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Comment by muddyrivers | Hacker News Reader

One question I haven't seen to be raised often is how the reviews are "regulated" by airbnb.

I rented an apartment in a metropolitan city via airbnb last year. Both the owner and the apartment got about ~15 excellent reviews. It turned out the owner was very indeed very nice and friendly, but the apartment was far from both the description and the reviews. Our friends living in the city was astound since the price we paid should get us a much better deal than that.

It made me wonder if 1) the reviews were "regulated" or "engineered" somehow, 2) due to the two-way review system, renters were reluctant to write a bad review since they were concerned they could get retaliated by the owners giving them bad reviews in response.

Edit: fix typos

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due to the two-way review system, renters were reluctant to write a bad review since they were concerned they could get retaliated by the owners giving them bad reviews in response

This, I think, is important. Both the renter and the landlord have to write a review before both reviews appear on the website. And the review content of the other party is not known to you until you post your own. So, basically, we know when the renter is "problematic" - has a lot of complaints, is constantly unhappy etc. We generally don't leave a review for such person. This is probably not the best approach from an ethical point of view, but yes - we do not want to know what this "problematic" guest may write about us.

So, if I don't write a review, the other party's review won't get posted either? This misuse can be prevented by implementing a deadline for submitting review and beyond that, whoever submitted theirs gets posted. So even if you forfeit your review, it still wont prevent the other party's bad review from getting posted

So, if I don't write a review, the other party's review won't get posted either?

Yes, I'm quite sure that's how it works currently. There is a deadline, which is 14 days, and also you are notified when the other side posts a review. The message says something along the lines "X just posted a review, you need to post a review for both of your reviews to become public". And you also can't see what the other side wrote until you post yours.

There is also place for "private feedback" in the review, so of course it is possible to leave a good review, but send a bunch of complaints or suggestions that are only visible to the person you are reviewing.

Haven't used AirBnB so I don't know about the review mechanism but isn't it blind? For example, if i remember correctly, on Freelancer.com, you cant see the other party's review until you submit yours. The reviews only get posted once both parties have submitted theirs. Isn't this the same for AirBnB? If not, wouldn't implementing this resolve the issue?

Side note: You can implement a deadline for submitting review to avoid misuse where someone doesn't submit their own review in order to prevent a bad review from getting posted on their profile

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