Airbnb High-Handed tactics - lost my Super Host status

I Googled ‘airbnb high-handed’ and lo and behold lots of other people have fixed on this adjective for Airbnb lately. It wasn’t always this way with Airbnb.

I started a new listing after a hiatus of about a year - things have changed. Instant booking is the default setting now and when I went to change it I was told I would lose ‘penalty-free’ cancellation. So I left instant booking on. Then there was a conflict in bookings because a VRBO guest booked at the same time as the Airbnb but the VRBO system is experiencing endless payment glitches so the booking didn’t go through (yes I know I can sync calendars and this gives rise to other problems). So I had to cancel the Airbnb booking because it didn’t come first in time. BAM, I lost my super host status - seems like a penalty to me. One more cancellation and I lose listing rights. High Handed is the adjective that comes to mind. Also, its impossible to reach a real person to explain the nature of the problem, but I’ve found the contact number now.

Many hosts on this forum don’t think being a superhost is a big deal. Some think it’s more of a curse than a blessing, so there’s that.

You mean one more cancellation that doesn’t qualify as penalty-free? I’m not saying this applies to you but bad and flaky hosts who cancel on people is a big problem. I also use Airbnb as a guest and when I spend hours perusing listing and finally put in my request I expect a quick answer accepting or declining and I expect that booking to remain in place, not get cancelled.

The penalty free cancellations are only for instant booking guests that violate one of your house rules or make you uncomfortable or have extenuating circumstances. Conflict with listing on more than one platform is not one of those penalty free issues.

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I think if you have multiple listings having IB is always a risk in terms of potential booking clashes if you aren’t integrating your calendars. It’s certainly not worth giving up the flexibility of being able to chose which guests work best for your listing and avoiding booking clashes.

If you don’t have Instant Book you don’t normally have to worry about cancellations.

Airbnb makes it clear that it takes host cancellation seriously and penalises hosts who do this And yes losing your superhost status is one of the penalties of cancelling bookings without extenuating circumstances. (Why couldn’t you use your ‘penalty-free cancellation’ by the way?).

I am not sure which problem you want to explain to Airbnb but I would recommend going forward you look at removing instant book.

Superhost is nothing but a self-congratulatory status. It means little, if anything. (Yes, I am a Superhost but wouldn’t mind if I wasn’t). Getting gold stars on a chart in kindergarten means more.

As for Instant Book, many of us use it by deliberate choice.

And yes, in the space of a year a website and app will change. They are organic and grow as needs alter. It would be terrible if things didn’t change.

I am not convinced that this is high-handed. AirBNB is very clear about cancelations and the penalties that they levy against hosts who do things like double book, which is what happened here.

Evidently there are channel managers that can synch your calendars, but we do hear of failures with these managers.

As a guest, I will never book at a place where the host has canceled. Just too risky.

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There was no penalty free cancellation - there was a penalty and no opportunity to explain. High-handed, pure and simple

Change is good, no doubt. Becoming high-handed because you have power, not so good.

Double booking is not a reason for a no penalty cancelation. They have a list of reasons that are acceptable in the TOS.

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High handed is when you are lured by the penalty free status to take on Instant Booking then you get stuck through no fault of your own and you get penalized. Instant Booking does not allow penalty free cancellation - it’s qualified penalty free cancellation - OH didn’t you read the fine print? Its only penalty free if…

Your rental, your power. You don’t have to list with Airbnb or any other site unless it’s your choice to do so. Ultimately, you’re in control of your own place.

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You failed to block days on your Airbnb calendar while you were negotiating with potential guests on another rental site. This is a big error. I believe that Airbnb is correct in penalizing hosts for cancelling if there are no extenuating circumstances. If guests can’t have faith that they won’t be cancelled on once they book they will stop using Airbnb and who would blame them. If you read message boards on which guests post you will see over and over how their trips were ruined by hosts who cancelled.

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I would never have chosen instant booking BUT FOR Airbnb’s auto message when I tried to remove it “you will lose penalty free cancellations!” Oh no, that sounds like something that I don’t want to lose. But I never had it actually. “penalty free” is a defined term that you don’t see the definition for until after the fact.

The high-handed part is the way the app forces you to choose something you wouldn’t choose BUT FOR a misleading promise. Then it imposes a penalty - more than one actually and offers no recourse. My guest was totally understanding and not put out at all.

Anyway, just a pointer for a fantastic site and I’ve had fantastic experiences but this seemed to me to be out of step with my previous experiences and taking a turn that is tempting when an organization gets some clout and power. I understand the concerns for guests but leaving a sour taste in hosts’ mouths isn’t the answer. Airbnb is so big and busy that it can’t deal with individual situations now probably - sort of like minimum penalties that apply once a fact situation is established - lots of unfairness results. If hosts are upset the the best approach is to acknowledge it, examine it and address it.

No that is not what happened. You have made an error in your assumption.

no kidding, just offering some feedback. I’m not alone in this - these things don’t just get shot down and they’re dead you know.

yep, that’s it, the penalty free cancellation is a ‘qualified’ term and not defined until after the fact, my point exactly

I get the impression that maybe you think by ranting on this site you are letting Airbnb know about what you see as a problem. But I also see you aren’t a fan of close reading so maybe you didn’t see that this forum is not associated with or run by Airbnb. It is a forum of Airbnb hosts but if you want Airbnb to know how put out you are, posting here is not the way to do it.

Now you know.

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And I get the impression that there are a lot of people who post here thinking just that. We have no association with Airbnb at all - this is an independent site for hosts to air their grievances, rant and above all, help each other.

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It’s that Belo logo…:slight_smile:

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You see I’m “not a fan of close reading” - where do you see that evidenced?
I thought this was not an Airbnb site but from the responses I have received I have to wonder, is it an Airbnb site, will my listing be disabled, will it be at the bottom of search results? Silly thoughts I’m sure.

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Perfect, that’s what I thought it was