Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: This is short term rental management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Carl.
Everybody wants to know, how do I get a review removed on my short term rental, on my vacation home, on my Airbnb, on my vrbo, on my booking.com, on my Google reviews? And today we're going to talk about that on short term rental management. It is a masterclass in how to be a better property manager in the world of vacation homes. I'm super glad that you are here and we will get to it after a word from this week's sponsor.
This episode of the short term management show is brought to you by short term rental, long term wealth. This is the book in the STR space written by my lovely wife, Avery Carl. It has hundreds of reviews on Amazon, and it will teach you literally everything you need to know about STR, short term rental, long term wealth, the book, wherever books are sold.
Here we are. I am grateful to have you on board today for short term rental management. Welcome to the party. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the program. Today we're going to talk about an operating procedure called review removal. Review removal. Can I have a review removed? And here's what I'm not going to do. Okay. All right. Before we get too deep into this, I am not going to get too deep into it. I'm just not, you know, this is one of those things where it's. The most important thing to take away from this show is you need to know your job. What is your job? How do I do this? What do I do? Okay. And your. Your way of doing this is going to be different than my way of doing this. And I'm not here to tell you some sort of Airbnb hack. I don't even know that there is one that exists. And if there is, I'm not going to go telling you about it because I am a host myself and I don't want to, you know, risk my host status or something like that, always have to kind of, you know, I play by the straight and narrow for the most part when it comes to my rental real estate. You know, got to play by the rules, man. And now in real life, I don't play by the rules. If I played by the rules, I'd probably be in gym class right now, as Ferris Bueller would say. But, man, you know, for the most part, you're going to have to kind of come up with your own thing on this, on this topic. And it is a bummer, right? Let's talk about that. Let's talk about the fact that when it does happen, it is absolutely heartbreaking and it's probably going to ruin your day. And it should ruin your day to get a bad review, especially if you're new. If you're, you know, two weeks deep or a month or two deep and you get a three star review, it's a little heartbreaking. It never gets easier. I hate to tell you. It never gets easier, which is a good thing. If you don't care about your reviews, you're probably not going to be the best in your market. You're not going to be the cream of the crop. So you should care. It's a big deal. It's important. You know, so bad reviews, they hurt, they stink. But as far as having one removed, my best advice, there is no the platform's policies for removing reviews. Review policy. All the platforms have a review policy. Most of them are very similar. Again, I'm not here to get into details. You will get to know these policies if for no other reason than when you do call to inquire about having a review removed, they will generally simply shoot you their review review removal procedure policy in a message on the platform and say, well, here's our review policy. Here's our review, whatever they call it, and they will say, please refer to this, read through this to understand how things work. And then they'll just leave you alone. They'll disappear. Like, here's how that works. Bye. You know, oh, you want to, you want to know about removing a review? Here's our policy. See you later. So their policy is to simply show you the policy, and that is effective for them, I think in most cases, and you, you should read through that. There are some pretty cut and dry ways to get a review removed by breaking the rules. Did they use a curse word? Did they put the address of your property in the review? That's against the rules. Now, I've had that go the other way where I had a great review where they put the address of the property and I had to call and have it removed because I don't want strangers on the Internet that have not booked my home to know how to find it. They can look at your calendar. They can find the address. I got. Again, we're getting into weeds there. It would take a very savvy criminal that wants to steal your microwave that would be even be interested in such a thing. But it could happen if they just happen upon your address somehow. I mean, I would say extremely unlikely, but you never know, so if they used your address, if they use profanity, you know, I'm not, again, I'm not going to get into all the, the details, the nuts and bolts of the review policy from the platforms because I feel I might get in trouble for doing such a thing. But just know the rules and call. That's, that's the, that's the main thing. Call the platform. Matter of fact, you should be calling the platform often anyway. You need to know how these things work if you want to be a great property manager and you are using Airbnb, Verbo, booking.com, etc. Which you don't have to, if you are going to use those, which I would recommend I use them. I love them, then you're going to need to know how they run their show. You know, if you don't know how they're running things over there, how are you going to run things over here when you guys are basically partners, you know? So to me, calling the platform often and asking questions, I mean, that's how I got to where I am. I called and learned how things work over there and there's changes that happen. And one thing to note is that you might get somebody who knows what they're talking about and then ten minutes later you get somebody that has no idea what they're talking about. And so sometimes you got to hang up and call back. Sometimes. A lot of times you're getting somebody that started last week, you know, but at the end of the day, it's your job to know this stuff. You need to know what answer you're looking for when you call and ask a question. And you can't figure that out until you've called and asked a million questions. I really feel like I've gotten to where I'm at in life by asking a lot of dumb questions. And I know that's not for everybody. My wife is extremely successful. She does not ask questions ever. So it works for her. But what works for me is asking questions. So don't ever feel. And then same thing with me. If you're a short term shop client, which I want to make no mistake here, the short term shop sells houses. I do not. But if you want to buy a vacation house and rent it out and have me teach you how to do that, I can help you with that. I'm available. I am free for short term shop clients. Give me a call, shoot me an email, I'm available.
