They Knew Book Review

[Milan Skidmore]

Ihad an awful guest experience and tried to settle it with the guest personally. She stayed at a reduced rate and then needed to extend her stay. We gave her an even bigger rate discount. When she left, she left the place a mess. Dirty, greasy dishes, pots and pans. All the furniture was in dissaray, both sets of blankets/quilts had spots and stains on them, there were crumbs in all the beds on the mattress pads (which had to be hand picked off), and she ruined a set of sheets.

I took 3 days to cool off before I texted her because we really went out of our way to help this guest and she took advantage of us. I told her I was unhappy about the state of the place and asked her to pay $50 to replace the sheets. Prior to this text, she had nothing but glowing reviews and thanks for me in all her texts. She did not understand why she should have to pay for her sheets because I was a woman and the damaged sheets were a result of a "woman thing" and thus I should understand. I said I shouldn't have to pay for her "woman thing".

After much internal debate, I decided to warn other hosts and gave her an appropriate but still not brutal review, even leaving out the refusal to pay for damages and passing on her lame excuse for the mess. She then gave me a bad review, lying about my place and me. Prior to this review, I had 5 star reviews. Now people think my place is noisy and I am rude. My bookings have almost stoped dead in their tracks after her review. Plus, my 3 month pre-book for Jan-March canceled right after the review. I have contacted Airbnb twice about this to no avail. I had responded to her bad review, but not in much detail because I assumed that if I could prove it was a retaliatory review, it would be removed. THIS IS NOT THE CASE! Not only will they not remove it, they won't even let me expound on my explanation to her bad review.

So frustrated! I am knee deep in the process of spending a lot of money to make my other 2 rentals Airbnb rentals and now I can't even get bookings in prime season. Airbnb penalizes us for trying to warn other hosts about bad guests.

Unfortunately there is probably nothing you can do about it. Things like this happen to all of us (guests, especially newer ones have wildly different expectations) and I hate the fact that one bad review plants a seed in future guests' minds (for example, I had one who stayed for nearly a month and I left town for nearly a week - I live in the part of the home - I came back and she had left an old pizza box, empty bottles,etc....her review dinged me for cleanliness?!)

I never leave a review for a guest unless I've personally interacted with him/her. I do this because if you are the first to leave a review, your guest sees that you left one and if they felt their stay was unpleasant, they have nothing to lose by leaving you a nasty review. A host may rely on sharing their home to cover a significant portion of housing costs, extra income, etc. but a guest may book an Airbnb once or twice a year. And even if guests get not so great reviews, in many cities there are plenty of hosts who would just be happy for the income.

I've been fortunate to have not yet had many "nightmare" guests but I would learn from this experience - do not be the first to review a guest! If they feel strongly about your space (negative or positive) they will usually leave a review. If I've had a weird situation/neutral, I don't bother. If my interaction was positive, I ask them to send me private feedback as to what I can do better. If someone leaves a review, you can comment on it but if you think someone had a less than stellar experience, you as a host leaving a review only prompts a guest to leave one as well (which may be unfair, misleading, etc.)

Saw your listing and I really don't think your guest's review was that bad. If anything it was probably prompted by your interaction with her following her stay. You have 5 stars and it was overall a positive review! I have no plans to go to Tucson but I'd stay in your place! In the future, I'd just let small inconveniences like that go. Don't be a pushover but understand accidents happen and sometimes minor things occur with otherwise well-meaning guests:

1.) Do not post a review first - Regardless of what you do, you get sometimes get less than 5-stars! If you've had a less than fantastic dialogue with a guest, posting a review prompts them to do the same - in your case, she knew you were upset about the sheets & was probably defensive about being asked to pay $50 for an accident - If she thought you were upset with her as a host, I am not suprised that she didn't give you a fantastic, glowing review in response to the notification that you had left her a review.

I think, if one leaves bad feedback, the other party will leave bad feedback too. Yes, it is good to know what you can expect from someone, but the other party can lie to defend him or herself, which is likely to happen, and you harmed eventually your own business, you did not help many others. If it is a bad experience, I would learn of it if I was a host, and would swallow it.

