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Bad review from a no-show guest

We have just received our first-ever really negative review for our property - and it came from a guest who cancelled on the morning of her due arrival.  She wrote saying that unfortunately due to family problems she couldn't make it that day and said that she would probably come again the following weekend (which wasn't actually available). The tone of her communication suggested that we should let her come when she pleased, at no extra cost. I replied politely that it was unfortunate that she could not make it, how disappointed we were not to meet her, and pointed out that we would be delighted if she rebooked via Booking.com 
As a result, she left a bad review regarding our communication and property, marking us seriously down on all choices (funnily enough except for value for money for which she gave us a 10!). The problem of course now is that her score has dragged down our otherwise excellent rating score on Booking.com - which I think is really unfair. 

 


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Life on 3rd Gu… 5 years ago

That is exceptionally unfair. There must be a way for guests to prove that they have stayed at the establishment before being able to write a review.

We have had this one awful experience a few months ago, a company made a booking on behalf of the guest for a week's stay. After one night he packed up his things and left without any explanation. I went to the room to see if there was anything wrong, but all was in working order and clean as always. The company called and said that the guest was not happy, but he would not say why, but we must give them a full refund. It is clearly stated in our policy that before seven days of check in you forfeit the 100% payment. I explained this to her and she started threatening that she would write a bad review on every platform that our establishment is based. How horrible is that? I couldn't believe that someone can be so mischievous.

This is a perfect example of how vulnerable we are to get our name tarnished by people who did not even stay at the establishment.

Does anyone have a similar experience or have advise on how to approach a situation like this?

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Gmulvein 5 years ago

AirBNB has a review policy whereby no reviews are shown until the Guest reviews the Host and Property and the Host reviews the Guest. If one chooses not to review the other then no review is posted. I think that this is much fairer and that maybe Booking.com should look at revising its Guest Reviews policy.

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Zoo 11 months ago

This was never possible with Airbnb. If one chooses not to review the other of course the review of the person who wrote a review will be shown. But after 14 days of waiting. If you don't know how it works don't write.

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Rrobynhowe 5 years ago

I agree with the AIRBNB concept. We've had our first bad review from someone who did not read our property description. This review has effected our overall rating and we have already received cancellations. This has upset me and we are considering removing our property from Booking.com

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Nikolaspg111 5 years ago

Booking.com must improve their review policy because now I think its uncompleted and guests have to much more rights than hosts.We got a two bad review from guests who make a party in our place and from guests who steal some gifts wich we got from our guests and wich we keep in special place at apartment.We had cancell both reservation and report to Booking.com why we do that and after all guests like that have a right to write a review!?In one review the guest who steal things from us call us cheaters!?It is unbelievable!It must be some resolving center on Booking.com for such situations.Because on AirBnb they have a great resolving center and when we have a problem with guests thay also carry about how we are partners with them,did we had any complains before from our guests and they also look a reviews for the guests and after that decide what is the best solution for resolving problem.For now,there is no way on Booking.com to have any protection from guests who doesnt respect your house rules,they may write review like any other guests who repect your place and host.The worse of everything,when you report such guests to Booking.com and ask from them to leave,they always give bad review with many untrue and imaginary information in it.It is a problem wich many hosts have right now.

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Angela @Promhills 5 years ago

Did you mark the booking as a no show or a cancellation? If you did, then b.com should have never sent them a review email and you could contact b.com and insist they remove it as you had already advised the guest did not stay

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Lazarus Momanyi 4 years ago

Even with no show booking still allow no show guest to do reviews

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Nikolaspg111 5 years ago

We mark as no show.Because with first guests who had bad behavior we didnt wish to mark as no show(because booking.com not recommend that)so we write to booking,explain whats happend and after that this guests give us a review.We had conversation with booking and they told to us-if guests stayd one night at your place,its no metter what they do,they may destroy your house and you may report all that but on the end that guests have right to write a review.

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Purockhostel 5 years ago

Booking.com they do not have any policies to delete the review all they said is to no show them as soon as possible even if they did not stay with us and we forgot to no show the booking then they still can write a bad review and booking.com only say they can not delete it that's not fair even if we prove that the guest did not stay

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Marc Nephtali 5 years ago

I had a guest who never stayed and also left a nasty review. This should not be allowed, plus there is not even an opportunity to answer.

I addition and earlier this year, a guest booked for 5 nights, decided to leave after the first night. She contacted Paypal (with who she paid) and her entire stay completely refunded. Net net, was a bad review and loss of income. I was not able to get this review removed, however was able to respond

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Kymberleycarterpaige 5 years ago

This is all so unfair and I must admit putting me off booking.com pretty poor management and extremely unfair Air B&B's system seems much more professional. I would have thought Booking.com would have valued its property managers considering we are paying their bill

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Zoo 11 months ago

Airbnb rating system is the same. nothing more professional.

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African Serend… 4 years ago

I have just had a similar issue. A guest booked for 3 nights. Called in late the ist night to say they were delayed. Second night sent a message at 10pm to say they were cancelling due to our dogs on the property (well advertised on our Booking.com page). Forgot to mark as no show and have just received a poor review. Booking.com should implement a similar AirBnB policy.

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pibomarco 4 years ago

Regarding AirBnB as far as I know, all reviews are published. You only have 14days to write a review. After a review is completed, it will be posted to the guest’s or host’s account.

 

Regarding Booking.com:

on 26.10.2019 the guest booked Apartment (occupancy max 3 persons), they came 4 in total (with 2 young children).

We didn't accept them because of breaching our policies:

- Our property is exclusively for adults only.

- Children under 12 are not allowed.

- Our standard occupancy doesn't allow additional children.

