OD "Review Your Guest"

[Casscat]

I have received an email from the increasingly annoying OD telling me that "time is running out" to review my guests from the other week. Apparently they have submitted a review - which is good of them - but I appear to be unable to actually view it unless I review my guests! This has never happened before, and I have had a review as recently as 14 September. I always reply to every review I receive but I am very reluctant to review my guests because I think that as a concept it's naff. This emanates from Airbnb where originally the 'guests' were taking a room in the owner's home and 'couch-surfing' on the cheap. It doesn't suit the quality rentals market at all. Are OD saying that if I do not review my guest they will either a) not publish their review of my property or b) publish the review but deny me the ability to acknowledge/comment/say nice things? Here is what I received:

You received a new review about your property. Rate your recent guest now and see what they said about their stay today!
Rating your recent guest is also helpful to other property owners, so that they can decide whether or not to accept bookings from that guest.
It only takes a few seconds but hurry, you must submit your rating by 20-Oct-2016!

Does this mean that I will not even know what the review said until 20 October, if at all??! I usually email guests personally if they submit a review to thank them, but I'm hardly likely to do that in this instance without knowing what it says. I have no reason to believe that it is anything but complimentary, but I never take this for granted

[FelicityA]

I got a similar message from VRBO when someone reviewed me. I ignored it except to tell the person that the email was purporting to come from them and they should complain. She did not want to be reviewed, anyway, because I asked her. Since then, they have changed their policy on falsely representing the guest (according to a reply on the HA US forum). I did not review the guest but I did have to wait until that certain date before I could see her review. I could however then respond to the review as normal, underneath.

[Casscat]

I have been on the phone for 35 minutes to OD about this as it is blackmail. They have no right to withhold the review and make its early release contingent upon providing a review of a guest I have never personally met. I said that there should be an option so that you could select whether or not to review the guest and if you elected not to then the review would be released for your comments. Why should a guest have the option to review but not the compulsion but an owner be deprived of information provided by their guest about their property! OD/HA have absolutely no right to withhold this information. Once the review is moderated to ensure that it conforms to the guidelines on acceptable content it should be shown to the owner immediately with the owner having the option to reply to the review and/or rate the guest. The 'contingent' carrot-dangling they are inflicting upon owners must surely be illegal? Any lawyers here with a comment? Contingent selling is illegal in the UK, and although OD/HA do release the review from captivity after two weeks they are trying to bribe people into getting access to the information as soon as it is available and that is at the very least morally wrong and at worst illegal. I am hoping it is the latter as they will have to abandon it and I would appreciate input from a legal eagle.

[ManxRed1]

'morally wrong' is something that they have absolutely no problem with whatsoever.

[Casscat]

'morally wrong' is something that they have absolutely no problem with whatsoever.

I'll have to pin my hopes on 'illegal' then....

[Casscat]

The woman at OD I spoke to confirmed that it was a 5* review, but that is not the point really. I have emailed the guest to thank her, as I always do when someone takes the trouble to post a review, but have advised that I cannot actually view her review and why. Why are all these holiday rental listing sites so utterly crap? How did 'utterly crap' get to be the gold standard? I posted a rant on the OD FB page and got the standard 'please feedback via this link' non-reply. The person I spoke to on the phone said that really they had not had any negative feedback about this new, highly beneficial feature so please can I ask anyone else who thinks this is a borderline illegal blackmail attempt to contact OD via email or phone and insist that their complaint is logged? It's the Neighbourhood Watch principle - if you don't report that your car has been broken into the police are unaware that there is a car crime problem in your area.

[AndrewH]

I can't see anything unlawful about it, Casscat. The reviews are requested by and submitted to OD. It's not a contractual matter. OD "own" the review when received. Although the review is very personal to you and is about your property and sets out to what extent the guest enjoyed it (or didn't!), there is no obligation on OD to let you read it or indeed publish it all. IMO, OD are entitled to do with it as they will, which includes sitting on it until you submit a guest review.

As mentioned somewhere on here, OD at some point, but I think they have stopped doing it, were submitting review requests to past guests purporting quite dishonestly that the request came directly from you, or otherwise saying that you personally are asking the guest to submit a review. Now that is a whole different story and they have wisely stopped doing that.

