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[cadetcaptain]

We had a guest who caused damage in our home and we asked them to pay. After they declined we escalated to Airbnb and guest freaked out, edits their review to be negative (we hadn't reviewed them yet) and then they filed a counter claim in retaliation as well as a made up a safety violation report.

Airbnb's default response when a safety report is made is to suspend the host account so that no one can book with that host. After everything was reviewed, we got paid for the damage, the guest counter claim was rejected, their review was deleted and the safety report was dismissed. But during the whole process which took a week we could not receive any bookings.

Are there any consequence for guests who abuse the system?

[NewJim15]

Here's a counterpoint: What if a guest’s claim isn’t just retaliatory but is real? AirBnB has no idea who is telling the truth because they’re not there. It might be safer from whatever standpoint they are at to just temporarily suspend accounts then reinstate afterwards. There are plenty of legit stories and proof of terrible hosts who try to cheat / like about guests.

[QueChau]

Airbnb needs to come up with a system to make fraudulent safety claims harder for a guest to claim. I have a couple hundred reviews….and just had a problematic guest who pretty much told me on the platform they were going to report me for a safety complaint because I wasn’t able to accommodate him staying in the unit a couple of hours past check out. I get that there has to be a way to weed out problematic hosts but this fellow was able to say some lie that was so bad they put my listings on hold for a few days.

[alankane]

Airbnb needs to come up with a system to make fraudulent safety claims harder for a guest to claim. I have a couple hundred reviews….and just had a problematic guest who pretty much told me on the platform they were going to report me for a safety complaint because I wasn’t able to accommodate him staying in the unit a couple of hours past check out. I get that there has to be a way to weed out problematic hosts but this fellow was able to say some lie that was so bad they put my listings on hold for a few days.

You are lucky in that it was only a few days. Generally these things can take a week or more to resolve during which your bookings may be canceled during that time and new listings not available.

[Ursa83]

We had a guest who caused damage in our home and we asked them to pay. After they declined we escalated to Airbnb and guest freaked out, edits their review to be negative (we hadn't reviewed them yet) and then they filed a counter claim in retaliation as well as a made up a safety violation report.

Airbnb's default response when a safety report is made is to suspend the host account so that no one can book with that host. After everything was reviewed, we got paid for the damage, the guest counter claim was rejected, their review was deleted and the safety report was dismissed. But during the whole process which took a week we could not receive any bookings.

Are there any consequence for guests who abuse the system?

Guests can edit their review until you do (or 14 days) so make sure you review them before starting any claims to avoid the retaliation.

[RoadWarrior187]

Even if airbnb were to have consequences for guests I'm sure it would be much easier for them to just set up a new account unfortunately. This is the cost of doing business, continue screening guests better and avoid these incidents.