficient software, becoming slower and slower on faster hardware,
* tiktok guitarists without skill showing off their montaged videos earning a living through popularity,
the majority is voting out quality and care out of everything.
A friend of mine had the same bribe experience (Airbnb, Israel) with a terrible accommodation (moldy, dirty etc).
In hindsight, why wouldn't they? Even if their reviews tank they can just register again with different credentials.
I effectively stopped using Airbnb, both due to prices that are approaching or more expensive than hotels, but also because of this shift of hosts to only caring about reviews and focusing on making a steady stream of new people checking in, without really doing any effort of making someone return. As long as the review scores are fine, all is good.
The original idea of Airbnb is long gone, and I experienced more than once someone writing on Airbnb, then another person sending a message with check in instructions. It is a business - nothing wrong with that in general, but it is disguised as people renting their spare rooms, which is rarely the case now.
Strong cosign. Ratings and reviews should always be independent and beyond the control of that being reviewed. Reddit would be an amazing service if it supported commenting on any page/site/product/entity, but this is anathemic to advertising dollars.
I have no idea who to trust on the quality of products in an era where the amount of choices available is overwhelming and the number of real human responses on the internet in any place where there's money to be made is dwindling by the day.
Online reviews are totally broken. I recently spent a week at an Airbnb in the Gold Coast, Australia. The property was rated 5* but was tired and worn. The photos must have been 5 years old before a soul set foot in the place.
I rated it 3*. Shortly after, I got a phone call from the owner. He had my number because I'd had to call him because one of the two toilets in a five-bedroom 14-guest 'villa' was blocked. As in, overflowing with fecal matter blocked.
He essentially tried to bribe me to raise my review. I refused. The house is currently listed as 4.9* with those same photos. A preposterous exaggeration of its quality.