Thoughts on AirBnB reviews, positive and negative, and game theory \ stacker news ~ideasfromtheedge

Thoughts on AirBnB reviews, positive and negative, and game theory

2126 sats \ 25 comments \ @Signal312 19 Jun ideasfromtheedge

I've been staying in some AirBnBs recently, and have noticed....I'm not being completely honest with reviews. As a matter of fact, I will either give a 5 star review, or not give a review at all.

Here's my thoughts. In a recent AirBnB that I stayed in, there's definitely some negative things I could have brought up. Not overwhelming, but they were there. But I gave a 5 star review, and only said positive things in it. Why? Because my audience for the review is NOT the general public. It's the AirBnB hosts.

This change in attitude happened after I paid a lot of money to stay in an AirBnB over a holiday with a big family group. It was quite expensive, so I expected the basic standards to at least be met. However, the place was filthy, many things were broken, and it was a miserable experience. I tried talking to AirBnB about it, and they were very unhelpful. They basically just said, "well, leave a negative review".

But I happen to know that negative reviews, on the part of AirBnB customers, do not give a good impression to AirBnB hosts. There are blacklists out there, of bad customers.

I know because of two reasons - one is that some friends of mine stayed at an AirBnB, and once they had arrived there, discovered that they had made a mistake in booking a place that was much further away than they wanted, from the main attraction they wanted to spend time at. Nothing was wrong with the place, they just changed their mind and wanted to have a place that was closer. So, the husband made up a story about the heat not working, so he could get their money back, and they found a new place. (I heard the details from the wife). Anyway, some months after this, they arranged a trip to Europe, and booked multiple stays in AirBnBs. And after the booking was complete, every single one of the AirBnBs cancelled the booking on them.

The other reason I know this is that there was a Wall Street Journal article on these AirBnB blacklists - I think they were on private Facebook groups - and it just clicked in in my head when my friend said that their reservations had been cancelled. It seemed obvious that they had gotten into a blacklist.

Of course, leaving a not-so-nice review on AirBnB is not the same as blatantly lying about your experience in order to get a refund. So I wouldn't expect to be on any blacklist. However, after experiencing the unhelpful AirBnB response to the awful but expensive house, I don't feel like doing them any favors by being completely honest with my reviews. They can hire inspectors to do that job. I don't work for AirBnB, I work for myself, and I'm going to do what benefits me.

So this is why I do reviews this way. If it's an awful place, I'm not going to review it at all, because I don't want to lie. If it's halfway decent, I'll give it a 5 star review and write something nice.

This signals to AirBnB hosts that I'll usually write a great review. They are then much more accommodating to all kinds of requests that I may have. For instance, at my most recent stay, I got both an early check-in and a late check-out.

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135 sats \ 1 reply \ @joda 19 Jun

Yep, review system in our society is fucked up.

Four stars= zero stars to a host. It makes the rating scale almost meaningless. If you leave four star reviews, the host can lose valuable status, and other hosts will reject your reservations.

Amazon reviews are basically 4.4 to 4.7. Outside of that range stuff gets delisted or is full of fake reviews.

BTW y'all probably know you can just go online and purchase reviews for Amazon, Yelp, whatever. Buy Google accounts and write multiple reviews for your own or competitor's business. Buy a pack of 100 Reddit accounts and go Sybil shill your shitcoins.

AI only makes it worse.

47 sats \ 0 replies \ @Signal312 OP 20 Jun

Yeah I have some experience with a book on Amazon. It was a great book and sold well, and often competitors would come up. The competitors were (this is pre-AI times) mostly a bunch of junk text scraped from wikipedia and the like, compiled by very low wage people out of India. From looking at the book (using the "look inside") feature on Amazon, I would often be able to spot multiple egregious errors just in the pages I was able to see, the book would often be complete and utter useless trash.

And then you'd see multiple 5 star reviews, talking about how the book changed their life. Yes, reviews are broken. Not so much on a place like Walmart, but on Amazon, you can put very little trust in reviews.

Some ways that I try to find the honest reviews is by ordering by "recent", instead of "popular". That way you're a little more likely to get real reviews, instead of paid.

134 sats \ 1 reply \ @clr 19 Jun

Thanks for this post. It confirms that I'm right in not using AirBnB for my stays.

If the places are so awful and expensive and the review system is so disingenuous and fake, why do people keep using that platform? I don't get it.

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @Signal312 OP 20 Jun

I definitely review all my options before staying at an AirBnB. But sometimes I just need a place where I can cook...

126 sats \ 0 replies \ @gmd 19 Jun

Sounds like a good strategy.

I used to write angry yelp reviews etc, but then I realized it wasn't worth the stress. Sometimes people have a bad day, and as a business owner a bad review can be extremely hurtful. Now I only give 5 star reviews to any businesses I think are great or memorable, especially mom and pop businesses. Don't need any more negative energy/karma in my life.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 19 Jun

Smart strategy but I refuse to be that logical. If your product or service sucks I am going to tell you. I would want to know where I need to improve if it was me but these platforms like air bnb, uber and amazon incentivize these kind of ridiculous behaviors like blacklisting people who complained that you provided them a crappy service or product.

