STRA Episode 16: What to do When your Airbnb Guest is a Karen

The Short Term Rental Authority Podcast

STRA Episode 16: What to do When your Guest is a Karen

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[00:00:05] Hey everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. We are John n Wendy Williams with the short term rental authority. Your authority on all things short term rental related to help make you the best operator ever. And today we are going to be talking about what to do when you have a Karen and we apologize to everyone.

[00:00:32] Named Karen. Yes, cuz I, I'm, it's, it's just a term, right? Yes. But I know some very nice Karens. Yes. In fact, your mother's named Karen. My mother's name is Karen. Yes. It's unfortunate, right? But it's basically what do you do with somebody who they, they tend to come in and they find every little thing that they could possibly find wrong.

[00:00:54] Right? And you're thinking, well, there shouldn't be anything wrong. . Nothing's perfect. No. Like if you, if you went through our house, the cleaners just came today at our house. Right. . And I guarantee you I could go around and find something. Yes. Right. For sure. If I wanted to say something. We have a visitor.

[00:01:12] Yes. Well, there's the culprit right there. Yes. Well, she's the one that makes things imperfect a lot times. With her shedding. With her shedding. But she's very sweet. She's very sweet. So what do you do? So let's, you wanna talk about like some of the. We're not recent. Well, we did have some recent Yeah, that's true.

[00:01:31] Goings on, right? We did have one lady. Well, which one you wanna talk about right? ? Because you, you, you will have a Karen, you, you will have someone who. Likes to complain about every little thing, every little leaf that they find on the back patio. Well, that's what this lady's thing was, right? Yes. Like a lot of times that starts with, I feel like it's something that [00:02:00] initially they didn't, they saw it could be anything really.

[00:02:07] There's always something that triggers it. Yes, I've noticed. And a lot of times it has something to do with the check in process or something like they couldn't get in the door. Like some, sometimes technology backfires or we forget to change it or, or something. Right. And they couldn't get in and it's, and it was that initial first experience.

[00:02:28] And then now they go through and take pictures of. Dust in the corner and hey, there's a mark on the wall over here. And how come there's leaves on the back patio? Well, cuz it's fall, right? and there are trees outside. Right? That's, that's lie . Right? And so it, and, and so it kind of becomes this thing like this, this, well this one particular lady, that's where it was, it was like there were leaves on the, this is a town home, has a patio.

[00:02:56] Yes, there are trees outside. It's November, October. In right, Charlotte, North Carolina leaves fall off trees no matter what you do, and she, and we have someone to come and do that. But we like to typically like to wait until all the leaves have fallen where the majority of the leaves have fallen off the trees.

[00:03:19] Like mid-November is usually when that happens, right? So we have someone, you know, at least twice a year come and get up all the leaves and put down new mulch and make it look nice. But she, well, that was her initial thing. She want, she wanted it done. Right. I get it. I get it. Okay. It's fine. It's fine. We, and we, we did it.

[00:03:44] We, we got it taken care of. We did. And that's usually our response to anything, you know, if there's a, a complaint or a concern or whatever. In fact, we even, that's part of our messaging the first morning is to say, Hey, , you know, let us know if anything's not up to your standards, we'll make it right. That type of thing.

[00:03:59] [00:04:00] And this particular lady did not contact us until something like five or six days into her reservation. And she was supposed to stay a long time. Yeah, I wanna say about two months. Well, she was staying through Jan the end of January. Oh wow. Was it? Or maybe end of December. I think it was the end of December.

[00:04:15] Yeah. Yeah, it was end. Cause I remember thinking it was through Christmas. Mm-hmm. , right? Yep. Which is, yeah, you're right. About two months or something like that. Yep. Right. And maybe. And once it was the leaf situation and okay, we're gonna send somebody out to do the leaves. But apparently she's lived with the leaves for five days or something and hasn't told us.

