OD "Review Your Guest"

[AndrewH]

Marking stars out of 5 - for people!
Give me strength, the business has gone barking mad.

+1

[GRL]

How the hell can you give a person, couple, a family or a group of people a star rating?

"Well Mr and Mrs X appeared lovely but the children had their heads permanently stuck in a screen and only grunted - then there was the other couple they came with - Mr Q smelt slightly and Mrs Q had bad breath but their kids were adorable. 2 bedrooms were immaculate when they left but 2 were a tip but I have no idea who slept where and everyone was a little bit short on communication .... but that was possibly because they were from Slovakia and didn't speak any English ... and and all this was gleaned from my housekeeper who met them on arrival. I never saw them. "

[Bunny]

Being an onsite owner I don't have a problem reviewing guests. There's no need to write personal comments; just confirm how they treated the property/observed rental rules etc. I can see some positives. Just think how we all live in fear of a bad review so we go overboard to make sure nothing goes wrong. Surely guests will behave the same in that respect. After all, is it really any different to writing a reference for a person who wishes to enter a tenancy? HOWEVER, I do think the guest reviews should not be public for all to see. There should be a system where hosts only can see guest reviews and only when an enquiry has gone through their system.

[Sam V]

...and if a guest receives any form of negatively in their review are they likely to use OD again to book a holiday? Could OD be inadvertently actively turning people a away from the site?

[newtimber]

There should be a system where hosts only can see guest reviews and only when an enquiry has gone through their system.

The guest has to be able to see the review too - otherwise a host could unreasonably give them a bad review and they'd be effectively unable to rent somewhere next time and wouldn't know why.

And if the guest is going to read the review, the host has to be very careful that their review doesn't libel the guest in any way and must be able to show that it's accurate...

[Sam V]

Hmm, now imagine the scenario of the guest who claims she's been flea bitten during her stay and the host who by all accounts had happy guests during their stay.

[Bunny]

There should be a system where hosts only can see guest reviews and only when an enquiry has gone through their system.

The guest has to be able to see the review too - otherwise a host could unreasonably give them a bad review and they'd be effectively unable to rent somewhere next time and wouldn't know why.

And if the guest is going to read the review, the host has to be very careful that their review doesn't libel the guest in any way and must be able to show that it's accurate...

Yes, I agree; I didn't mean that a guest shouldn't be able to see a review of themselves, but that review should not be public like it is on Airbnb for all to see.

[Casscat]

As an update it would appear that this blackmail feature is only engaged when the guest offering up the review availed themselves of the all-hallowed online payments option (probably also online booking, but I don't have that enabled.) I've only ever had one guest do this and it was indeed she who left the embargoed review. I subsequently received an OD review from another guest and was advised of it straight away: full viewing rights, immediate right of reply, posted onto my page without further delay. What a complete mess! So if guests pay or book online, via owners who are persuaded of the vast improvement that these features offer to both parties, then guests have to submit to a beauty parade and owners are deprived of access to their reviews unless they rate their guests like slabs of meat! Hmm, yes, that's major progress isn't it...

[PW in Polemi]

Well, Casscat, we're on subscription, with no on-line booking and no on-line payment - and we had one guest that we had to review before we saw his review of our cottage.

But that was back in May so maybe the system has been tweaked somewhat since then, because it's not happened since - and we treat all our HA/OD enquiries the same i.e. respond briefly via the dashboard and send a more detailed response from our own domaine email.

[Casscat]

How random PW! I have my most recent guest's review online already while my 'beauty parade' online payment guest's review is still in dry dock!

[hydroland2]

For the first time recently I gave in to the nagging from OD and submitted a review on my guests. I gave them good ratings for everything because I thought it would be good for other owners to know they were good guests to have. And I thought no more about it.

A few days later I got a very irate email from the guests who were extremely shocked to be told by OD that they'd been given a star rating and it was on their permanent record. They were very unimpressed with the system - and with me for reviewing them. I had absolutely no idea initially what I had done to upset them so much - my first thought was someone had hacked my OD account and sent something offensive! It took me considerable time on the phone to explain and mollify them and thanks to OD that nearly wrecked a perfectly friendly relationship with some very nice guests.

