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Hi Everybody, My name is NJ. My room was booked from April 28th to May 1st by a guest name Janice from the USA. As soon as I got the booking, I sent many messages to Janice asking her for the arrival time so I could meet her and give her keys to her. She had not contacted me at all. But on April 26, I got a call from a Chinese lady named Lisa, she said that a friend booked the room for her on April 28 to May 1. She had a difficulty speaking English so she asked me to use WeChat which was quicker and had better Chinese transalation so I agreed to use it as requested by the guest. We had communicated through WeChat during her stay. She arrived on April 28 and left in the morning of May 1. At the same time on May 1, I got an email from Airbnb stated that this reservation has been canceled. It said the following:-
Hello N.J. and Janice,
We monitor all reservations and user interactions on Airbnb very closely. We’ve noticed this reservation XXXXXXXX doesn’t appear to be legitimate. As a result we have canceled the reservation and refunded the payment. If you feel this was done in error, please let us know. Otherwise we hope you understand that we do this to preserve the integrity of our marketplace.
Regards,
The Airbnb Team
Upon reading Airbnb email, I asked myself many questions. How could I tell whether the guest was legitimate or not because even though Lisa did not book the room but she knew all the booking details. Could I refuse the guest when they know all about the booking. Since I wasn’t able to contact Janice I assume that this guest is legitimate because she knew my number and called about the booking. I have all the evidence about our communication through WeChat and has her pictures taken while she stayed. I don’t understand why Airbnb did not consult me first before canceled the reservation. I called Airbnb hotline but the operator has no idea how to solve this and said she will send this issue to the relevent department. I doubt this would ever be solved because I still have 2 pending issues from Airbnb regarding withheld payouts since December 2016.
I joined Airbnb since 2015 and I have tried to treat my guests the best I can. I could not figure out how to solve this problem.
Third party bookings are not allowed (against Airbnb terms of service). The right to do here would have been to contact Airbnb and they could have cancelled the reservation before it got to this point.
Keep all communication on the Airbnb messaging system. This is so you have back up in cases like this and Airbnb can see from their end exactly what has been said/arranged.
I wish you the best of luck but I think these mistakes will make it very difficult for you to get your payout paid
Please elaborate on this. Were these two other issues on a similar topic? Since you are mentioning this here, you seem to think that these are related issues, so it would be helpful to have details.
It’s quite confusing. Janice booked the room for 2 persons. I thought Lisa asked Janice to book the room and they would come together. Prior to her arrival, Lisa didn’t mention that she would come alone. When she showed up alone, I asked her about Janice. She said Janice was sick and couldn’t come. I didn’t suspect that this is against Airbnb policy. I did not know that I supposed to call Airbnb to cancel reservation just because Janice couldn’t come because she was sick. That’s why I accepted Lisa as a my guest. How would I to know that this is not legitimate booking. I was not able to contact Janice neither.
Hi Blocher,
My two previous problem cases did not related to this one. I just made the reference to show my frustration with Airbnb regarding their inability to solve my cases. They were two bookings that I have not get paid since December 2016. I’ve called Airbnb and sent them emails many times regarding the two cases. Since then all they said was they have escalated those cases to related department! This has been half a year already.
The first case was a guest name KP booked my room for 2 nights and after the first night she to me she wanted to extend her stay another 6 nights. So I asked her to extend the booking to Airbnb system. She finished the new booking and Airbnb sent my confirmation so I let her stay till the new booking date ended on December 8, 2016. After the guest left, I still have not get paid. The payout is now still under “Future Transactions” as a pending payout. While she was here, everything was great.
The second case was a guest name Nana. She booked the from Dec 22 to Dec 24, 2016. Everything was great while she stayed. We even exchanged great reviews. She had no issue at all. But I still have not get paid from Airbnb. I looked at the transaction, it is still under “Future Transaction”.
For those two cases, Airbnb hotlines have no answer for me why they still keep the transaction under “Future Transactions” and has not paid me.
While these two cases still has not been solved, now there is this new case coming this morning.
Since last year I have hosted more than 100 bookings. I already accept that there would be some problems as a fact of life. But I did not expect such a mess.
I have to continue with Airbnb because other apps seems not to get good booking like Airbnb.
I am sorry this happened to you. Although for me a guest ignoring my messages and then someone who was not the guest from another country contacting me would have thrown up red flags.
I can only suggest you reach out to Airbnb through Twitter and explain the situation. You have evidence that someone stayed. So either the original guest had her account hacked or this was a scam,
Either way, ask them to pay you.
As an experienced host you need to be rather more intuitive about these situations. As soon as the guest who booked didn’t respond and then someone else contacted you offsite you should have contacted Airbnb.
Hi @Helsi It did not alert me because previously I had guests who booked from a country and later contacted me from different country. Something like somebody booked a room from England and later contacted me after he was already in Thailand. For this case, two days before the arrival date, Lisa called and did not mentioned that she would come alone. She told me that her friend was sick. Her English was very bad that’s why I assumed that her friend was Janice. I assured her that my room was very breezy and clean and it would be good for a sick friend to stay. When Lisa showed up alone, I asked her where was her friend, Lisa said she could not come because she was too sick to travel here!
Hi NJ, that happened to me too around the same time: A guest extended his stay on the same day that payment usually is sent. It seemed like that messed up the payment. Air could not figure out the problem. I politely called, tweeted and emailed til I was blue in the face and then resorted to ranting like a maniac. Still no payment. Then I added my husband as a co-host. He called and escalated it up the chain using his authoritative white male privilege voice until they paid us (and they gave us a $100 credit to boot). The amount still doesn’t show up in our yearly total. This incident peeves me still.
@Nancy_in_TO You are so lucky! I’ve contacted Airbnb almost every month from December asking about these two cases. I still got the same answer that they would escalate my cases. Bah Bah Bah. And still nothing happens. With new case showed up today, I will be paranoid about all upcoming bookings because I’ll never know which one would get cancel by Airbnb after the guests had stayed! Today I called them, email them, messaging them using twitter. This freaks me out.