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @Signal312 OP 20 Jun

The people that get blacklisted from my experience are only the ones who do something really egregious, like what my friends did (lie about something critical like heat not working in an AirBnB, to get a full refund). Just putting in a negative review won't get you blacklisted. However, hosts do look at your previous reviews and can make a decision on whether or not they want to host you.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @SilkyNinja 19 Jun

I wonder if the increasing capacity for self-censorship is just a feature of the “open floor plan” model of internet companies.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @WeAreAllSatoshi 19 Jun

It’s disappointing that this is what the reviews turn into. I fear the same for services like Uber, but at least there I think it’s well know that passengers get reviewed by drivers and those reviews generate rankings which can affect drivers being willing to serve passengers.

As someone who periodically wants to use these kinds of services, it’s concerning that reviews may not be representative of reality, whether that means the reviews are lies, or reviews are missing. But if I’m being honest, I didn’t ever expect them to be truly genuine or representative of reality anyway.

1374 sats \ 8 replies \ @k00b 19 Jun

As a matter of fact, I will either give a 5 star review, or not give a review at all.

A frequent traveller friend of mine says the same thing, for the same reasons.

AirBnB's incentives favor hosts over guests and favors both hosts and guests over the neighbors they disturb and neighborhoods they occupy. Although they frequently fuck over and lie to hosts too. They don't want honest reviews for hosts, because they don't want available listings to appear anything but amazing, so they're happy this self-censorship exists so that more people are duped into over-priced, sub-standard stays and they can collect their rent on you discovering the listing. They could easily solve this with an anonymous review system, but instead they have you leave one glowing public review and an honest private one for the host.

They don't have to behave in this incentive misaligned way, but like any good nihilistic ZIRP empire, they do the predictable thing and only serve their quarterly bottomline. They have all the reckless, woke, fake-nice, boldface lying ambition of a Silicon Valley tech company, but are operating in meatspace where the consequences are much more real and they do not give a fuck (and neither do their hosts¹ or their guests² who line up and blindly cheer them on).

"how else can I, an uncreative and unproductive lululemon wearing sociopath, run a debt-fueled residential real estate empire?" ↩
"where else am I going to live like a local, throw a party, cook my drugs, and traffic people?" ↩

101 sats \ 7 replies \ @WeAreAllSatoshi 19 Jun

This got progressively more hostile as it went on. Can’t say I disagree, but this does seem like a passionate subject for you. Do you have personal experience to share?

22 sats \ 6 replies \ @k00b 19 Jun

I used to live next an illegal party AirBnB that slept 16 and had a pool.

10 sats \ 5 replies \ @WeAreAllSatoshi 19 Jun

Oh man, yep. That’ll do it

200 sats \ 4 replies \ @OneOneSeven 20 Jun

I remember reading about this back then lol, man 2 years flew by. #98011

105 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b 20 Jun

lol ironically, I sleep less now¹, but I get to choose when I sleep at least.

I should probably rethink my 6 hour minimum experiment. 7 is probably the right number. ↩

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @OneOneSeven 20 Jun

I listened to this JRE podcast about sleep when it came out 6 years ago and started taking it a bit more serious. According to Matt Walker, 7 hours is the absolute minimum for 99.9% of people, but there's a rare gene that allows some people to run on as low as 5 hours.

Run, in this case I think, meaning not suffer from the effects of certain genes expressing or not based on the hours slept.

1:29:11 He starts talking about the numbers.

105 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 20 Jun

Oh I’ve read Walker’s book. I’m definitely under doing it. I was just kind of curious for some reason.

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34 sats \ 2 replies \ @chaoticalHeavy 20 Jun

I have used AirBnB infrequently for many years. I always left a positive review and the hosts always left a good review of me. On my last trip we had power problems and a rotten door frame opening to the patio. The host was responsive and communicated well so I still left a good review. But this time the host never left a review for me. I haven't booked anything since then but I wonder if a lack of a host review is some kind of message being sent.

30 sats \ 1 reply \ @Signal312 OP 20 Jun

I'll bet you're on to something. People will find a way to communicate. Even here on stacker news, zaps are supposed to be anonymous, but you can often tell who's who because people most often just do their default zap amount...

If I ever have any negative feedback on AirBnB, I will just put in a private note.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chaoticalHeavy 20 Jun

Yeah, I always put any negative comments in private notes.

34 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei 20 Jun

Thanks for this. Airbnb appeals because you get a feel of the locals’ personalised living standards, but if basic standards are not even met, I’d rather fork out a bit extra to stay at reliable hotels

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Signal312 OP 20 Jun

Actually that's another negative about AirBnB, when you consider the additional costs like cleaning, they're often more expensive than a hotel. I usually only use Airbnb when I need either a larger space for more people, or a kitchen.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @teemupleb 20 Jun

I used to only leave positive reviews, but after a few sub-par experiences (smelly flat, bring your own toilet paper etc.), I started to leave honest reviews to incentivize hosts to put in some effort.

Haven’t been blacklisted yet. I think it’s good to have a balance of positive 5 star reviews and honest negative reviews in your “portfolio”.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @16d86e9daa 20 Jun

Airbnb can have negative impacts on locals' quality of life. This is one of the lesser-known Airbnb problems. Tourists hiring a place on Airbnb to enjoy a “cheaper” holiday actually pushes rent prices up for locals who need to live in the city. Tourists are visitors competing with locals for accommodation

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