Calender changed itself, now crisis

Please Help.

My calender has changed itself a couple of times at least.
Makes dates available that I had blocked.

Now someone has booked a weekend that I have a wedding.

I kindly explained that there was an airbnb gltich and asked the guest to cancel .

They tried and my account is asking me to cancel it as a result of their request.

I have superhost status and immaculate reveiws.

I lose all that for a whole year if I do the cancelling, with the resulting comment on my status.

What can I do? This poor guest is also tied to my calender.

CALL AirBnb Customer Service

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I have noticed this (in time) before as well. Using a mixture of the app and the website I noticed not all dates I blocked are actually being blocked and sometimes seem to reopen. Not sure which one of them is the cause.

Sunshine there known glitches in the system. For future reference when you block dates in the calendar also change the price to something ridiculous like ÂŁ1000, so even if by some magic the dates become unblocked no-one will book them.

6 Likes

I have been seeing the opposite - consistent mystery dates on my Airbnb calendar - and synced to my Gmail Cal - that just say UNAVAILABLE. I don’t know what is doing it. I know have to check my calendars every day and delete them.

Hi @Sunshine

You shouldn’t have put the onus on the guest to cancel as they haven’t done anything wrong.

What the guest quite rightly did is notified Airbnb that you as the host asked them to cancel which is why you got the request. By agreeing to this Airbnb will impose penalties on you for cancelling, which obviously you don’t want.

If issues like this happen always call Airbnb explain what happened they can see that you blocked the dates and will cancel the booking without penalties on either side.

If your guest had cancelled, as you know, they would have penalties imposed on them, which wouldn’t have been fair.

My listing now shows that guests can cancel with no penalty and others have reported the same on this forum. Here is the wording. I have the flexible cancellation policy.

“100% refundable
Cancel up to 24 hours before your trip and get a full refund, including service fees.”

I hadn’t thought about it previously, but now I bet there will be an upsurge in hosts pressuring guests to cancel as they won’t be penalized.

Wow @EllenN

What settings are you using?

Have you found an increase in guests cancelling last minute or too early to tell?

I am on the flexible cancellation policy. I have always had a lot of cancellations. I haven’t noticed an increase in cancellations, but it is a new policy for Airbnb to refund their fees. I don’t mind cancellations. For all but two days that were cancelled I have gotten a replacement booking, usually a better booking. I’ve scanned a few listings. It looks like Airbnb is now refunding their service fee to the guests regardless of the cancellation policy. The other aspects of the cancellation policies appear to be unchanged.

That’s really interesting thanks for letting us know.

I had read something about guests being able to cancel for free within 24 hours but not that they were now refunding fees in all cases. Wish they would just have lower guest fees in the first place.

I think they want to remain competitive with booking dot. That is their premise, cancel and get a full refund. I keep,seeing their ads.

If free cancellations become the norm and strict is penalized, vis a vis the Italian hosts, this is really going to be a problem for me. I’m in Hawaii and I just can’t having bookings cancel at the last minute. Really disappointing the road this site is going down.

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@konacoconutz. I have been thinking about this a lot today. I suspect that your guests are similar to mine– they book a flight, an AirBNB or two or three, and have maybe even booked some special trips and/or events for their stay. How likely are these people to cancel? The flight from anywhere on the mainland to Hawaii is a huge investment. The flights to Boston are also expensive. Do you really think that people will cancel their trip, or are you worried that they will find alternative accommodations?

I am trying to figure out how this might affect me. I have concluded, without enough knowledge, that the folks traveling from NYC to Boston for a weekend might cancel without much thought, but that anyone who has purchased an airline ticket, either from elsewhere in the US or Europe, will make the trip and not bother to find another place to stay.

I think they could cancel if they found a better or cheaper place. Easily. The flight over isn’t really a deterrent.

I can’t be on flexible though so I will need to pay their rate hike. 2% is a lot to jack it up by when we have been used to 3% all these years.

I agree. So, the problem you anticipate is that people will KEEP their airline reservations and choose a new place over yours. Not sure how we can combat that. Lots to consider.

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Yes exactly. Change Airbnb and keep their flights. If this is going to be lowered on us, I am going to think twice about taking reservations too far in advance.

My AirBNB is based on “far out” reservations. I am booked until the third week of August. However, the number of people from European and Asian areas is declining with the current administration. Argh. Difficult!

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Since the election we’re still getting lots of Chinese guests. We’re getting lots more Americans than we used to. We still get Europeans. We have not hosted any Muslims since the election.

i blocked 5 weeks yesterday, doubled checked all good. This morning it was all unblocked, had to reblock again, this was not the app but on my laptop which should be ok.

Have you changed the price off all the blocked dates to £2000 per night ? It’s really a good idea to put a fail safe in place just in case and a ridiculous nightly price does mean even if things get unblocked the dates won’t be booked.

2000 sounds good to me, great idea thanks