[00:04:36] And then she starts sending this, these lists of. Other things, right? Like light bulbs were burned out. Yeah. There was a light bulb burn. Okay. So we sent somebody over with the light bulbs and the, the, the rug in the dining room was a tripping hazard for her husband who walks with a cane. Right. Which is, I'm like, well, why don't you just roll it up then, but, okay.

[00:04:57] So we sent somebody over to get the rug up. Right, right. And then it was something with the, the toilet was clogged downstairs. . Right. She's like, did they, and, and kind of this tone, a lot of times it's, it's not even the complaint, it's the tone. Yes. Because we sent, we sent somebody to get the rug up and her response back to us was, did the lady tell you that the toilet downstairs has been completely unusable since we've been here?

[00:05:22] Right. I'm like, No. And you didn't either, right? Like but you've been there for five days. I would, I would love, love to have known about it. . The previous guest didn't say anything. The cleaners didn't say anything and she didn't say anything for like a four or five days or something. Right. And you didn't say anything for four or five days.

[00:05:41] And she didn't even tell us. She told the runner, right, who I then questioned and she said, yeah, I went, I used the pl, the plunger for them. And it went down. I'm like, okay, sounds like it's been solved, but maybe we need to send the plumber out. Right. And [00:06:00] then it was something with the refrigerator door.

[00:06:02] Right? The refrigerator door didn't close properly. I don't think that's true. Cause now you're, cuz now that sounds like a valid complaint. Like if somebody said, Hey, the refrigerator door isn't closed properly. Like, why didn't we fix that then? Right. Cause it wasn't that. No, it was more like, . She felt like she had to push it too hard Okay.

[00:06:21] To close it. Oh, okay. Like when she closed it, it didn't, she had to like actually close it. I don't know what to tell you about that. It's a door, right? Yes. You have to actually close it. . Nobody said anything about that either, but Okay. Bless her heart, you know? But it was, it was, it is. It's almost. , no matter what you did or how you tried to fix whatever was coming up, it's like, I fixed this.

[00:06:47] Here's four more things I don't like. I fixed this. Here's five more things. Snowballs like It tends to snowball. It tends to snowball sometimes. And they are some people that no matter what you do, you can't satisfy them. That's true. You're just not going to be able to, and you know what? I think think sometimes it's just.

[00:07:06] there's something going on in their lives and they're, they're just genuinely not happy people. I actually think that's what was going on with her. Yeah. I don't know, and I'm a psychologist, don't. Right. But to me it came across as she was just an unhappy person. She was angry and, and we were a soft target.

[00:07:24] Yes. To complain to. Right. Right. And we have to respond to her. Right, right, right. And she knows it. Like she's probably in Walgreens yelling at them too. Yeah. Right, right. But they just told her to leave. Right. Like we we can tell people to leave, but which we eventually did. Yeah. So eventually she said, Hey, it's so bad I can't stay here.

[00:07:46] And we said, fine. After about 10 days, I think she stayed for like 10 days. Right? Yeah. And we said, okay, fine. Here's our cancellation policy. Right. And, and she paid. And left. Yeah, sure did. [00:08:00] I'm glad I didn't have to deal with her until the end of December by Felicia. Right. But it's like, oh my gosh. Yeah. You know?

[00:08:08] And then of course the people that stayed there before were like, this was great. Right. The people that stayed there after says, Hey, this is one of the best places we've ever stayed in. Right, right. So I don't really think it's was us. No. I don't think so. Sometimes it's not you, but you know, it is important to address issues as guests bring them up.

[00:08:26] So the, the question that we like to ask ourselves is, is it within our power? Yeah. To, to do And does it break our system? Yeah. And, and those are the que And in this case, it, it wasn't our power to do and it didn't break the system. And so we did it. So we did it. But it's, it's almost like no matter what we.

[00:08:46] Wouldn't, and sometimes that happens, right? Is satisfied. This person, sometimes there are people who will never be satisfied, and what do you do about that? Mm-hmm. , we had another one not too long ago where basically I, she's, I think her actual problem was she didn't realize that she had rented an apartment and not a house.