Hi @Sandra856! So you say that reviews are published only after both parties (host and guest) enter a review? In my case I did not enter a review bc I had communication problems w the cohost (she was v v careless) and did not want to say publicly anything bad. I just emailed with the host discussing w him the negative interaction w the cohost. Next day I see an email from Airbnb that the host did a review of me that I cannot see unless I make my own review. What if he said something negative and other hosts in the future will not rent me a place? I hate hotels and I like to stay only in Airbnb! Regards, Tatiana

Yes Airbnb only cares about their income and sides the easy way weather guest or host. I have been screwed both sides. I had a reservation cancelled because of COVID and did not receive my refund but yet the reservations I had as a Host was cancelled. So I guess they just keep of our money. Also I realized if you want to claim an extra bed just list an air mattress as a bed. Are you kidding me?

Hi in our last house we used booking. Com and late rooms. If you think Airbnb are bad try using these. You have to collect the money and pay 20% plus commission. We have had our Annex up and running for 10 months now with no issues with Airbnb.

@Chris395 You can read the reviews guests have left for previous hosts. When you go to the guest's reviews, click on the profile photo of the host who left a review, which will take you to that host's profile page. Scroll down the host's reviews to find a review from that guest.

That only picks up the hosts who left a review. Potential guest should have an overall star rating for the reviews they left for others. This would be a good clue as to how finnicky the person may be.

Sorry about these "guests" -- we've ALL been there. In this case, there is nothing to lose, their review is in. Tell the truth about the guests so that other hosts can protect themselves, to the degree that protection is possible, which really it is not. The only way to cope with the AirBnB rating system is to train yourself not to care about it.

But the real power of Before You Know My Name is the way in which Bublitz examines female empowerment from the perspectives of her two female protagonists. As noted, for Alice, it is about being valued. Even though her life was short, she wants to ensure that it was not without merit and meaning, and that she will be remembered as a person who mattered. The same things are important to Ruby, but from the perspective of her continuing life. Bublitz makes a strong statement about the importance of safety to women in New York City, in particular, but wherever they find themselves, and the vast power imbalance that still leaves women vulnerable and too often victimized.

Before You Knew My Name is a richly emotional, riveting, and thought-provoking debut from a talented and promising new thriller writer. It is a hauntingly tragic, yet life-affirming story of two women readers will not soon forget. And it is one of the best books of 2022.

I never knew if my mother told my father what he was really seeing when he took that picture. If he ever knew his unborn child was also there in the frame. The finer details of how I came to be were smudged, blurred out, by the time the story made its way to me.

But we are only at the beginning of things tonight. My name is Alice Lee, and I have just stepped off an overheated cross-country bus, only just started to make my way up an avenue called Seventh in the city of New York. I am alert, alive, present, as I breathe in the peculiar smell of cardboard and piss and metal that is my first hour in this city. There is an order to how things happen, a trail of breadcrumbs I need you to follow. Right now, I want you to get lost with me, as I turn the map on my secondhand phone this way and that, following the blue dot that is me, right here, pulsing. In this moment, the lines and circles make no sense to me at all.

I shimmy around these noises, careful to avoid all the concrete cracks, and the large, metal-framed holes that seem to puncture the sidewalk at increasing intervals. Cellar doors, I realize, but only after I see some of those rusty traps open up, men in aprons climbing onto the street from hidden staircases, crates of flowers, bags of fruit in their arms. I have no idea where they bring these gifts from. What gardens have they been tending to underneath my feet? Perhaps there is a whole other city living, thriving, beneath me. The thought makes me speed up, shift my body closer to the curb, away from those holes and these men. I have only just hoisted myself up into this new world; I do not want anything or anyone to pull me back down.

Stimuli consisted of 24 general knowledge questions that systematically differed as a function of difficulty (some of these stimuli have been used in published work from Tauber et al., 2013, and from Wang et al., 2016). The questions came from several domains, including: geography, history, science, and sports.

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