We had a lot of problems with an Airbnb house in Houston. When I kindly told the host to fix the following problems he got extremely aggressive.
A few days before arrival, the host has switched the property. The property I initially booked is no longer listed on Airbnb. I paid more than double the price, as the host was asking for the new listing. The new listing said that it was located in a historic, quiet neighborhood. However, it was located in a run-down neighborhood.
The other neighbor had three big dogs (five feet away from the bedroom) which barked all day and night. We were always waking up and it felt very uncomfortable.
The TV did not work. When we arrived, the Internet TV had no power cable and it was not installed with the router. The stove and oven did not work either, because the gas meter was locked by the gas company. After two days, we had no more access to the laundry room.
As of April 1st, 2018, Texas law dictates that any residential and commercial structures with both sleeping areas and gas or fuel-burning appliances must install and properly maintain carbon monoxide alarms. However, there was only a cheap smoke detector, no carbon monoxide and no fire extinguisher. The host was very reluctant to solve these problems.
Without getting a review from me, the host was giving me a totally bad review, without reason. However, in the last email to me he wrote: “It was a pleasure hosting you! We will be certain to leave a great five-star review for your stay. If you ever come back, please let us know and give us the chance to accommodate you again. A five-star review for us as hosts is very important for our business. Please don’t forget to give us that.”
After checking the reviews of the listing, I discovered they were all fake.
The reviewers are all but one new members since 2019.
If you read them together, you see a pattern… every reviewer is praising another topic.
Each reviewer must have stayed only one day, after we left at the end of March and we have been the first guest.
Last but not least, they praise topics which are very obviously not true.
That is very astute. The booking we had had good reviews and then you would see the bad review so we researched what other properties the host had and we saw the same pattern. Then we spoke to town people and they confirmed the poor treatment of the host to the staff such as he did not pay them. Then we did further research and he was accused of theft by the courts but there was a glitch which sounded like an attorney etc error and the host was not relieved from the theft charges so it sounded like they took his passport but he didn’t get charged. The accommodation manager was so verbally aggressive after we left after the first night then he charged us for the whole stay. It seems like hosts like to try to intimidate to test the waters.Well done you for picking this up
Yes, I would love to hear how you determined that the reviews are fake. Waiting for your reply!
This sounds like something we just experienced. How did you determine the reviews were fake? Also I noticed a person named Anne is responding on here and that was the name of the person who deleted our review because we used a first and last name.