 

We suggested them to contact Booking.com and to cancel the reservation asap, and if we would find a replacement booking we would issue a refund. The guest didn't cancel the booking, so the booking remained active and not bookable for other potential customers. The next day (27.10.) I marked the booking as No-show as suggested by my account manager.

 

Today I received 2,5 score from this guest. I reported this to Booking.com and now I am waiting for the answer/solution. :)

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pibomarco 4 years ago

Solved :)
 

 

"Dear Partner,



Thanks for your request. We’ve taken another look at the review in question and have decided to remove both the comments and the score from our website. Just be aware that it may take us up to 48 hours to remove them completely.

 


We’re very sorry for any inconvenience caused by this review. Thanks for your patience and understanding throughout this process.

 


Best regards,
Booking.com Moderation Team"

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Anca Smaranda … 1 year ago

Hi! after I also reported a false, unsustained review, I got the same message from Booking.com, saying that it could take up to 48 hours for a review to be completely removed. So, initially the review was removed and then, a few hours later, it reappeared. Did this happened to you as well? In the end it did disappear? Thank you!

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pibomarco 1 year ago

No. Once it was removed it didn't reappear. 
But was the booking a no-show? Or were they actualy staying at your property and then left and you marked as no-show or something like that? :) It also depends of variety of the circumstances if review will be removed or not.

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Clem Shange 1 year ago

Hi there, maybe you can shed some light.I had a no show didn't know I had to mark it. I got a review from them they didn't even check in. I have now marked it a no show after reading up, they gave me a horrible rating and they didn't even stay at my place. Will this review stay forever on my wall? I have never gotten a score lower than 9. They just decided to score me down no comment, nothing.

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pibomarco 1 year ago

I recently also received a review (from a no-show). Guests didn't arrive at the property. I've contacted Booking.com and let them know that guests were not staying here and BDC removed the review (score 8) after checking. Reviews are deleted after 3 years. I think.

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Clem Shange 1 year ago

They removed it, thanks for sharing 🙏

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Tony 1 year ago

Two guests came to check in, looked at the rooms first. I double checked with them if they were satisfied with rooms. Both of them said "Yes‘’ and signed the registration form. They left without saying anything. At night, they didn't come back to stay, so I marked No Show in Booking's system. The second day I received a very bad review.

We help clients cancel reservations for free if they are not satisfied with our property.  But the clients said they were satisfied and didn't say anything else. How could they write a review without even staying at the property? I called Booking, they said you can reply it... it can't be removed... 

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Hotel National Park 11 months ago

I think the new system of no-show that allows customer who did not stayed In this case they did a booking.com made a wrong decision and give important only to customers. Same thing happened to me also they hotel was overbooked and we request to the guest to find the next place but at the last after doing no show the guest give us 1 out of 10 as the guest has not experienced any service I got cleanings 2.5, comfort 2.5, facilities 2.5, staff 2.5 can you imagine if anyone review on your hotel with out experience anything. Do they know is my hotel clean or not, Do my staff are friendly or not, Do they know the facilities of my hotel, Do they know what is the value of my hotel so how can the guest give each rating to my property with out knowing anything about my property. They can leave the notes but they do not have any right to play with hotel score I fully disagree and I know no one hoteliers are happy with this change.

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Hotel National Park 11 months ago

Due to the new system of no-show where the guest review their stay with out staying in hotel that makes the hotelier too hard to survive. It's a unfair system that the booking.com has introduced. my guest who booked and does not stay or Mark as noshow can review their stay will sound unfair because anyone can  be the reviewers now. I think booking.com need to think about the hotelier too. 

If any other hoteliers are satisfied with my view please raise the voice against the change of this system... We also have right to keep our opinion 

 

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pibomarco 11 months ago

Definitely this is unfair that a no-show guest is able to leave a review. For those that actually did NOT show up. 

My experience with no-shows and guests breaking the rules, or they came and did not wanted to stay for bizzare reasons I did this: 
If I couldn't accomodate guests because breaking the rules, or they wanted to cancel a non-refundable rates or were pass the free cancelation policy, I suggest them to cancel the booking and in case if we receive another booking for those dates we will issue a full refund. Usually in high season we get quickly re-booked and those guests gets their money back. If you manage the guest to cancel, then they are not able to leave a review. Majority of guests will cancel, so that they still have a possibilty of being refunded. 

Regardless of our policies I do think we as good hosts still need to be little more flexible. Ofcourse to the point not making a revenue loss. Of course there is also thin line between the " should I take money or should I take a potential bad review". Specially a bigger dilemma for smaller properties. :)

I marked two no shows where both guests left a review 2,5 and 7, and both reviews booking.com were removed when requested. 
One was for a family that booked for two adults but two more children. 
The other was actually a no-show but they left a 7 (strange). 

I also think that many no-shows are exploited from lots of hosts and this feature is somehow a preventive measure. I guess. 

On the other hand... we are stuck with Booking.com since they bring the majority of bookings to my small hotel.. Expedia not worth a mention.. AirBnB not bad but still far away comparing to booking.com. At least for my business. 

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Zoo 11 months ago

Another problem and this shows also how stupid the booking.com rating system is. And booking.com dont want to remove the reviews:

For example:

A guest books a room without air conditioner.

Its written in the offer, displayed during the booking procedure to the guest and the guest receives a booking confirmation with the same info that an air conditioner is not available.

After his stay the guest leaves a bad review with an overall scor of 1 and writes: no air conditioner.

This review makes sense to booking.com. They say you can comment it as a host but the bad score with "1" is staying.

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Castell Granadella 7 months ago

To allow no-show customers to threaten you to write a bad review if you do not return his money is incentivizing blackmail. Once you complain about this and the moderators replay twice insisting that the customer has just expressed his opinion with a 1,  you clearly see that we, small business, are just dispensable collaborators. It has happened to us on four ocasions.