[00:09:09] Mm. Yes. And so she showed up. Her reasons for not wanting to stay were kind of silly. Yeah. It was something like, Hey, there are people outside . Like, well, there were, there were people hanging out, hanging around outside, I think is what she said. Well, it's apartment complex, and it was lot of people that lived there.

[00:09:30] Yeah. And they go outside at night sometimes. I mean, I don't think it was anything. The Ferris, it's a nice apartment complex. It is, yes. Right. I think it really, and she, and she said, Hey, I didn't realize this was an apartment. And sometimes I think you gotta replenish between the lines and realize that, okay, that's actually her problem.

[00:09:48] Right. And, and so we let her, I think we gave her a refund. Let her go. I think we did because she didn't stay. She just came and left. She came and left. Right. . But it's, it's stuff like that, like often [00:10:00] and, and sometimes you know what it is, it's somebody that, in, like, in her case, it's somebody that's expecting Nordstrom's type experience, but they walk into your target.

[00:10:11] Yeah. And they're like, where's my personal shopper? Yeah. And like, we don't do that here, man. Right. . Right. So it's all, but sometimes it's that, that's the actual problem. Is the expectation. Expectation you get the wrong customer. Yep. Right. It happens. It happens sometimes customer, and it happens sometimes, so you know it's not always your fault.

[00:10:30] Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's like, Hey, the cleaners missed something and they shouldn't. . Right. Which is something that is within your power to address. Right. So address it and you correct it, right? Yes. Right. Yes. But it, you know, sometimes that's just the thing that sets off the rest of it, right? That little snowball effect.

[00:10:48] Like if that had never happened, then they would've never contacted to begin with and these other things they come up with or would've never been even complaints. Right? Right. So that does happen. So, So you were getting to, what do you do about it? What do you do about it? Well, sometimes you can't do anything about it.

[00:11:04] Right? I think we covered that. Right? And then what we do do is we, well, we use hospitable to manage our. messaging for us. And on that platform, you can do what's called Mark the review because we have the we, we have it set up so that it automatically sends a review or reviews the guest. There's a slide bar on there where you can mark it and it says Bad review.

[00:11:40] And what that does is that pushes that review out to, I believe it's 14 days. Yeah. The point is it, wait, so you kind of skipped ahead to the reviews, cuz that's kind of implied, but that's what happens. You know, that's, that's what you're actually afraid of. It's like, okay, now this lady's gonna leave me a bad review.[00:12:00]

[00:12:00] Right because of X, Y, and Z, that maybe isn't even my fault, right? If you think it's going to happen, right? So what do you, what do you, now you're talking about, okay, what do I do about this bad review that's coming? Yep. Right? So part of it is, exactly what you said is, I, I think the timeframe is, especially on Airbnb, it's like you got 14 days.

[00:12:18] Yeah. 14 days to respond. And the thing to understand about that is your review, their review doesn't show up until yours shows up. Correct. So, so until you leave them a review, regardless of what they said, it doesn't show up. And if you can wait till the very last second before you leave your review, at least it gives you a two week buffer to then get someone else in there to leave you a review.

[00:12:41] because the reviews aren't left in order of when they appear, they're left in order of the the stay. Yes. Right. So if this person stayed two weeks ago and someone else, you know, you can get three more people in there maybe in that next two weeks. Now their three reviews, even when this bad one shows up, are gonna be the top three.

[00:13:00] Right. So it kind of varies together. One kinda gets buried. Yeah. And so that, that's a strategy you can use. So that the review doesn't affect you as much cuz you don't want the first thing people to read to be this place is awful because X, Y, and Z. Right. So that that's what you're talking about. Yeah.

[00:13:19] Yeah. So you wait till the very last minute and using a tool like Hospitable does that for you automatically. Right. So you don't have to remember, oh God, it's 11 o'clock on the 26th. Right. , I need to go send that. You know, push that review through. Right. That happened two weeks ago. Right. Because you'll forget all about it.