Ask me dumb questions. I get a lot of times where people are like, luke, I got some dumb questions, and they're, like, afraid to ask me. And I'm like, dude, that's my favorite thing, is when people ask me dumb questions, because that's how I got to where I am. I asked a lot of dumb questions. Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning. Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning. There's your quote of the day from none other than Albert freaking Einstein. That's just me, man. I'm a questioner. I'm questioning how it works. I'm questioning why it works that way. I just ask a lot of questions. That's how I got all this crazy, useless knowledge that I get to share with you. I went out and asked a billion questions. I'm a pretty good guy to ask questions to. So if you're a short term shop client, come on, man, I'm free. Let's go. Ask me questions. I've been through it all. But anyway, call the platform. Ask questions after question after question. And so here's my thing. Can luke, can I get a review removed? The answer to that question is generally no. I would say if we're just cutting dry, yes or no, easy peasy Japanese, the answer is probably no. But if you call and ask questions, you may get a different result. Call and say, hey, I got a four star review. I mean, honestly, you just be honest. Take the honesty approach. That's one way to do it. Take the honesty approach with the platform. I got a bad review. I work really hard, and I'm just wondering if there's anything we can do about getting this removed. And of course you're going to get stuck in that vortex of, you know, standard operating procedures at the platform, and they're going to send you their list of rules and, and they're going to say, yeah, we'll get back to you. And then they never get back to you, or whatever the case may be. And you might have to call it twelve times, but you could just take the honesty approach and call them up and say, hey, I got a bad review. I feel like I'm really doing a hard, you know, working hard over here, I'm really doing a good job. And all of a sudden, this, this person just kind of hit me with a four star out of nowhere. And maybe the honesty approach leads to the sympathy approach. You know, maybe you start saying, hey, man, you know, is there anything you can do for me here? I'm really working hard and I don't know why they nick me like this, ding me on this, this review. I was really, you know, I thought for sure I was hitting a five star on this guest. I went above and beyond. I answered all their questions. I let them check in early or whatever the case may be, and they still hit me with four stars. Anything you can do for me? You could take the sympathy approach at the honesty approach, the sympathy approach, the I'm pissed off approach. You could call them up and say, this is bullshit, man.
How could this be?
My house is so awesome. And they gave me three stars for cleanliness. This is bullshit. You know, you could take that approach and see if that does you any good. You can take all of these approaches in the same day. Hang up, call back, see if it works. Hang up, call back, see if it works. My best advice is just keep calling and calling and calling because normally, you know that that's how you're going to get to know things at the platform anyway, you know, and then eventually you're either going to sit in that phone tree queue so many times that you're, you know, you're ready to move on to something else and just give up. Or maybe you'll get some. Maybe you'll get somewhere with it, you know? And, you know, I will say the platforms have gotten a little bit cooler over the years.
