First of all, I have dozens of reviews which are only 5 star. I have nothing less than 5, as I go above and beyond.
But I no longer want to feel the pressure and stress of having to appease guests for fear of low reviews, or allowing them to get away with things.
I think hosts would be ecstatic if we had an option to accept or reject a review from being posted to our profile. Guests can make up anything, and there’s not even a rebuttal option either. And you are FORCED TO WRITE ONE.
Many of us are basically letting people get away with murder and it’s all because of this “forced review”. It’s much like how businesses are put under unfair pressure from Yelp.
Please allow hosts to accept or reject reviews at our discretion.
As all of you, I do hate being held hostage to review fear. I recently had a conversation with a representative from Peerspace who told me that “revenge” reviews are against Peerspace policy and they will remove such reviews. I’m not certain this should work, but perhaps if you have trouble with a guest and immediately informed Peerspace (i.e. arguing about overtime or number of guests) they would take this into consideration that this is a revenge review and remove it.
As I said, not certain that would work. Would love to hear from Peerspace.
Hi @Yvonne_E ! Any reviews that violate our Community Guidelines will be removed. You provided a great example. If you have logs showing the guest left after their booking end time, and the guest gives 1 star due to the overtime charge, we would remove the review. If ever in doubt, shoot us an email and we will review!
Hi @Zoe_G… I think the concern, though, is what if in your example situation the review isn’t as cut and dry and it’s more generic? If the guest is mad about being charged overtime but their review simply says “Host wasn’t helpful. This place isn’t worth it.” Then what? That’s the predicament we as hosts are in when it comes to a fear of implementing certain rules or charges.
I’ve had a lot of great experience with you and the rest of the customer support team helping out in situations where the guest is clearly doing a revenge review for charges for breaking rules or something similar. But there are definitely a lot of situations where I have allowed the guest to get away with things or avoided extra charges because I wasn’t confident there would be enough evidence for me to argue my case were I to receive a negative review.
I understand Tommy’s frustration, but the option to reject reviews would just lead to hosts rejecting all negative reviews. Though to give hosts the option to select a review to be placed under review would be great. And while that review is under review by Peerspace, it should not be visible on the listing so as to prevent it hurting potential new bookings.
But that still wouldn’t solve the problem at hand which is that many hosts avoid implementing charges or rules out of fear of the negative review. Some kind of improvement to the process should be done so that we don’t feel inclined to forego additional income out of fear of retribution. This loses hosts money and it loses Peerspace money.
And another thing, what if the guest was awful?
Peerspace forces me to write a review. Therefore, I’m either going to have to tell the truth and say they were terrible, or lie and give a false rating.
In life, sometimes it’s best to just say nothing… and that’s the option we need.
(Enable/disable review)
Chris: From my conversation with Peerspace and the one time they removed a review for me, I believe that they understand that the reviewer will not mention that they were charged for overtime but the comment “the host wasn’t helpful” is taking revenge for the charge.
Hey @Yvonne_E… well that was just a made up example, so let’s shorten it to one of these hypothetical reviews… “This place isn’t worth it” or “It was ok”
If a guest were to leave a review like one of those because you charged an overage or enforced a rule how would you dispute it and prove that it’s a revenge review as opposed to simply the guest stating their opinion?
Maybe if they were required to explain why they choose their star rating it would prevent guests from being able to give an ambiguous negative statement and help ensure they inadvertently divulge whether it’s a revenge review. I think that could make me feel more confident in the system.
I think bad reviews are simply a fact of life when you offer a product/service on the Internet.
Adding in a complex approval or review process would just become this subjective quagmire that monopolizes the time and energy of Peerspace staff.
A better solution could be to add the functionality for users to “reward” the reviews they find helpful. You see it everywhere on shopping sites; text saying “Was this review helpful?” above two little thumbs up and down icons. The reviews would then be sorted by most helpful to least by default.
All of the dumb “The space was not worth it” reviews would sink to the bottom of the list while the helpful ones where people take the time to write something nice would rise to the top… at least in theory.
Also… I have to add that I don’t understand the idea of being held hostage by a guest for fear of a bad review. If the success of your business hinges on your last Peerspace review, I would suggest you look at how you’re approaching your marketing efforts. Diversify onto other platforms, market directly, leverage social media, etc. Don’t lose sleep over a bad review here.
It seems like it shouldn’t be that big of a deal but then I legitimately experienced a potential booking pull out from submitting because of an unwarranted review that posted while we were in talks so that was frustrating.
I believe your space is primarily for productions @Geoffrey_B , so perhaps the kind of location you host plays a part in how much of an influence the reviews have. I think that spaces that cater to a lot of event bookings may be much more inclined to be held hostage by the bad review fear vs those that mostly do productions.
It’s not a matter of losing sleep over a bad review, but rather trying to make Peerspace aware of the pressure it puts on a good amount of hosts and hopefully have them implement a helpful solution.
I agree with Ron. The lack of a rebuttal option is the problem. Not that Peerspace wants to be inviting arguments out here but a host should have the option to defend themselves against what is essentially slander (if the review is untrue).
Exactly. If a host replies back professionally, it lets a potential renter know that the reviewer is wacko. If the host replies back on the same level, we all know that there’s truth to the review.