Airbnb Took Down My Negative Review. Why?
Candid feedback, in theory, helps keep everybody honest,
unless there's a thumb on the scale.
By Timothy L. O'Brien
May 26, 2021, 6:00 AM EDT
e My family visited
Hudson, New York, for a couple of days in March for the same reason everyone
goes there. It’s a cool little town surrounded by the Hudson Valley and stocked
with wonderful food, crafts, shops and people. We used Airbnb.com to rent a
place for our stay.
The rental was the only bad part of our visit. Garbage was
piled in front of the driveway when we arrived. The patio that looked quaint
and cozy online was a mess and ringed with construction equipment. The hot
water didn’t work. A load of clothes was in the laundry machine. The pedestal
sink in the bathroom needed only a gentle nudge to tip over. The ladder to the
loft bedroom was too steep for kids. And so on.
We decided to hang in there and not request a refund. The
host was a nice guy, and when I told him about the hot water he called and
walked me through a reboot of his system. But my online review of his place —
which cited its good location, its kind, communicative host and its
disappointments — was mediocre. It was the first poor rating I’ve given to an
Airbnb host, and I felt vaguely guilty about it. My wife and I rationalized
that away by agreeing that an honest review would help future travelers make
better decisions. Besides, most of the reviews of the Hudson property were
positive. How much of a difference could ours make?
I forgot about the review until a few days ago, when an
Airbnb “resolution support ambassador” emailed me out of the blue to inform me
that my evaluation of the Hudson rental violated its “review policy” and was
taken down. I looked at the review policy, and nothing I wrote seemed like a
transgression. I said I didn’t understand the decision and asked to have a
supervisor look at it. My support ambassador said no.
Although Airbnb Inc. has weathered criticism for
price-gouging, bait-and-switch scams and a stock price that soared and then
tumbled since its initial public offering in December, its bookings have boomed
over the last year. While the Covid-19 pandemic sideswiped the traditional
hotel industry, Airbnb’s portfolio of nonurban lodgings and long-term rentals
got a boost from remote work, a rebound in domestic leisure travel and
preferences for more intimate home-shares.
With business surging, why bother selectively dinging a bad
— but accurate — review? Airbnb is largely meant to be self-regulating, and
candid reviews, in theory, help keep everybody honest.
After fishing around for information about how often Airbnb
deletes negative reviews, I came across an interesting Quartz article from
2018. It found that some Airbnb users’ negative reviews “were either edited or
quietly removed from the site without their knowledge or permission.” Airbnb
assured Quartz that its content policy was meant to ensure integrity and that
authentic reviews were “critical to building trust.”
Some users have speculated that Airbnb selectively removes
negative reviews to protect its top sellers. While the surprisingly ubiquitous
online debate about the integrity of Airbnb’s reviews often notes that hosts
don’t have the power to have bad reviews removed, that’s not true. Airbnb has a
process that allows hosts to appeal negative critiques. I also discovered a
robust cottage industry that helps hosts contend with bad reviews. Advisers plying
that trade offer how-tos such as “Remove Airbnb Reviews — A Superhost’s Secret
Weapon” and “Bad Airbnb Reviews: How to Turn Them into Your Weapon.”
Structuring a public review system that’s foolproof is
tricky, and Airbnb has become a continuing lab experiment for academics
interested in parsing its data to uncover management insights or sociological
takeaways (this recent study is just one interesting example). Still, the
reasons Airbnb gave me for removing my review had nothing to do with complexity.
Among other things, they said it wasn’t “relevant.” This appears to be a common
reason Airbnb gives when it deletes poor reviews.
After Airbnb declined to escalate my query about my deleted
review, I told them that I would get in touch with the company directly the
next morning. A few hours later, a “senior case manager” on Airbnb’s
“escalation desk” messaged me promising to take a closer look. The next day,
another “support ambassador” also got involved. Nothing changed. After I
contacted Airbnb’s media relations department and said I was interested in
doing a column about my experience, a spokesman, Aaron Swor, took quick action.
Airbnb eventually reposted my review, and Swor said the
company made a mistake by deleting it. Swor said it was removed after my host
in Hudson asked Airbnb to do so. I asked Swor how frequently Airbnb deletes
negative reviews, and he said “it happens very rarely.”
“We believe that a healthy review system is one that
respects and protects our community’s genuine feedback,” he added. “For that
reason, we take the removal of any review very seriously.”
Perhaps that’s true, but Airbnb only seemed to take the
removal of my review seriously once it knew I was a journalist. I also asked
Swor about suspicions that Airbnb favors its hosts at the expense of its users
because the site’s financial interests are aligned with top sellers. “This is
not true,” he responded, reiterating that reviews are removed only if they
violate the site’s content policy.
I think Airbnb is a great service, but trust is a fragile
and fleeting thing. Memorial Day weekend is approaching, and if Airbnb has
helped you find a place to stay, read those reviews carefully and ask yourself
if anything might have been left out. Or deleted.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the
editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
To contact the author of this story:
Timothy L. O'Brien at tobrien46@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Daniel Niemi at dniemi1@bloomberg.net
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