My reviews as a renter are high and in fact I've often left the place better than I found it. But that doesn't mean I don't feel pressure to not leave a bad review because of the reasons I stated.
Case in point, I rent a 1 bedroom apartment in Los Angeles for 4 weeks. I arrive and it's clearly a couple struggling to make in in movie production. They tell me they are expecting funding for a documentary but that it's come a week late so they are going to go stay with friends for the next week since they rented the place to me.
The place a single sofa in the living room and a king size bed with only sheets. There are no lights in the bed room except a string of christmas lights. The advertised wifi is them leaching off the neighbors which only works in a corner of the apartment and only sometimes. They say I can hang out in the lobby for free wifi but "the lobby" is just an outdoor hallway.
They leave and I debate my options since I need to be somewhere for 30 days. I ended up staying. I check the fridge. It's disgusting and sticky inside. The bathroom and shower are also gross, clearly uncleaned for many many months. So I go buy cleaning supplies, clean the entire bathroom, the entire kitchen, and pull out all the removable surfaces from the fridge and clean them in the now clean shower. I then make do with this "crash pad" for 4 weeks.
Now the question is, do I leave them a bad review? I think many might see it as my moral obligation to warn others. But I also know it's a struggling couple. Probably 24-28yrs old. IIRC I gave them 4 stars but mentioned the wifi in the review but the review was still "Jack and Jill are a very friendly couple ...." because it just feels wrong to be mean to people you know AND it also feels wrong not to warn others.
I don't know if there is a perfect solution. For example maybe I could have talked to them about the issues and asked them to pledge to do better? Maybe AirBnB could let me delay my review until the next person rents and I can ask if the issues were fixed? For example removing the "has wifi" setting.
There have been others where I never met the owners in which case bad things were more likely to get me to write a bad review but I still left the worry that if I did I'd be labeled a "user who leaves bad reviews, don't rent to them"
Case in point, I rent a 1 bedroom apartment in Los Angeles for 4 weeks. I arrive and it's clearly a couple struggling to make in in movie production. They tell me they are expecting funding for a documentary but that it's come a week late so they are going to go stay with friends for the next week since they rented the place to me.
The place a single sofa in the living room and a king size bed with only sheets. There are no lights in the bed room except a string of christmas lights. The advertised wifi is them leaching off the neighbors which only works in a corner of the apartment and only sometimes. They say I can hang out in the lobby for free wifi but "the lobby" is just an outdoor hallway.
They leave and I debate my options since I need to be somewhere for 30 days. I ended up staying. I check the fridge. It's disgusting and sticky inside. The bathroom and shower are also gross, clearly uncleaned for many many months. So I go buy cleaning supplies, clean the entire bathroom, the entire kitchen, and pull out all the removable surfaces from the fridge and clean them in the now clean shower. I then make do with this "crash pad" for 4 weeks.
Now the question is, do I leave them a bad review? I think many might see it as my moral obligation to warn others. But I also know it's a struggling couple. Probably 24-28yrs old. IIRC I gave them 4 stars but mentioned the wifi in the review but the review was still "Jack and Jill are a very friendly couple ...." because it just feels wrong to be mean to people you know AND it also feels wrong not to warn others.
I don't know if there is a perfect solution. For example maybe I could have talked to them about the issues and asked them to pledge to do better? Maybe AirBnB could let me delay my review until the next person rents and I can ask if the issues were fixed? For example removing the "has wifi" setting.
There have been others where I never met the owners in which case bad things were more likely to get me to write a bad review but I still left the worry that if I did I'd be labeled a "user who leaves bad reviews, don't rent to them"