Airbnb service fee refunds for guests

There is some recent change to the service fee refund language. @JJD believes you have to cancel within 48 hours to get a refund. The 3 refunds per year no longer applies. This has huge implications for the cancellation policies we set.

I have one data point from a guest who says they got the refund. But the guest might not have checked their statement properly.

It would be good to know if others have any data points.

I don’t have the previous text but some bloggers have it

When Is Airbnb service fee refundable?

Yes, the service fee is fully refundable under three special circumstances.

If cancelled within 48 hours:

You cancel within 48 hours of booking and it meets these conditions:

  • You have not cancelled three reservations in the last 12 months
  • There is no overlapping reservation on your account for the same dates
  • The host’s cancellation policy is not super strict

What is the change? Do you have a link? What is “recent?”

I canceled a reservation in October and did not get the service fee back. The host had a strict policy and I cancelled several weeks in advance so I got half back, minus the service fee.

Here’s a screenshot of what I’d get if I canceled an upcoming reservation and you can see it’s also minus the service fee:

refund

As for guests that cancel, I’m not going to bother them. If a host contacted me asking about that I’d be quite annoyed and would probably ignore them or just just give an answer without checking my receipts.

added to OP. The new language no longer says you can get the service fee refunded 3 times per year.

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I’m confused. I saw this post yesterday

and that’s what @JJD referenced when she made her comment.

I’m just going to back out of the whole conversation now.

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How so? Whether Airbnb refunds its service fees to the guest has nothing to do with hosts. That’s for the guest to battle out with Airbnb.

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If guests can cancel for free, they can continue making speculative reservations that they cancel before the deadline. But if they don’t get the service fee refund, some of them might not cancel the reservation as they would lose something. People are always averse to a loss.

So for me, no service fee refunds would mean I go on the firm policy. They will book thinking it’s a more liberal cancellation policy than strict.

If they get service fee refunds, I will move to the strict policy.

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It is only super strict that stops the refund according to what I read

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I just canceled a reservation for the end of May (moderate policy) due to flight changes, and got the service fee refunded.

Yes, because of the cancelation policy. This has always been true that the service fee is refunded if you cancel during the time you would get a full refund.

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