[00:13:35] Oh yeah, totally. Yeah. But, but that is a good strategy. So, but, but it is important to know that you have 14 days to respond and as, but. The guest review will not show up until you as a host, leave them a review as well. Right. So, so that is a strategy that [00:14:00] we employ. It's basically just part of our procedures.

[00:14:02] If we even suspect someone may not leave us a very far star review. Yes. Right. For whatever reason, we just push them Right. And push 'em out two weeks. Yep. And, and wait. So that, that's a strategy for dealing with it. Yep. And then, okay, so say this lady with the leaves and all that, she's going to probably, if she leaves us a review, maybe they won't.

[00:14:23] Maybe, right. So part of the waiting is I don't want to give them an additional notification that says, Hey, Wendy left you a review. Right. Right. So that's part of the waiting as well. But if she leaves us for review, what do we do about it? Right. So can we do anything about it? , we always respond to reviews.

[00:14:45] That is one of the, oh, that's number one. Yeah. That that is one of the things that we have our customer experience specialists do is respond to all the reviews in no, no matter what ota. Online travel agents, see what they call OTAs, like Airbnb is an ota. VRBO is an ota. booking.com. As an ota, no matter what platform they come from, we always respond to reviews, good or bad.

[00:15:14] Right. And that and that support the note that that's different from your review to them, right? That is, this is a, this is. You can leave a review for a guest, but you can also respond to a review from a guest. From a guest, right? And, and that's important because, later guests who are reviewing your listing will see the review.

[00:15:38] Yes. But then right under it they'll see, hey, your response to it response. Mm-hmm. . And the key there is to make, to realize that, okay, I'm actually not writing it back to Karen . I'm actually responding to the next person that's going to read it. Yeah. The person reading it, the future guest. Right. So you, you want to write it in a way that usually it's, it's [00:16:00] something like this was an issue.

[00:16:02] It's been resolved, it's no longer an issue type thing. Right, right. And that just gives, you know, a pot, a potential future guest, the feeling that okay, they're actually resolving the issues. If there were any, it's resolved now. You know, it's not all just one side of the story. Right, right. So you want both sides of the story there, but we try to give 'em the warm fuzzies then.

[00:16:25] Yeah. And keep it short. Sure. Don't write a large paragraph. Well, And That's so funny because the, we, we coach people on, on how to, you know, operate their businesses. And this is one of the things that a lot of our students have a really hard time with, I think a lot of people do. Cause it's emotional, you feel attacked.

[00:16:49] Exactly. It's, you feel personally attacked when somebody. Has bad things to say about something that you spend a lot of money making sure that, that it's set up well. It looks nice. The, you've got the, you've spent a lot of emotional energy on getting this listing up and running to a certain standard that you feel like is, is five stars.

[00:17:23] And, and if you spend all this emotional energy on something and somebody comes in and, and says, no, it's, it's not five stars. Here's all the things that are wrong with it. You're like, what? No, that's not true. , right? Yeah. But you, you get, you feel emotionally attacked and you feel like, well, you wanna respond emotionally and you, you wanna write this?

[00:17:51] All this three paragraph response to somebody. And that's really not the way to do that. You, [00:18:00] that's not the way to respond to . To, right. Cause they're what you want is their emotional response and then your very logical professional. Unfortunately, this person didn't have the experience that they wanted to have.

[00:18:13] Exactly. And you know, we tried to fix these issues. Exactly. And they. You know, we're basically a pain in the ass. But you don't say that. Right. But you know, you want to contrast, you can actually use that against them actually. Yes. Because now they look like they're, cuz it's like, good review, good review, good review.

[00:18:29] Wall of text about how bad the place is. Right. Emotional, emotionally charged. And then, and then your response to it saying, unfortunately, you know, yes, Karen had this issue. We, we resolved it in this way. It's no longer an. , Right. You know, we welcome you back in the future type thing. Right, right, right.

