Airbnb system glitch not allowing extension request for current guest

Our current guest is staying with us while waiting for her new home to be completed. She was scheduled to leave Dec 2, but had told us there were construction delays and wanted to extend her stay for another 18 days. Unfortunately we were booked, and could not accommodate her.

Yesterday the guests scheduled to arrive after our current guest cancelled. Our listing shows the extension she wants is available. When I went in to her reservation (using hosts’ browser interface) the little pop-up calendar that asks you to choose the new departure date did not reflect the recent cancellation – the dates of the now-cancelled stay were greyed out and un-clickable. The guest had a similar experience when she tried to request an extension from her end.

I phoned Superhost support, and the guy just started guessing. He told me to “unlink” the property from a similar listing that uses the same space (one or two bedroom configurations of the same suite). It made no difference. This support person has no training or background or knowledge-base notes that equip them to even understand this system bug, let alone fix it. He also said he has no capacity to override and send a change request to the guest from his end. Same cluelessness when I phoned six hours later and got another “support” person.

It is now 24 hours later, and the problem persists. Prospective new guests checking my listing see it open for business on the dates in question (no instant booking), current guest (and I) are told – when we click through to the “Change and cancel” routine – that the very same dates are not available.

I know we have the option of just doing a cash side deal with the guest and bypassing Airbnb, but prefer not for two reasons: 1) insurance 2) keeping up our “paid nights” count on Airbnb to stay qualified for superhost

Two questions for the community:

  1. Has anyone else run into this bug (and I am assuming it IS an IT bug)
  2. Any advice on how to penetrate the wall of untrained “tier one” support and actually get through to someone in a position to say “This is a known big, and here’s what you do” or “This is a new bug, we’ll get back”

In the meantime I have parent with 12 year-old daughter wondering why Airbnb cannot confirm the extension we promised them, and which is showing available on the listing calendar. As I pointed out to the support people yesterday (as if they give a sh*t) this is embarrassing to the Airbnb public-facing brand. (The host-facing brand is already in shambles, but this forum already knows all about that.)

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Block the dates and take cash?

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Neither of those things is worth the “bird in the hand” of a booking extension with a good guest.

Can you book any part of the time they want extended into?

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I agree with @KKC that it is worth just taking cash for the extension, but if you really don’t want to do that, you said parents, plural. You could have the one who isn’t already booked with you book the extension dates as a new booking and then just refund the cleaning fee either in cash or through the resolution center.

Mother and daughter.
Father overseas until new home is ready

Two of the requested 18 days… still left with the same problem

She’s not going to bolt… daughter is a serious piano student (2 hours/day practice) and we have a piano… and are near daughter’s school and new home. Guest has alternatives, but none that meet all her requirements. The bonus is we also have a fireplace, and it’s getting cold and rainy here in the Pacific Northwest

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I know that’s an option, but it’s a last resort for reasons outlined in my posting. What I really want is for Airbnb to fix the g*damn bug (pause here for laughter from other superhosts)

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Yep, since Airbnb can’t/won’t fix their system to take the guest’s money so they can get a commission, take cash and even offer a discount to the guest if you want.

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@Sparky_O_Reilly I have had weird stuff just like this. It was so long ago I will be throwing spaghetti at the wall…but what I recall is I ended up going through my listing settings and removing rules I’d set, min and max stay settings that had been scattered throughout using rules (vs just the base settings), removing buffer preparation day settings, etc. I also seem to recall the total number of days (current stay plus added days) possibly conflicting with my max stay setting.

With one incident I had the person extend as long as they could and I blocked the other days until we got it fixed - which in that case was Air manually extending the stay at a price I agreed to after speaking to the guest (again, apologize I don’t recall the fix). Sorry if this wasn’t helpful…wish I recalled the details.

Oh, and another potential useless detail…once I had to let my guest’s stay expire (had blocked the extra days they wanted) and then I unblocked and they made a brand new reservation…I may have even had to allow a day in between (can request as an extra services fee to make up for the uncollected fee for that night). The bonus of that hassle? they gave me a 5 star review for each stay :slight_smile:

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