I'd assumed that this was something only shown to other owners if the same guests requested to book with them. Not something OD were going to wave under the noses of the unsuspecting guests themselves. I'm not really surprised they found it rude...

Won't be reviewing guests again!

[Codliveroil]

Oh my word! What a shambles!

I have ignored the "Review your Guest" requests completely because to me the idea is sick and stinks.

I have had 4 reviews (made at my request) and they have appeared as normal albeit I think they took longer to appear than usual, I didn't think anything of that.

One review has gone missing, the guest told me he had made a review, 6 weeks ago. I ignored the Rate your guest as usual. I did get the email about 3 weeks ago with the review attached and an option to reply to it, which I did, and the review has still not been published.

I think everyone is entitled to review an object, business, service or vacation because they have spent hard earned money on it and a review is (mostly) essentially about value for money, no problem with that. However it is sick to review/judge a guest it's not about value for money it's about behavior and/or integrity, nothing else and to judge another persons behavior and integrity in public is scandalous, I am not surprised at the reaction of the guest in the previous post.

[Jenster]

I have had lots of 'review your guest' emails, which I have been ignoring. It just means a slight delay before you see their review, which doesn't really bother me. However, I can see it would be a bit awkward for those that send a post review 'thank you for your kind words etc' email as it would seem a bit late! (I tend to send a post stay email instead and only reply to reviews if there is anything negative).

I did review one guest early on, but only because she was so nice I felt I could give her 5 stars for everything. I might consider reviewing a truly awful guest that I definitely wouldn't want back, just to help out other owners, but it would be better to have a private 'report this guest' function or something, so that OD could then ban them from the site (not sure if this already exists or is feasible?)

[FelicityA]

For the first time recently I gave in to the nagging from OD and submitted a review on my guests. I gave them good ratings for everything because I thought it would be good for other owners to know they were good guests to have. And I thought no more about it.

A few days later I got a very irate email from the guests who were extremely shocked to be told by OD that they'd been given a star rating and it was on their permanent record. They were very unimpressed with the system - and with me for reviewing them. I had absolutely no idea initially what I had done to upset them so much - my first thought was someone had hacked my OD account and sent something offensive! It took me considerable time on the phone to explain and mollify them and thanks to OD that nearly wrecked a perfectly friendly relationship with some very nice guests.

I'd assumed that this was something only shown to other owners if the same guests requested to book with them. Not something OD were going to wave under the noses of the unsuspecting guests themselves. I'm not really surprised they found it rude...

Won't be reviewing guests again!

Did you tell OD about this? I told Homeaway on their US forum that my guest did not want to be reviewed and was very put out to hear from me that I had got an email from her (her name was in the address of the email so it looked like it was directly from her, but if you hovered with the mouse you could see if came from noreply@) saying she wanted to be reviewed. I thought it most unethical. There were others who agreed and the person who mans the board eventually came back and said they were not going to do that anymore.

[hydroland2]

For the first time recently I gave in to the nagging from OD and submitted a review on my guests. I gave them good ratings for everything because I thought it would be good for other owners to know they were good guests to have. And I thought no more about it.

A few days later I got a very irate email from the guests who were extremely shocked to be told by OD that they'd been given a star rating and it was on their permanent record. They were very unimpressed with the system - and with me for reviewing them. I had absolutely no idea initially what I had done to upset them so much - my first thought was someone had hacked my OD account and sent something offensive! It took me considerable time on the phone to explain and mollify them and thanks to OD that nearly wrecked a perfectly friendly relationship with some very nice guests.

I'd assumed that this was something only shown to other owners if the same guests requested to book with them. Not something OD were going to wave under the noses of the unsuspecting guests themselves. I'm not really surprised they found it rude...

Won't be reviewing guests again!

Did you tell OD about this? I told Homeaway on their US forum that my guest did not want to be reviewed and was very put out to hear from me that I had got an email from her (her name was in the address of the email so it looked like it was directly from her, but if you hovered with the mouse you could see if came from noreply@) saying she wanted to be reviewed. I thought it most unethical. There were others who agreed and the person who mans the board eventually came back and said they were not going to do that anymore.

No I didn't tell OD. I figured that if they were up to their usual standards they would contact the guest with some completely incorrect interpretation of what I'd said to them and make things much worse.
In future I'll only ever review a guest if they are a disaster and I think other owners need to be warned!