[Casscat]

The review request was initiated by me Andrew. The girl on the phone made reference to that. It wasn't auto-generated by OD without my knowledge. That the request was passed through their conduit is purely the mechanism required to ensure that it appears on my listing. What they have is a system which seeks to bribe people into a course of action they would otherwise not wish to take. "We have something relating to your property that you may wish to see, but we are not going to show it to you unless you pay the ransom." How can that be right?

[GRL]

It occurred to me also that if you have to review your guest before you see the review do you also still have the chance to reply to the review after it has been published? Where does the guest review appear on OD?

[e-richard]

Personally I find this whole business of guest reviews exceedingly tasteless.

I can't help feeling its just another airbnb me-too because they (Expedia) believe it'll add a few points onto the stock price.

[Sam V]

I'm with Richard on this too. How are off site owners supposed to write a review of guests they've never met?

I had a similar situation with my second (and last to date) booking via Airbnb after the air con not working, guests unhappy so 5o% refund to the guest situation. I left an honest but defensive review for the guest only to find she had left a lovely review for me!

[AndrewH]

The review request was initiated by me Andrew. The girl on the phone made reference to that. It wasn't auto-generated by OD without my knowledge. That the request was passed through their conduit is purely the mechanism required to ensure that it appears on my listing. What they have is a system which seeks to bribe people into a course of action they would otherwise not wish to take. "We have something relating to your property that you may wish to see, but we are not going to show it to you unless you pay the ransom." How can that be right?

Casscat, I am sorry I missed the obvious. But I still think (and it is just my opinion) that whether it is you, who through their system or otherwise, asks the guest to leave a review on the OD site, or whether it is OD themselves who ask the guest for a review, the answer is just the same. The review lands up in their "in tray" and it is there for them to deal with in whatever puerile way they want.

I don't ask OD guests for reviews myself, either personally or by clicking a button on the site, but OD reviews of my property are coming through in unexpected numbers lately. So I can only think that OD themselves are soliciting these reviews themselves. I just hope they are not making the requests look like they have been made by me.

Here's a suggestion - take it or leave it. Email the guests in question with a cc. to Owners Direct, thank them for their 5 stars review, tell them that you are not permitted to read it or see it published, because they want you first to review or rate their conduct while guests in you property, and this you will not do, because it is impertinent and inappropriate for you to criticise them in the way you are now being asked.

Now, to whom should you copy that email to at Owners Direct. The MSE Resolver should be able to tell you: http://www.resolver.co.uk/companies/own ... complaints . It is a bit of a rigmarole, however, because you need to register and "start a complaint", before it will name names.

[e-richard]

Not a bad idea Andrew, although I suspect OD will totally ignore it all. However, I do want to pick you up on ....

..this you will not do, because it is impertinent and inappropriate for you to criticise them in the way you are now being asked...

Why do you presume that a review is always negative?


Personally, I just hope the whole thing will vanish down the drainhole that it belongs in. In reality, it will take decades to build up enough reviews to make any database of guests have anywhere near enough info to be of any interest to anyone.

The likelihood of finding a previous review of anyone making an enquiry at your property in the next 10 years is lower than your chances of winning the Euromillions jackpot.

I'm off to buy a ticket !

[AndrewH]

..this you will not do, because it is impertinent and inappropriate for you to criticise them in the way you are now being asked...

Why do you presume that a review is always negative?

"Criticism" can be positive or negative, nice or nasty. It derives I believe from the word "critique", however I certainly agree that in modern speech it does mean an adverse comment and likewise the verb. More so now than it did in my boyhood, so another word would be much better.

[FelicityA]

"Criticism" can be positive or negative, nice or nasty. It derives I believe from the word "critique", however I certainly agree that in modern speech it does mean an adverse comment and likewise the verb. More so now than it did in my boyhood, so another word would be much better.

Judgement? Because that is what we are being asked to do of a person.

Rosie - in answer to your question, yes, we can still respond to reviews, as before, on VRBO so I would assume it is the same across all the Expedia sites. I think if a guest has been reviewed in the past you would probably get their review status by clicking on their name/photo? Isn't that how it works in AirbnB?