Hacker News Reader

Comment by geronb | Hacker News Reader

What do you mean by "shady tactics to prop up positive reviews over the years"? I'm an employee and we have very strict policies around review fairness. If anything, most review-related complaints come from hosts who want to have negative reviews removed due to perceived unfairness. By policy, negative reviews are rarely if ever removed this way much to the chagrin of hosts.

Reviews are usually ranked chronologically, but in some cases there may be sorted by predicted relevancy ranking based on review length and language.

View on HN

I stayed in an AirBnB in Houston in the summer with broken AC. I left before the first night and was not refunded a cent.

My review is buried on the page. It wasn't on top when I wrote it, and the stars weren't displayed, just the text.

I deleted my AirBnB account.

> I deleted my AirBnB account.

How? I'm trying to delete my Airbnb account since months (as part of my regular declouding routine).

First, to my surprise, it was only 'deactivated', despite a wording that suggested otherwise, as far as I remember. Then I followed a tutorial on the Internet that said that I need to contact support through a somewhat hidden web form to actually delete my account. .. but to access this form I need to be logged in, which was impossible for me after my account deactivation.

To reactivate my account I need to talk to support, but, surprise, that's not accessible without being logged in.

In the beginning of July I wrote to the email they link in their site imprint. Two weeks later someone told my that my request was forwarded to someone else who will contact me soon. ... and that's the last thing I got.

I did only deactivate my account. I followed up on Twitter, and on a support thread and requested my account be fully deleted, and they didn't get back to me on either request.

You could read the link I attached to my comment.

I've personally experienced problems with reviews before where negative reviews never showed up, and have stopped using AirBnB as a result. I also know this is an extremely well-known problem, and if you aren't aware of it it's because you haven't looked for it (a few minutes on Google is all it takes).

One of my friends found a hidden camera in the bedroom, in an Airbnb "superhost" overseas (around 2018).

Despite providing a police report to Airbnb and getting a full refund, the listing was never taken down, the Superhost status was still there, and somehow the review she left was deleted.

I think it's pretty shameful and wish she went to the media about it.

I stayed in a place that had cockroaches and no hot water in the shower. Airbnb eventually let us move to another unit, but we were unable to review the unit that we had originally booked, and which we stayed in for over a week.

Any guest whom Airbnb agrees to re-home based on the conditions of their original unit should be allowed to leave a review for that unit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com