[00:18:48] Or whatever. Right. We value guest feedback. Yeah. But it, it's short. It's sweet, it's professional. There's no emotion to it at all, and, and it, it's, it's, we're sorry that, that Karen had the, the, a less than five star experience. Here's how we address these issues. We welcome guest feedback and we appreciate the opportunity to, to resolve these issue.

[00:19:18] From any guest, we, we hope that they have a great experience on Airbnb, , whatever. Right? Yeah. And, and then, and bam, you're done. Bam, you're done. And now you've kind of neutralized that at least. Wall of text, emotional thing that happened. Right? Cause there was a leaf on your backyard. Right. Right. So that, that's part of it.

[00:19:40] That's a big part of it. And then the other part of it is sometimes you can actually have these reviews removed. Yeah. That's cause it is, it is affecting your, your star rating. That's true. It does. But that's a problem. It does. Especially if somebody leaves you a one star and you've got, even if you. What, 10, 20.

[00:19:57] Well do the math. You need 25 star reviews. To [00:20:00] overcome that, you need 25 star reviews to overcome a one star review to get back to a 4.8, which is would be super host status. Right. Right. So, so a one star review, it does affect, actually pre detrimental. Yeah, it does affect because of the way the star ratings work and because it's almost like 4.8 is almost perfection.

[00:20:20] Right. Like even a four star review, if you think about it, if you have a four and a five star review, you now have a 4.5 rating. Four and a half. If you have a four star and two five stars, now you're at like 4.7 or you're still not at super host. Right? Right. So it, you know, having even a four star review is, is one of those just mathematically until you have a ton of reviews, like we.

[00:20:46] you know, once you've got a hundred of them, it's not as detrimental. Right? Right. Because you've got so many good ones. But especially at the beginning of a listing, that can be almost devastating to your star rating. Right? So sometimes you have grounds to have the platform remove the review, right?

[00:21:01] Especially this is a case on Airbnb, you know, more, more than the others, I wanna say. . What you wanna do is go read the Airbnb policy. Yeah. Cause they actually have a review policy. They also have a content policy, and you want to review those and say, Hey, did anything they say or did this review that they wrote violate Airbnb's policy on reviews?

[00:21:24] Like they can't call you names. Right. There's stuff like that. Right. It has to be relevant right to the stay. So if they say something, I don't know. The city of Dallas is dirty and it's awful . Right. And that's their review. Right. Well that has nothing to do with you. Right? It's not really relevant to, or the space, the the space.

[00:21:43] Right. If it's something totally external or Right. You know, the, the cab drivers are rude in this area. Right. That's not relevant to your Right. Your listing per se. Right. Right. So there, there are certain things they can't come to you and say, Hey. Either you give us [00:22:00] $1,100 or we're gonna leave you a bad review.

[00:22:02] Oh, that happened to us too. That happened. This was a lady that stayed a long time too. Oh, she did. She stayed for months and months. I think she, her stay was something like 146 days or something. Yeah. And her real problem was she wanted to leave three days early. Yeah. And we stuck to our cancellation policy.

[00:22:20] said, sorry, you gotta pay for the three days, especially since you're just now telling us three days the day you wanna leave, type thing. Right, right, right. And she didn't like that. And she actually, and this is a good tip, she actually called Wendy and Wendy answered the phone. Right. So one of the things we always say is, because of these content policies and.

[00:22:38] Things that people might violate. It's better if you can get them to say it in the messaging system. Yes. Keep it on the message. But in this case, the phone rang when you answered it, it was her. And she basically told you either she's like, Wendy, either you gimme $1,100 back or I'm gonna leave a really bad review.

[00:22:55] Well, she was a host too. And she was a host and she knows better. And she, she knew, knew exactly what she was doing. She knew exactly what she was doing. Mm-hmm. . And she knew to call because she knew it would be off the record. Well, guess what? What she doesn't know is that we record all of our phone calls.

[00:23:07] Yes. So it wasn't off the record, but Yep. And make sure that's legal in your state. In fact, it's probably better a good idea to just say, Hey, this call is being recorded. Then you're good. Right. But we actually had a recording saying that now whether you can use a recording is the evidence with the Airbnb is another story.

