Preferences

I too had similar experience. I booked a 4.9 rated property with 30 reviews. But experience was really poor and I rated 1 stars post checkout. The propery owner reachout to me asking for explanation but I wasn’t in any mood to discuss.

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.


Had a similar experience where a Sydney AirBnB listed their property as air-conditioned. Had a misting fan. That doesn't quite cut it as "air conditioning" in 45C weather. Had the same outcome as you. Ended up doing a chargeback on my card and got banned from the platform.

Wouldn't go back anyway.

Yes, I had a similar experience. Reviews on Airbnb can't be trusted because most hosts are experts at having bad reviews removed. But if reviews can't be trusted then the whole thing is worthless.
I've become a lot more jaded about online reviews over the years.

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.

Oh absolutely. This makes leaving bad reviews even more important.

- 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.

The problems you mention are real; but on average it seems Google Maps review are fair; in my experience they tend to reflect the reality better.

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.

Recent changes make it very hard for hosts to remove reviews. Hosts are of course complaining.

Hopefully goes without saying that all communications should happen in the app.

Ye reviews doesn't work when the reviewed know who reviews and what they say.

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.

This item has no comments currently.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Story Lists

j
Next story
k
Previous story
Shift+j
Last story
Shift+k
First story
o Enter
Go to story URL
c
Go to comments
u
Go to author

Navigation

Shift+t
Go to top stories
Shift+n
Go to new stories
Shift+b
Go to best stories
Shift+a
Go to Ask HN
Shift+s
Go to Show HN

Miscellaneous

?
Show this modal