<story><title>I Got Banned for Life from Airbnb (2018)</title><url>https://jacksoncunningham.medium.com/digital-exile-how-i-got-banned-for-life-from-airbnb-615434c6eeba</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bambax</author><text>AirBnb seem to have a different policy now: they simply delete the bad reviews. In June I had my first bad experience. The owner was nice but the property was absolutely awful (yet it was a &amp;quot;superhost&amp;quot; with glowing reviews).&lt;p&gt;I left a bad review (my first). Two days later I received a convoluted message from support, telling me that my review was incorrect and wouldn&amp;#x27;t be published, because it pointed out &amp;quot;things the property owner couldn&amp;#x27;t change&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;This is sinister, but funny at the same time. If the property is dirty it can be cleaned. But if, for example, it has walls so thin you can hear the neighbors breathing, or the slope of the bathroom is in the wrong direction and water flows into the bedroom every time one takes a shower, you can&amp;#x27;t say that in a review! Because it &amp;quot;can&amp;#x27;t be changed&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I learned from that experience that AirBnb reviews can&amp;#x27;t be trusted, and &amp;quot;superhost&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t mean anything (except the power to kill bad reviews).&lt;p&gt;I haven&amp;#x27;t been to an AirBnb since; the best properties are very often on Booking.com as well, and those which aren&amp;#x27;t, are questionable.</text></item><item><author>SLWW</author><text>I learned back in 2008 that you never, ever attach a review to your real name.&lt;p&gt;Any review, negative or neutral, runs the risk of damaging AirBnB, too many negative reviews might have the effect where AirBnB has to address the allegations, when it&amp;#x27;s much easier to just keep making money off of the bad host and ignoring negative experiences.&lt;p&gt;I feel less likely to rent an AirBnB because of this article, simply by the fact that there is more than one negative review placed off-site.&lt;p&gt;They don&amp;#x27;t want to deal with it; you are just a number, always have been.  DO NOT post negative reviews with your real name</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mancerayder</author><text>&amp;gt;I left a bad review (my first). Two days later I received a convoluted message from support, telling me that my review was incorrect and wouldn&amp;#x27;t be published, because it pointed out &amp;quot;things the property owner couldn&amp;#x27;t change&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been shouting that from the rooftops for a couple of years.  I discovered that same thing happened to me, but without the support comment above.  Then I discovered in the Airbnb subreddit, hosts telling each other that to remove a bad review it&amp;#x27;s easy, just show something in the review you can&amp;#x27;t change.  Bingo.&lt;p&gt;You know what, F Airbnb.  Anyway the cleaning and service fee add ons make it more expensive than a hotel, and with 0 flexibility to cancel or reschedule.</text></comment>
<story><title>I Got Banned for Life from Airbnb (2018)</title><url>https://jacksoncunningham.medium.com/digital-exile-how-i-got-banned-for-life-from-airbnb-615434c6eeba</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bambax</author><text>AirBnb seem to have a different policy now: they simply delete the bad reviews. In June I had my first bad experience. The owner was nice but the property was absolutely awful (yet it was a &amp;quot;superhost&amp;quot; with glowing reviews).&lt;p&gt;I left a bad review (my first). Two days later I received a convoluted message from support, telling me that my review was incorrect and wouldn&amp;#x27;t be published, because it pointed out &amp;quot;things the property owner couldn&amp;#x27;t change&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;This is sinister, but funny at the same time. If the property is dirty it can be cleaned. But if, for example, it has walls so thin you can hear the neighbors breathing, or the slope of the bathroom is in the wrong direction and water flows into the bedroom every time one takes a shower, you can&amp;#x27;t say that in a review! Because it &amp;quot;can&amp;#x27;t be changed&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I learned from that experience that AirBnb reviews can&amp;#x27;t be trusted, and &amp;quot;superhost&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t mean anything (except the power to kill bad reviews).&lt;p&gt;I haven&amp;#x27;t been to an AirBnb since; the best properties are very often on Booking.com as well, and those which aren&amp;#x27;t, are questionable.</text></item><item><author>SLWW</author><text>I learned back in 2008 that you never, ever attach a review to your real name.&lt;p&gt;Any review, negative or neutral, runs the risk of damaging AirBnB, too many negative reviews might have the effect where AirBnB has to address the allegations, when it&amp;#x27;s much easier to just keep making money off of the bad host and ignoring negative experiences.&lt;p&gt;I feel less likely to rent an AirBnB because of this article, simply by the fact that there is more than one negative review placed off-site.&lt;p&gt;They don&amp;#x27;t want to deal with it; you are just a number, always have been.  DO NOT post negative reviews with your real name</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>captainbland</author><text>You&amp;#x27;d think that it is somewhat within the owner&amp;#x27;s control because they could disclose whatever this apparently immutable fact of the property is and then people could reasonably factor this in when deciding whether to stay or not.&lt;p&gt;But presumably this is not something which is policy because it would lower the price of relevant properties which presumably affects airbnb&amp;#x27;s revenue as well.&lt;p&gt;This kind of behaviour should somehow be regulated in a similar way to advertising - if they&amp;#x27;re intentionally hiding negative information while posing as a place to reliably inform you about your stay based on the experiences of others (which is what &amp;quot;review&amp;quot; implies) then they&amp;#x27;re misleading you for profit. What they&amp;#x27;re actually running is a mislabelled testimonials section. It distorts the market by actively preventing people from accurately assessing the property&amp;#x27;s utility to them.</text></comment>