Submission of damage claim leads to negative review of host

Conflict between resolution policy and double-blind reviews

I've been hosting on Airbnb successfully for a couple of years having over 100 guests renting my house. I have a 90%+ 5-star rating and generally have no issues with guests. However, I've had a few of late where a seemingly minor issue has made me notice the inherent conflict between the 48-hour deposit resolution policy and the double blind review policy causing larger issues with guests and negative reviews. I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this.
Here's the issue: upon a recent guest leaving, the inspection showed they did some damage to our dishwasher door having dropped something heavy on it putting in a notable dent and possibly compromising its seal. I tried to do quick research on whether the whole door or just the panel had to be replaced with the 48-hour policy adding real pressure (I find this timeframe to be way too short esp when you have to get a professional over for a damage assessment). My policy in these cases is generally to privately communicate with the guest first asking what happened and then to resolve if I feel there is a damage claim vs. just posting a negative review publicly which could really harm their ability to rent in the future (I only do this if the guest is a real problem).
However, the guest in this case turned combative never actually denying but being quite illusive as to what happened but then refusing to pay. I went through the Airbnb process but the problem was that the guest decided to get back at me by posting a very negative review filled with misinformation (this was a guest that had no problem in their stay including when I checked in on them and their departing message was that the visit was great). The problem was that I posted a relatively neutral review of them as, again, my policy is that I'm not going to take out a minor damage issue in the public forum.
Thus, I find the damage claim policy (where you're required to first engage the guest to get resolution but in a tight 48 hr window) and the double blind review policy are in conflict. For future situations like this, do I assume the worst in the guests review and give them a negative review? When I had a bad guest once in the past that I had to have removed, Airbnb blocked reviews by both of us. I can kind of understand that but now there's also someone out there who's a nightmare and other hosts need to know but I can't review them. In another case, someone posted a review that was generally good but had some factually incorrect info and Airbnb was willing to take it down. Since the guest mentioned above also posted factually incorrect info I asked them to do the same in this case and they refused. Just wondering how others are managing this as Airbnb seems to have a blindspot here when I've tried to raise this with them. When the double blind system was put in place I thought it a good idea but now seeing its holes.



Reply 1:
THis is definitely a problem that I really dont' know how could be resolved, because even if the time frame for making a damage claim were longer, such as 14 days, you would still be making it within the review period and potentially before the guest had written their review. Other hosts have pointed out that damage claims on the guest resulted in a negative review from the guest. WHich just goes to show that reviews ARE in fact used in a retaliatory way, which was the entire scenario meant to be avoided by the double blind process.

Because guests can be quite vindictive when retaliating, they could potentially submit very low star ratings for you as well.

Additionally, you are not permitted to state in a review that a damage claim has been submitted for a particular guest, as that could result in AIrbnb pulling the review.

So it's a difficult situation. The best way to go in my thinking is to just write an honest review, and if there was significant damage, then to mention that, and all the while realize that you may incur retaliation for the damage claim. You can respond to a negative review by the guest, indicating that there was damage (you can state there was damage, just not that you submitted a damage claim).

It's my hope that the possibility of retaliation vis a vis a bad review does not deter hosts from submitting damage claims, because then bullying guests would win -- having demonstrated that bullying the host helps shut hosts up and keep them from telling the truth.