[00:23:27] So let's say, you know, if you can keep it in the messaging. Then it's very easy to say, okay, here's the evidence, right, and here's the review. Right? And then you can get something like that actually removed. Removed. And you said you got an email here recently? Yeah. So apparently as we're filming this, this is apparently, yeah.

[00:23:44] Yesterday, November, 2020, Airbnb actually has released. Winter updates is what they called it. Yeah. So they, they're updating the software. Right. But as part of that, they've updated the, the review policy. Yes. And they call it retaliatory [00:24:00] reviews. Right. So there's a new process for getting what they call retaliatory reviews removed from your listing.

[00:24:07] Right. And that would be an example of one where like, Hey, because you didn't give me a refund, then I'm going to do this. Yes. Right. And in the past it's been hard to. It's almost like whichever rep you call. Yeah, pretty much, right? Some, some say this. Yeah. Some will say this. Yeah. You know, this kind of thing, right?

[00:24:26] But I think they're trying to revise that policy and they said that, hey, even, even ones that had been in the past, We'll now go back and review. So we might be able to get this lady removed. Right. Cause initially they would not remove it. No, we tried it. They would not. We tried. So there, there you go.

[00:24:42] That, so we haven't quite fully read through that yet, so I don't really have a lot to say about it. But it's there and they're aware of it. That it's, that it's actually an issue. Mm-hmm. . Yep. Well that, those are really great tips, I think. Yeah, I think so. It's, you know, when you get someone who's complaining.

[00:25:01] basically try to resolve the issue in the most professional way you can. And you know, ask yourself those questions and then ask yourself those, the, is it, is it within my power to do mm-hmm. and does it break my system? Right. And that's with any request really. Right. Not even just problems, but it could be, Hey, do you guys offer bikes for rent?

[00:25:20] Well, no, we don't. Yeah, right, right. So it's not something we normally do. It's just, and, and so we, we do that with every request, even if it's. Non-complaint. Right, right. Ask ourself those questions. Yeah. And then, and then, you know, you can, you, you can push that review back 14 days, I believe it. And so that it gets buried.

[00:25:45] Mm-hmm. , that's a good, or it doesn't happen at all, or doesn't happen at all. If you can get it, it is possible to, to, well, I mean, they may not even leave you review. Well, that's true. If you push it out for two weeks mm-hmm. , then they're not getting that extra notification that's, that says, Hey, when do you send [00:26:00] your review?

[00:26:00] You might wanna leave her one. Right, right. They'll think maybe they're just not gonna leave me one. And by the time they get the notification, it's too late. Right, right. So that's part of it. And then, oh, you were talking about getting it, remove. So it is, that is a possibility, you know, if you, if you get a bad review, it is a possibility you can get it removed if it violates one of the pop platform policies, basically.

[00:26:21] Right. Or is retaliatory, which violates the policy. . Right. And try to keep everything in the messaging threat. Yeah. And try to keep everything on the platform. On the platform. Mm-hmm. Texting and calling and things like that. Especi. , especially if it's someone, you even have an, an inkling that they, that it's an actual complaint that you're dealing with, try to keep that on the platform.

[00:26:46] Yeah, for sure. So a lot of times, even if somebody texts us, what we'll do is go back to the platform and respond. Or if they call, we don't answer the phone, it goes to voicemail. They leave us a voicemail. And then we'd respond back in the messaging center. So we've kind of always kind of redirecting things back to that channel.

[00:27:03] Right. And you can kind of train people to talk to you there. Yes. Right. Mm-hmm. . So that's, that's a little tip and trick as well. Yep. Yep. Well, we dropped lots of nuggets today. I think so, yeah. That's a little bitty nuggets. Well, we hope you found some value in this episode. We are John and Wendy Williams with the short-term Rental Authority, your authority on all things short-term rental related.

[00:27:26] To help make you the best operator ever. And I can subscribe. I can subscribe. Yeah. . Onto next. Onto the next

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