Talking about platform short term rental real estate right now with reviews, with removing them, they have, it used to be like super strict and like anti hosting. Everything the guests said was gospel. And we believe the guest and things have kind of gone the other way now. They have. Sometimes they have a rule about being relevant. The review must be relevant to the property. So if they give you four stars and they're not talking about, for instance, okay, rabbit hole. Let's say they go to Paula Dean and they had a bad time and the waiter made a mad and they spent more money than they wanted to, and then they go back to your house and then they're just mad. Their vacation is not going the way they wanted to and they're spending too much money and they're stressed out, and then they decide to take it out on you when you leave. Four stars. And they, you know, obviously they would need to say something like, this is, we're getting very ridiculous now, but they would need to say something along the lines of, went to a restaurant. They made us mad. It was too expensive. Our vacation wasn't. That was ruined by this. Four stars. Okay, obviously that is not relevant to the property. That was not your fault, had nothing to do with it. That's an extreme, over the top example of the relevant thing. But if they leave you a three star review and don't say anything about your house, pretty good chance you could have that one taken down, you know, and also, if they're being intimidating or extorting you, that's very common. Not very common, but you hear that word a lot, extortion. If you have a guest that's trying to ask you for money in order to not leave a bad review, that's not even, you know, I'm no lawyer, but I don't think that's even legal. And again, we're getting probably deeper into the policies that then I would like, because the interpretation of the policy is up between you and your lawyer and the platform. And I just keep my nose clean. I do my job and I do my best to make my guests happy. That's all I can do. Kiss the guests ass all the time. That's rule number one. Be nice. Rule number one.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: Did you know that we're officially back in a buyer's market? That's right. Even though interest rates continue to rise, they are causing prices to fall. Fall. So there's finally room for you to do regular real estate investor things that we couldn't do for so long, like gas. Negotiate, make lower offers. Ask for sellers to cover some of your closing costs. So it's a really great time to buy in terms of being able to get a lower purchase price and being able to negotiate. So if you're looking for your first or next short term rental, it's a perfect time to reach out to us at the short term shop. Let our team of agents in any of our true vacation market destinations help you find the perfect investment. Jump on over to the shorttermshop.com and click get connected to get started. We are brokered by EXp Realty. See, all over there.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: I guess we should probably get in the nuts and bolts a little bit here for noobs. If you're a straight up noob, you need to understand that the guest leaves a review, the host leaves a review. Neither, nobody can see these reviews until both reviews have been left. And then they, at that point, they come up to the Internet and they're stuck there that everybody can see them. And it's generally about a 14 day period where this guy just reviewed and we're waiting on the other guy. The host is, has reviewed, and we're waiting on the guests to review. He's got 14 days if he doesn't review. The host reviews go host's review goes to the Internet without, you know, and then the guest review never happened or, you know, that kind of thing. So make sure, you know, I don't want this a little too elementary for my show, but, you know, make sure you know how the policies work, first of all. And you'll learn that after a week or two of going through this, not a big deal, you know, so just learn post review, guest review. There's a period of time involved there where you're waiting on the other person to review. Can't see those reviews until they've both been published on the Internet and they're stuck there forever. That's another thing to mention. You can't change these reviews. Let's say you want to go way over the top and contact the guests. This is another strategy. You could contact a guest, I guess strategy number four here on the show, you could contact the guest and say, hey, you know, I noticed you gave me a three star review. Is there something we could have done better? And this can work? You know, generally I would recommend this is done via a phone call. Give them a call and try and reason with them. You know, you could do the whole, hey, man, you know that we're trying to put our kids through college with this house. This is our livelihood. You know, I mean, don't lie to them. But, you know, there's a lot of money and time and effort goes into rental real estate, and a lot of people don't realize that. A lot of people just think you're the man. You know, you're holding them down, you know, so you could call them up and say, man, you know, I don't know what happened here. Is there any way I can get you to reconsider? And sometimes they will. And generally, if that happens, the call the guest way of doing this, if they say they'll, they agree, they're going to have to call the platform. You're usually going to have to supply them with a phone number. They're not going to know how to find that. And they will have to call the platform and say, you know what? I decided, I really kind of did like this house. Can we do something about the review? The review cannot be changed, ever. It can, however, be removed. So they can say, can we remove my review? I, you know, I decided I felt bad for the host, and I really did have a pretty good time on my stay. And I, you know, I discussed it with them and I didn't realize where they were coming from, you know, so is there any way we can remove this, it's asking a lot of a guest. But if you can get them on the phone, you know, and reason with them like human beings, that can be very effective. A lot of times that's probably the most effective way to do it, you know. Now if the guest is outright, you know, mean and a jerk and doesn't want anything to do with you, that's pretty common too. Then, then you just leave it be or keep calling the platform and hope for the best. Okay, so we've gone over four strategies here. The honesty strategy, sympathy, getting angry or contacting the guest. You know, I think that's a pretty good, pretty good list of ways to possibly get a review removed. I think that for the most part, you got to remember, call, call.
You're gonna have to go with your gut again, property management, especially vacation rental property management, which is what we're talking about here. Very large portion of this business is being a mind reader and a psychologist. So you need to, coming from a guy that's not really all that well educated, I'm no psychologist, but you do need to go with your gut. And if your gut says, you know what, maybe I should call this guest and see what they say. If they're, if I can get this review removed or you know what this guest is, you know, they were kind of not cool from the get go. You do get that too. You get these guests that before they even see your house. There's no way they're leaving you five stars. There's, there's people out there that, they just go around leaving bad reviews. You'll see them on Yelp and Google where they are like a local review legend or whatever. And they have something like 1500 reviews that they've left. There's people out there that just go around leaving bad reviews. I don't know how you live your life like that. The amount of karma that is stacked up against you as a human being at that point is not good. I can't imagine, you know, I'm a, I'm a peace, love, happiness kind of guy. Try to be as much as I can possibly be. I can't imagine what kind of life those type of folks are living. It's not a good one, but they do exist. So sometimes you're just, you know, you get a bad egg and there's nothing you can do about it. And do we even care at the end of the day? It takes all kinds, man. The universe is full of all kinds of people.
