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wow in my 7 years of Airbnb hosting on the platform we have over 70 listings and over 6800 five star reviews on airb B I have never seen this happen in all of my hosting experience this is absolutely shocking let's get into it okay welcome back everyone Mike link Traina here with strr wealth Academy if this is your first time to the channel welcome we talk about all things on growing and scaling hosting businesses to help you Achieve Financial time and

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location Freedom you might notice our tones a little bit more serious today because honestly we just got off the phone with Airbnb support I'm honestly pretty pissed off and we'll explain why so essentially what just happened we were speaking to someone on support team and we hosted a guest recently at a property where we had advertised that the property was a Triplex meaning it has three units on the property okay all of the units are separate all of them

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have their own entrances all the units are private there's no shared space between the units clearly advertised okay so we wanted to do this timely video cuz this an alarming experience that we had with the Airbnb support rep today could literally impact every single host on this platform so this guest as Michael said booked the platform booked our property it's a Triplex and during their stay they ask for a full refund now the reason why

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they asked for the full refund is the guest now our property is pet friendly okay now the guest when they booked they said I'm going to be bringing my dog but they described it as an aggressive dog now when they arrived at the property and they were staying there they said they wanted a full refund because they claimed they didn't realize that it was a Triplex property and they didn't want their aggressive dog to cause issues for other units guess don't read let's just

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be honest yeah okay and it happens we get it but here's the kicker they then said to us I don't want to leave a bad review so let's work something out now if you've been hosting for a while when you get messages like that that essentially basically translates to give me my money back or we'll give you a bad review now historically with airbnb's review policy which if you're curious you can actually read the policy just in the link in the description below here

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if a guest tries to leave a retaliatory review or threaten you with extortion or any way to try to influence the review whatsoever yeah it's retaliatory and extortion and it can be removed our response to the guest was well un fortunately like I understand where you're coming from but like our listing was very clearly advertised our cancellation policy is very clear so we declined their refund request now the guest completed their stay there was no

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issues during the stay now after the guest left they left us a terrible review okay and they literally blamed us for their own aggressive dog and they were talking about things related to things that had nothing to do with the listing at all they talked about construction that was multiple blocks away and the guest also damaged the property as well so so we had sent them a request to get the well damages paid for which was caused by their dog and of

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course the guest denied to pay it okay this is where it gets really really crazy so we sent the claim to Airbnb through their air cover protection that they have okay and again if you're curious about that you can check out the link in the description below as well now Airbnb did pay for the claim but here's what's really crazy so after we had the claim paid we went to Airbnb and said we need your supportting getting this review removed because this review

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absolutely violates your review policy so on the phone we're with them saying hey like every single element about this review is clearly in violations of airb be's review policy not only is this extortion because they've tried saying hey in the actual text on Airbnb saying if you don't you know give me a refund I'm going to be leaving you a bad review and like let's work something out this is clearly what an extortion and retaliatory review is right it's very

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biased like that in alone should have had the review removed on top of that they talked about other factors that didn't even make sense like talking about different airbnbs talking about construction half block away it was speaking about everything that wasn't even relevant so like every single element of the review needed to be removed and when we were on the phone with Airbnb support and their supervisor they said I understand all these

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elements however we have an internal policy that prevents us from removing these types of reviews because you have done an Airbnb cover claim the guest refused to pay it and we paid it and so we are out of pocket for it we cannot remove the review that the guest did because we are at a loss so basically what they're saying is that if you have an air cover claim and the guest denied to pay it and Airbnb pays it even if the guest review absolutely

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violates their policy Airbnb will not remove the review because they paid for the claim so I want to explain three different reasons why this is so dangerous for hosts and it puts you in a really precarious position first reason is that it forces you to choose between getting reimbursed for damages or protecting your reputation as a host and in this business you live and die on reviews if your reviews if you disappoint 25 guests in a row you're out

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of business like you will not be able to host ever again now the second reason is that it literally punishes you for enforcing your house rules and hosting responsibly and the third thing is it leaves you so vulnerable to getting hit with biased retaliatory or reviews that are absolutely irrelevant that can directly impact your business now this is huge because previously araban be's policy stance was that if guests damage your property or violated your house

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rules then that was grounds to have the review taken down now if you think we're making this up on the screen right now we literally have a screenshot from rbb host support that absolutely validates and just shares full evidence that this happened literally today okay yeah so they have it in writing we literally have the call here I'm so shocked like I'm I've never seen this in my entire seven years of hosting and the whole thing with this is the complete 180 from

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what airb be used to do as well is one extreme to the next saying hey if a guest damages your property yeah of course we'll remove their review now it's like if a guest damages your property and we had to pay for it oh yeah you're stuck with it it's just it boggles my mind do we have that screenshot for proof guys so really guys here's a calls to action for here so to all fellow hosts out there please share this message hit the like And subscribe

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at the top here and start sharing this to other hosts and hosting groups like hosts need to know what's happening this is a quote unquote internal policy so we don't even know why reviews are not getting removed and now we do yeah so from here share this message with other people in groups if you're on X tag Brian chesky at B chesy and let him know that this is like completely unacceptable because you shouldn't be in a position as a host where you either

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have to accept Financial losses or choose to have a poorly thing written about you that is a completely ridiculous thing and right now hosting me is becoming more and more punitive and less sustainable on the Airbnb platform this is unacceptable and guys we've invested so much time effort everything and so have so many other hosts they really got to be looking at how do we keep hosts instead of just getting this churn of new hosts coming

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in and not being able to sustain them and being able to really attract people to stay on the platform so that's what happened today guys so again if you can hear a little bit of tension in our voice we're honestly just pissed off and we're pretty fed up but we wanted to get this message out just so you guys know the Precedence that this sets so again be very careful be very mindful two quick things that in terms of workarounds you can think of doing on a

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go for basis if you are a host on the platform if you have to file a claim do it as close as possible to the end of the 14-day window that you have after a guest checks out before you put the claim in so that there's less chance that if they do leave a bad review at least you then have time to attempt to remove that review before you then file for the claim the second thing though that you can do is go direct go direct honestly don't even deal with it when

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you go direct and we'll do more videos on how you can get more business off of Airbnb but when you go direct you call the shots you don't have to deal with these policies from OTAs you don't have to be at under the stress and pressure of worrying whether or not you're going to be put out of business because of something that's completely outside of your control and it's an everchanging policy I mean literally last year they said yeah for sure we'll remove this

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review if they damaged now it's like no now you're getting punitive consequences because of it and that's just like a 180 right so you have to always keep up with it so guys if you have been having issues removing reviews on Airbnb I really hope that this was insightful into reasons you may not have known why it was occurring even though like they keep saying it was a guest experience it was the guest experience if you actually had an air cover claim that they paid

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out that's the real reason why we'd love to hear your comments in the comment section below and see if you've had very similar experiences in this as well and I really hope this enlightened you as well of you're not crazy of why they're not removing reviews it's an internal policy yeah if you filed the claim and airb B paid it and they won't take your review down this is why this is why okay if you enjoy this video go ahead and hit like And subscribe and again leave us a

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comment in the Box Below guys just let us know have you gone through something similar has this happened in your hosting business we want to hear from you guys because ultimately if more hosts speak out against this and make you know the top of the ladder aware of what's going on at Airbnb that's when change can happen that's when change can happen Okay so hope you found this information help and we'll see you in the next video see you there