Bad feeling about guest who is yet to check in

Have any one of you taken a booking and regretted it and hope they cancel? A while back it happened to me but I got lucky and they cancelled within the allowed period. Well, I’ve got another one coming up and where communication has been a major problem. They originally booked for 4 nights and within the 5 day period wanted to cancel one of the days, while mentioning they understand there might be a penalty. I responded that although AirB’s policy does not provide for refunds under those circumstances but that we would split the charge and refund 50% directly. The response I received just did not make sense and didn’t seem to address the issue, I asked for clarification and the response was to leave the reservation as it was. I then emailed asking them if they could give some idea of arrival time. Today they were due to arrive, and at 6 am I had an email informing me that their plane had landed and when could they check in.
At least that was the gist of it. I replied that our normal check in was 5 pm per listing but that the room was not ready as a guest had checked out the day prior. We got everything ready by the but the guest did not show. They will probably arrive just as we are sitting down to dinner. We have five star ratings and great reviews and would like to keep it that way. Any suggestions at impproving communications and making an hitherto unresponsive guest an appreciative and happy one?

Stick firmly to your check in and check out times - unless it’s convenient for you to do otherwise. If the previous guest have checked out the day before, then I will allow early check in if the place is ready.

But when you have back-to-back it might not be possible.

Regarding communications, my current guests are very bad in that respect, but they are sweethearts in every other way. They are elderly and although they have an iPad, they prefer to knock on my door rather than communicate in any other way. (I’m right opposite the rental). That’s OK with me - I don’t mind adapting to guests. They are the ones who are paying me, after all!

Some guests are just bad at communication. I like to give them options - they can message me via the Airbnb system, text me, call me or knock on my door.

Well you can always do an alteration on the reservation if there’s a one or two day change without canceling on either end. There is no fee to do so.

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Update - Guests actually arrived at 5 and emailed stating that they were on the driveway and asked were there two houses in the street with the same number.
Of course not, and our house is clearly marked with the # at the beginning of driveway and on the house itself. It is a freestanding house on an acre lot!
My feelings started to prove right after greeting and checking in. Guest told me that their rental car was due back around 9 the following morning and would I mind following him back to the airport rental facility while he returned car and then drove him back to house, and drive him back the day following to pick up new rental car.
For me, that would have involved two round trips of 70 mi each and taking 2 days off work, so thinking I must have misunderstood I questioned him as to why he could not pick up another rental car immediately upon his return of the first. The answer was that our place was so nice he was happy to stay around the house that day and did not want to waste any more money on rental cars - Great! I responded that had he booked the first car for more than a day he would not have to return it and that his bad planning was not going to be my emergency as I have to work on those days and I never offered free limo service in my listing. He kind of slunk off like a dog with its tail between its legs.
The following day he returned the car and rented another from a different company. Today he returned that car and came back in another as the second car apparently was more expensive and he was able to get a better deal on yet a third car in as many days. So far he has spent the best part of two mornings on a 3 day vacation in collecting and returning cars. He seems to be blaming this on Arizona for not providing public transportation throughout the State.
When one gets a feeling, it is usually right. Unfortunately it’s not over till its over.

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oh my! Are you serious??? That is bizarre behavior! Reminds me of a tightwad roommate I once had who would buy an article of clothing at a store, bring it home and get on the phone and call all the other stores and find out if she could save a buck or two and then drive around returning it and rebuying it at the different stores for the lower price. Like you said, spending all day driving around just trying to save a couple of bucks.

Oh dear, that is going to be a very long reservation indeed! What a nutcase!!!

What a relief - they checked out without any damage, so yes, could have been worse!
I have never before given anyone a bad review, because I had no reason to. In this case I considered not giving any review althouigh I should probably do a search of “bad review or no review”. However, after they checked out I noticed they had thrown a beer can over the fence into the desert trail behind the house. No question it belonged to them as I had see it in our fridge and was an unusual brand and size and that beercan did not appear in our trash which did contain 14 other bottles of popular brands. That really ticked me off as they had no respect for our beautiful natural surroundings that they saw fit to trash them. Funny how its the small things!
Because I was annoyed at that I thought I would wait 24 hours before deciding on a review but now I am thinking that other potential hosts should be warned. Had I seen a review before they booked warning others there would be no way I would have accepted a booking. On the other hand, if I leave bad review it may turn off other guests thinking they may be the next. Then I’m thinking good I don’t want or need that kind of guest. Am I overreacting?

Well maybe there was an explanation. Why one can and not others? Can you ask the guest via the messaging system about the beer can? Of course that may prompt them to ding you over something small.

BTW, guests really have to search to see reviews left by you. I think most wouldn’t bother.

It was silly of them to ask you this for sure. Just wondering though … Did you answer him in exact words how you describe here?

I personally don’t leave negative reviews, because it is so easy for a guest to make a new account. If the guest was awful I just leave none. That way if they try to book again and I see there is a message history with them already… I will reject the booking. (Yes this is a bugbear of mine and very annoying that we can be hurt by a bad review but they mean nothing to a guest… thanks, AirBnB.) I do always leave reviews if the guest was a good one, though.

So I’m just going to be a bit more careful about accepting people without many verifications or reviews in future.

Actually it is not easy for the guest to make a new account for this very reason. They ask for identification like a driver license or passport. As I’ve said before,you are missing out by not taking new users or those without review. Some of those have been among my best guests.

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Leave a review!!

[quote=“konacoconutz, post:10, topic:3837, full:true”]
Actually it is not easy for the guest to make a new account for this very reason. They ask for identification like a driver license or passport.
[/quote]Hate to break it to you but it’s not true. I wish it were :frowning:

I had one last week that a bit of detective work on my part, proved they had gotten “AirBnB verified” with a fake passport. When I pointed this out to AirBnB and sent them the proof of her real name, asking why this person was verified… they immediately cancelled the booking (at my request) and they decided to lock the user’s account. She texted me later asking why AirBnB was asking for verification (as if she did not know). I will admit that I was very lucky to stumble on proof of this, but it’s not the first guest I have had who I believe has submitted false documents to AirBnB and they have believed it.

I do accept people who have no reviews, just not if I see they stayed with me, and not if they can’t introduce themselves or say why they’ll be coming :slight_smile: And remember, if Joe Bloggs and his wife stay somewhere and get a terrible review, then they can do it again after Joe registers again using a new email address and his driver’s licence instead of his passport. Then if they do it again, Jenny Bloggs can do it twice more. Each time, all they lose is one nasty review. We hosts, on the other hand, can’t just delete our account if we get one bad review, it stays there to be seen forever.

In answer to “Why one can and not others?”

My best guess is that that was the only can in the refrigerator, as the rest were a 12 pack of bottles which to the best of my knowledge were consumed in the room
and the empties were left neatly in the case outside the room. The can must have been the only drink consumed outside the room.
BTW I hate to have to turn down a guest’s request and have gone very much out of the way to accommodate unforeseen circumstances a fact which is reflected in several reviews. This guy put me in a position where I had to turn his request down and tell him why. Also I had requested an eta in 3 different emails so why wait and then tell me his plane just landed at 6 am?

What do you mean by this? created a fake passport online or something? how would you go about this?

Well they send AirBnB a photo of their passport, remember, not the passport itself. I assume she doctored that scan or photo to change the name. All I know is that she explicitly discussed a different name being on her passport when I went Googling. She happened to be asking a forum how to go about changing her name on her passport, and the answer was that legally she could not. This is how I knew that it didn’t match her profile and Facebook names.

I happen to be an honest person but I could certainly make a fake document like this if I needed to. It’s very simple using Photoshop or even free internet sites, to edit images.