Booking.com not much help with misplaced negative review.
I have a simple problem that no support staff seems to be able to fix. A guest left a review that had a negative element to it which is not a problem normally as I can respond to the review and my response is shown in the review section of my listing. However in filling out the online review form she put the negative comment under the "what you liked" section and the positive under the "what you didn't like" section. The site then selected that negative comment and put it up on the first page of my listing that a potential guest sees under the heading "What guests liked".
This is obviously misplaced and does not help with my bookings, but but after multiple phone calls and e-mails no-one seems willing or able to fix the problem. I am basically being told I have to live with this which is really annoying. Something as simple as this obvious mistake and nothing can be done? It is hard to believe such a big site as this has no way of dealing with a simple guest mistake in filling out a form.
Anyone else have any advice or a similar experience? I am on the verge of moving on to some other booking agent that can offer a bit more help to their "partners" as I have had no bookings since this negative comment showed up on my front page.
Harold
I will suggest to keep try and send with all prove of document to show that guest is misplaced.
Thousand of employers working for Booking.com and no decision makers, every year they worse and worse.
They clearly understand that bad reviews from people that not happy with something else not with property and this happen most of the times.
They call us partners , but we are not, we just tool to extort money , I'm desperately waiting that some company finally appears on the market and move them away from business.
That company is called Airbnb. They did actually moved them away. I am also tired of non professionalism of Booking. They never do anything to fix even small problem, answer with automated messages not related to the question.
And on top of it they asked me to pay money for the property that was not verified for more than 3 months and never had any bookings!
Yes, I had to waste my time going through many e-mails and phone calls only to be told that there was nothing that could be done and that if someone read the negative comment they could just go to the reviews and see my response! Not a very satisfying solution, to say the least. I can deal with a negative review, that is part of the business, but to have a negative comment under the "What guests liked" section on my front page and no way to remove it just stupid. I too will be looking to move away from Booking if I can. Airbnb, though not perfect, is in my experience much better at dealing with misplaced reviews.
This is very bad of your guest to do that to you. As he was very well prepared to hit you hard and knew in advance, that automatically the system will expose his "What he liked" on the main page.
Booking will not change it, because it does not violate their policies. They are actually very hard to break. Read about them here: https://partnerhelp.booking.com/en-gb/help/guest-reviews/can-i-request-review-be-removed
Don't worry, karma will get your guest. IF(!) he really wanted to do something bad to you, not just misunderstood or overlooked. Sometimes people just press the wrong button, it happens, they don't mean something bad to you.
The best thing what you can do now is to prepare a powerful answer. Use the reply option to review not as a chance to answer back, get angry or disappointed, but as a powerful solution to get attention of the new guest, who might read it.
Expose your strong points... Advertise yourself. Market yourself. Your reply shouldn't be necessarily an answer to the karma guest.
It can be something like this:
Dear X,
We took your feedback very seriously and we will do our best to improve. We are constantly working on making our services as excellent as guests do expect them to be. In fact, we receive many sweet reviews and verbal feedbacks, but we are here to listen to everyone.
/if your guest complained about something that could be changed, not out of your control/ mention here how you will fix it.
/here advertise yourself/
Location
Services
Staff
Communication
Etc
/info for future guests/
For our future guests we would like to know, that when booking with us, you are in safe hands. Please, address all your concerns during your stay, not after, so we can fix all problems to the best of our ability.
Again, thank you for choosing us! Have a pleasant stay!
Yes, I replied to the review in a polite and straight-forward manner as soon as i saw it, so that is not a problem. The problem is that her negative comment, without the visible reply from me, is on my front page for everyone to see as soon as they log onto my listing. I fail to see why this has anything to do with a policy of any sort as I don't want to change the review, just the mistaken placing of the excerpt. It is quite possible for disgruntled individuals to purposefully do this if they want to cause trouble, but in this case I think the guest just made a mistake. However, either way I am stuck until the site selects another comment to replace the negative one and who knows how long that will take! Not being able to change it is just bad website design and the refusal to look into a way to fix the problem is incompetent.
You are 1000% right. The system, that exposes "Good review" and the staff that couldn't do anything to change it...
It's sad, but let us try to do something in that kind of situation.
Try to get a better review from the next guest. So there is a chance that the system will replace the negative one. Total replacement requires 2 years. Not the best solution, because system uses Rotating mode, but just a chance.
Screenshot your good reviews and post them as pictures in your listing, update Profile info. Put guestbook at your property and make pictures of wonderful reviews from your guests and put them as your pictures.
Update your pictures (add more) and follow improving your score in Extranet. It will give you a better visibility results in search. You might consider using Visibility booster, remember about the higher commission for that.
And after all, Booking is not everything. Use Airbnb, Facebook, Google maps, groups on social networks, local agents..
And please don't be sad. People just come and go. Many people will not read reviews. If they do they get their own points. Make sure that your response is something to catch their attention.