Just had a booking request which I accepted but received a message that payment was pending and my calendar would be blocked for 24 hours. This has never happened before. Calendar was only blocked when guest made payment. Under this new system what is to stop a guest from making several bookings without making payment thus unfairly tying up hosts calendar. I wish Airbnb would notify us of these types of changes.
I don’t think this is new. I’ve read host complaints about this (or something very similar) for the year that I’ve been hosting. Hosts have speculated that it has something to do with the specific payment method or a specific problem with the payment. I think what’s new is that they are notifying hosts about it, whereas previously, it was happening but there was no notification.
This happened to me and I made air withdraw it. They were blocking my calendar while they sorted out an issue with the guests payment. NO. When I called they tried to make me wait it out, they told me it was “policy” . I told the CS person it was my policy not to block my calendar with an unpaid reservation. They cancelled it no penalty.
RR
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I respond with this message when I get it.
I received the message “There was an issue with payment” when I tried to accept. Usually this is caused by an expired credit card on your account, or your credit card verifying this is valid and not a fraud charge. It usually can be fixed with a quick call to your credit card company.
Yep it blocks your calendar. Usually my message gets their attention, and it is fixed within an hour. My last one, I called airbnb to ask them to cancel it, and they were trying to call it a “host cancellation”. NO WAY! I have never cancelled on a guest, and wasn’t going to for a payment issue. BUT… the guest booked at 1am to check in at 4pm. and by noon the payment had not yet gone through and the guest was not responding to any of my messages. Airbnb finally understood the issue, and cancelled the pending payment guest with no penalty to me.
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Every time I read about Airbnb allowing a guest to check-in without receiving payment, it makes me cringe. You were able to stop it before it happened. Good job!
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It is up to us hosts to stop them.
RR
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This is a follow up to my original post, but please read on as this evolved into something far worse so will try posting it under a separate heading also as it is something every host should be warned about.
I had received a message from the guest whose payment was pending while our calendar was blocked telling me that they cancelled due to medical reasons. Airbnb basically stated policy that entitled them to block calendar for 24 hours regardless. I told the politely that I was not happy and as this was the first time I should have been notified when my acceptance was requested that guest had a payment problem.
Today, they cancelled most of my reservations including one who was about to board a plane in Alaska for arrival tommorrow. They wrote these guests to the effect that the host has cancelled your reservation and offered refunds. Also posted about eight messages on my review page that host had cancelled reservation. Also, posted fines of $500 to our account.
I phoned CS following an email from a guest asking why I had cancelled, and had a good 1/2 hr on hold and rep apologised for delay saying they had an unusual volume of calls. I explained what happened and he said it was a glitch in the system and they are working on it. I asked if this was a reprisal because I had complained the day before and he told m it was not and that there were a lot of people with the same problem and that they were in process of contacting all affected people. While I was talking to him I had another message from Airbnb telling me my account was cancelled but no mentoion that all reservations had been cancelled. At the bottom was a button marked reinstate my account. I read this to the rep and he told me not to respond to that as he would take care of it.
About 2 hrs later I had a message from an account manager as I had not agreed to new terms and conditions when I was on their website earlier. This was absolute BS as I had indeed gone to airbnb site in order to message guest with arrival info but for some reason I reached the travel page asking where i wanted to stay. I clicked onto the logo to look for hosting but a message came up stating there has been an error and page froze. I then exited and logged on with another browser as I had been having problems with a blank screen for the last few days. This seemed to work but the next thing I knew was a an email from a guest saying OMG why have you cancelled. It was at that point I called the first CS.
For the past six hours I have been contacting those guests thru Airb webmail informing them that I never cancelled and that i would honor their reservation. Only two of these had been contacted by Airbnb with a rebooking offer. Some of the others I think I have saved but others booked elsewhere.
Airbnb’s case manger is inferring that it is my fault as I they allege that I had not agreed to Airbnb new terms. Whatever they were, I had not read them so had not disagreed. I had agreed when I joined so would probably have agreed to whatever was new. I don’t recall getting an email from them with the terms but it was possible I missed it in which case they should have phoned/emailed telling me if I did not agree that all my bookings would be cancelled. I feel that at least 24 hrs notice should have been given me. At the time I went to the site I was in a hurry to message guest among lots of other things and obviously did not read the site as I wanted hosting section.
This is very unfair not only to myself as host but to all the guests. Also by putting out a statement in my reviews that I had cancelled the booking, along with emailing guests, that is a complete lie, but who are the guests going to believe, a multi billion co or a host like ourselves.
If it was a glitch as I was told then they should notify guests of the truth, and compensate us for the lost income which here is a very short season.