How To Delete Negative Reviews on Airbnb | Tim Hubbard

So what do you do when you get that review for your short term rental? That just makes your teeth cringe and you know it's not true. It's just not fair. You got to get it removed. And you're in luck because I've got some great tips for you. My team and I have removed a lot of reviews and I want to tell you how. Stay tuned. Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches. We'll discuss investing in real estate, but with a specific focus on short term rentals. Quick actionable items to acquire, manage and scale your portfolio. I'm your host, Tim Hubbard.

So it's never fun to get a negative review. Now sometimes it's warranted if you drop the ball, right? But sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's not accurate. It's just not fair. And the reality is these negative reviews can really impact the performance of your short term rental. So we've got to do everything we to get them removed. And you are in luck because my team and I have removed a lot of reviews. I want to break that down for you this week. I want to give you three reasons why reviews can be removed. Questions to ask yourself if it's worth trying to get the review removed, the importance of having proof, how to proactively handle a negative review, and then just in a nutshell, how I our team does it. So there's three reasons why Airbnb, this is specific to Airbnb, will let you remove a review. Now, when I say let you doesn't mean that you can just personally remove it yourself. You have to involve them. But there's three reasons why. The first one is if it's in violation of their content policy. The second one is if the review is biased and the third one is if the review is irrelevant. So if the author, the guest who is writing the review, does not actually have any relevant experience with the review that they wrote, well, then you can have it removed for that as well. So let's dig into some more specific reasons why you can have your reviews removed. One of those, and this is an easy one, is if a guest demands something in exchange for not leaving a bad review, which is kind of like blackmail, right? So maybe they say if you don't give me the discount for the cleaning fee, I'm going to leave you a bad review. Something along those lines, you can have that removed as long as you have proof. So hopefully you've got that in writing. Another one, if a post reveals the exact location of the listing, that's not something that is allowed and so you can have that review removed. If your guest never actually stayed in the property. That's another reason. Get that bad review out of there. If they never stayed, they don't have relevant experience. They can't be writing that review. Another reason, if they mention an open resolution case. So let's say the guest stayed with you. They broke a table, you filed a resolution and they put that in the review. Like the stay was awful. The guest tried to charge me for breaking a table and filed a resolution. Well, you can have that one removed. And then the last one here is if they just straight up lied in your review. So if you missed last week's episode, go back and check that out. We talked all about lying. How your guests might be lying to you, how a lot of hosts might be lying to their guess, and why lying. Just like we should never be lying. So go back and check that one out if you missed it. Questions to ask yourself if the review is worth pursuing, is the damage from the review enough to where you want to go through the effort and have it removed? If it's a four star, you know, I know four stars can be damaging. They really can. If you're an average scorer, the reality is if your average score for your short term rentals, a four star, like you're not going to get booked, right? 4.8 and above is what a super host would be. And so you really want to strive for five. But if you're trying to argue a four star review, you're probably not going to have as much luck. Questions you're going to want to ask yourself if it's worth pursuing, trying to review the review, is it worth your time? Did someone leave you a four star? And I know as damaging as a four star review can be, is it really worth your time to go through all that process? I would say maybe it is, especially if it's dishonest because a four star review can really be damaging to your short term rental. If your average score is a four star, that's really not good at all. Superhost, for example, have an average rating of 4.8 or higher. So we always want to strive for the five. So first take into account if it's worth your time pursuing. But I would say if there's any dishonesty in it all and it's not a five star, I would go for it. The other thing we want to think about before we pursue trying to remove a review is if there's actually some truth to it. If you're trying to have A review removed, that's truthful. Well, then you, you are being dishonest. And the likelihood of you actually getting it removed is not going to be very high. Right. Because it's an honest review. So those are a couple questions you'll definitely want to make sure asking yourself before you spend the time and the effort trying to get a review removed. Now, there's another thing we want to be careful of. We want to make sure that we have proof that we have evidence against one of these reviews. And if there is evidence, you know, and it's not going against one of those other content policies or a straight out why or something like that, but the more evidence we have, the better. And so it's best to make sure that we're always doing everything via writing. Right. If it's a phone call, well, then that's gonna be a lot harder to have evidence from. Although our phone system, for example, we record all of our calls, so we could even use that. So how do we proactively handle a negative review? We always want to make sure we're responding to it. And actually, I did a whole episode to this episode number 46 of how exactly we want to respond to these negative reviews, because it's super important. But I'll just break it down in a quick nutshell again. First of all, we want to thank the guests for their feedback. Remember, if we get a negative review, that means that any of our future potential guests are going to see that review. And if we respond to it appropriately, it's really going to help our chances of them not, you know, maybe taking that review with a grain of salt and seeing all the other really positive reviews and not letting it really affect their booking decision. So first of all, we want to, we want to be polite. We want to thank the guests for their feedback. We want to apologize for the fact that we didn't meet their expectations and that their trip or their stay with us wasn't quite what they had hoped for. We want to address future concerns. So, you know, if this was something that was our fault, like the AC went out, well, then we want to state that in there. We want to say that we fixed it. Now, if this was something that was just a straight up lie, well, then we want to address that as politely as possible. Remember, if we go back to last week's episode, we can be honest in lots of different ways. We can be brutally honest, which doesn't always come across as best as it can, or we can use our communication skills to address a concern, to be Honest, in a way, that's a lot. A lot softer, I guess we could say. So the last thing is that we want to hope that they come back and stay with us again or that we can make it up to them next time in the future. Remember, we are addressing future potential guests when we respond to reviews. So make sure you respond to the review. And if you want a lot more detail on this, you can go back, check out episode 46. Okay, so some quick tips on how and why we can have a negative review removed. Now, I want to break down how we actually do it. My team and I. In fact, we have one of our virtual assistants who's designated, designated to get the reviews removed. So this is how we go about it. First of all, we want to check the review to see what rule it actually violated. Did someone blackmail us? You know, they demanded a refund or they were going to leave a bad review. Did they not actually stay there? Did they straight up lie? Go back and check out those reasons. Make sure that the reviewer trying to remove you can actually have removed. Afterwards, we're going to want to report it to Airbnb. We want to provide them with as much details as possible. Copies of the transcripts, any sort of proof, anything that we have to help our side of the case. That could include photos, any sort of documents, anything communication we receive from our housekeepers, anything like that. And then we want to wait for Airbnb's verdict to see what they have to say. Now, this is the thing. They might get back to you and say, sorry, Tim, this did not go against one of our rules, even though you may still think that it did. So this is what we do. Are you ready for it? Well, they deny a review, we wait a little bit, and then we do it again. Yes, we do, because we really want that review off. If it really isn't accurate, we fight for it. Right? And we. A lot of times we get other Airbnb support agents and they have a different opinion and they get it removed. So we try this multiple, multiple times until we get that review removed. And that really helps our overall score. It also just. It helps us feel better, right, to know that there's not information out there that's totally fake or false about something that we've maybe put so much time into, like our short term rentals. So that is it in a nutshell. Just because you get a negative review doesn't mean it has to stay on your profile. Make sure to recap these reasons and Airbnb's content policy to make sure that the reviews you have on there are legitimate and make sure that if there's some way you can have them removed you fight for it and you get that review removed. And if you get denied try it again. This will really help your performance getting rid of those bad reviews even if it's a four star remember even if that review is a four star. So hopefully that gave you some good insight. I hope that you are able to get some of your reviews removed that aren't honest. Till next time have a fabulous week.

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