And if you're renting your house out. That's number one thing here. You're renting your house to strangers. Hello. It's possibility something can go weird. And if a bad review is the worst thing that happens. Hey, man, not a big deal. I know when you're new, it's way more stressful. Eventually, you know, I'd like to say it gets better. It does a little bit, but, man, it still hurts. It does. It hurts when they give a bad review. But all you can do is go above and beyond, have a kick ass house. Clean, cute, clean, and comfortable. The three C's are always number one when managing a vacation home. Cute, clean, and comfortable. If you're offering a good product, at the end of the day, you can go to bed knowing that there was nothing you could do. It's just a bad review. Now, if. Let's say it was your fault something bad happens, I think you need to be coughing up a couple of bucks, you know, I mean, I'm the first guy that, hey, if something weird, like, I don't know if I have a decent example, we'll go with the hot tub, which is not a great example because it's, you know, like, I don't know, it's a bigger, bigger item. It seems a lot of times, these folks, if you got a hot tub at your house, it's like they're. They're the pinnacle of their entire life is to get into that hot tub. And if it's not perfect, they can be upset, you know? So that's just vacation rental management 101. That hot tub needs to be pimp clean, new, rocking, and rolling sexy, have some clean, extra towels around it, that kind of thing. But if something does go wrong with a hot tub, man, I'm the first one to say, hey, we're happy to give you a refund, full refund. Go find a place that's got. If the hot. Let's say the hot tub is broken, worst case scenario, which, usually, by the way, it's not, nine times out of ten, it's in sleep mode or economy mode because they push too many damn buttons. Here's what happens. They show up, push a bunch of buttons because they're excited, and then it turned into sleep mode, and then it won't get hot. And then they call you up and say your hot tub is broken. They do all this with one hand because they got a beer in the other, you know? So, you know, then you. We're getting in the weeds now. You got to kick into manager manager mode. This is why the hot tub like I said, is a bad example. But in that case, you got to talk your way out of it and say, hey, here's how to get out of sleep mode. You know, I have all that stuff in my guidebook, but let's say that is the hot tub is just straight up broken or maybe coffee machine. These are obviously different dollar figures here, but if your hot tub straight up broken, you're going to offer them a full refund to go find a place that has a hot tub down the street or, you know, x amount of dollars off their reservation. I'm sorry for the trouble. I'm not the kind of guy that's going to rush over there and get something fixed, you know. But anyway, back to the review. That's what we're talking about today, the review.
If you were to offer them a refund, does that guarantee you a five star review? No. I think you're still very much susceptible to, hey, four stars, hot tub didn't work. The guest four stars, a hot tub didn't work. The host handled it very well, but I'm still probably not that psyched about that if I'm them, you know, sometimes that stuff is completely unavoidable, which is why I generally, I'm quick to offer a full refund and get them going down the road, which they can still leave a review. Keep that in mind. If they have checked in, if they have opened your front door, they can leave a review even if they're canceled. Full refund first day, for whatever reason, if they've opened the door, they can leave a review again. You might get a different answer on that from somebody at one of the OTAs, somebody that just started last week at verbo might not know what the rule is. And maybe the rule changes, you know, maybe this two years down the line when you're listening to this and the rule has changed. So that's one of the rules you're going to need to know. How do you find out what that rule is or how that works? Call the damn platform. Call them often. So just to summarize, man, we've gone on a lot of rabbit holes today. Had a great time. I love you. You're beautiful, and I really appreciate you for trying to be the best property manager that you can be and provide kick ass vacations. And the short term shop would love to help you with that. I don't want that to be a secret. The short term shop sells houses, and it is my job to teach folks how to manage them better. And I am on the house. Why? Because my wife is the boss, and she wrote me in, man, and I'm really freaking good at this. So call the short term shop, buy a house, and you'll get my phone number, and I'll help you with any of this kind of stuff as you go, man. I'm available. Let's rock. So, anyway, honesty, sympathy, anger, contact a guest. And rule number one when it comes to having a review removed, call the platform. Call the platform. Call the platform. Call the platform. Call them over and over and over. If nothing else, you'll learn something in that process.
Long hair. Luke already gave you a quote, so I'm going to leave you this glorious Tuesday morning, if that's when you're listening with my usual, which is, don't overthink it.
