Good advice! I figured the same re penalty free IB bookings - only if you find something wrong with the guest, which is absolutely not the case here.
The different time zones are working against me at the moment, as the assigned case manager messaged me at 2.30 AM, at which time I was fast asleep of course. I have been trying to contact her all morning, but she’s obviously somewhere in the US, and not available now.
It’s a waiting game.
How strange.
When this happened to me. I called them. Explained what happened. They looked into it and then messaged me to confirm there was a glitch and they cancelled the booking without charge (within an hour or so of me contacting them).
You shouldn’t have to wait so long. I would give them a call back and ask for someone else to action it if the rep you spoke to is not around.
Do make sure you message the guest in the meantime to let them know so they can be looking for alternative accommodation.
2 Likes
Still no progress! The case manager is looking into it…It was obviously a mistake to contact them via Airbnb Help on twitter. Next time I will phone straight away.
I have messaged the guests and they are waiting for me to cancel.
Oh I hadn’t realised you had decided to contact them via Twitter rather than calling them 
Having said that now you have a case manager it shouldn’t be taking that long. How frustrating for you and the guest.
I am trying every method possible to get a result. Phoned the superhost number twice today, and after going through the whole verification thing was told each time that the specialist case manager Sarah was going to deal with it. 15 hours now, since I first flagged the issue.
I just did this on Friday. Although I’m in the states, if UK platform has different rules.
Just checked all the options again, other than I’m uncomfortable with the guest, and extenuating circumstances each option carries the Lose Superhost Status for one year penalty. These dates were blocked does not feature in my settings.
I had it happened to me too several times and the opposite too.
1 Like
Look at the bottom of the page of all the penalties you will receive. Is there a box you can check to cancel penalty free? It indicated you could do so 3 times per year. It may also have been on the next page. I was double booked so was going to cancel regardless of penalty.
1 Like
This bug has happened to many of us.
One hack some of us use when we block days is to also change the daily rate for those days to something so ridiculous that, even if unblocked, no one in their right minds would book.
I’m sure your case manager will sort yours out soon. Try not to stress.
3 Likes
Finally got the booking cancelled without penalty.
On my third phone call to the superhost phone number I was told in detail how to go about it.
Basically, you have to pretend you are uncomfortable with the booking, provide some explanation (minimum 30 characters) that the guest won’t see, and then write a short message to the guest explaining the cancellation.
Bingo!
1 Like
That’s completely ridiculous. You don’t have to do this and they shouldn’t have made you use one of your IB cancellations.
The three times it has happened to me, Airbnb just did the cancellation themselves.
They could and should have done it for you.
Sounds like you got a customer services rep who didn’t know what they were doing 
1 Like
I agree, it seemed a strange way to go about it, but I had spent so much time with calls and messages trying to get the so-called case manager to reply that I was happy enough just to get rid of the booking.
The customer services rep who told me how to go about it even send me a message afterwards, so I do have her name.
All in all it took 24 hours to deal with what should have been done in an hour.
I was wondering if those of you who assured me case manager would sort it out soon were a little sarcastic?
Hi. I remember reading that option of “these dates were blocked”. I think it was in an email sent out by Air but now I can’t find it. I can’t see it in that link you posted. It would be great to be able to find where they’ve put that in writing. Anyone else seen it?
1 Like
I found the policy:
3 cancellations per year
As long as they do so within 24 hours of booking, Instant Book hosts can cancel penalty-free up to 3x a year if they’re booked on days that should’ve been blocked.
Some examples of when a host can cancel penalty-free include:
The host didn’t get enough advance notice
The host got double-booked
The host forgot to block unavailable dates
1 Like
Can you link to the policy or do a screen grab please @Brandt ?
This is completely contrary to what we have over here
And it’s not even grammatically correct - not sure which offends me more
2 Likes
Nope when I click on that, it’s just the one I posted to earlier with a completely different set of rules.
Could you do a screen grab please
No I wasn’t being sarcastic. I spent quite a lot of time trying to help you, based on my own experience of this happening to me three times !
What a frustrating experience you have had.
I really hope it doesn’t happen to you again.
1 Like
