It’s the default setting on the Discourse software.
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I did not know that. They charge an “occupancy” fee from all of my guests and I live on the property. How can this be rectified?
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What? Are you asking how to stop a Billion dollar corporation that steals money? Ah, yeah, you don’t. I called them out on it a couple of years back. I asked them how it is that they take money for taxes. STATE and COUNTY taxes that they “REMIT on MY BEHALF” when those taxes are not due? I looked them up to see if they were even registered with the Secretary of State and they were not. They said they would get back to me. Next thing I know I look them up again and they registered 2 days prior as being listed as Doing Business Out of State. aka Delaware where they don’t have to pay taxes. I looked up the state law and it says for STR units where the owner is not present, there is a state and county tax. In cases where the owner lives on the property and has less than 5 rooms, NO TAX IS DUE! I said to ABB I do not get the business from your site as I used to because with your fees and taxes you are the same price as a hotel with a private bath. Yeah, no response. I tried to get the SC hosts to understand, but they do not care. They feel as if Airbnb would just make it so the taxes would be due and then we would have to pay them from our own sites as well. So, I don’t know if it is true or not, but I have never seen a government miss a chance to take out money. So there is that. Good Luck. I just let this dog ly.
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As of last week Homeaway/VRBO is now charging State and County taxes to guests for a total of 10-11% of everything including their service fees! In South Carolina, I don’t know about other states.
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I refunded her money and the hurricane was a non issue here and traffic was a non issue. She was supposed to arrive today. In the future when this happens I will refer to my cancellation policy and if she has a problem with it she can contact abnb. I feel like there was something else and she used the hurricane as an excuse. Cost me $999. Not happy with her or myself. I live and learn and have learned from this mistake.
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It probably doesn’t make you feel better but I’m 99% sure Airbnb would have refunded her. In any case, don’t blame yourself. Maybe you will get lucky with a replacement booking. Sometimes opportunistic travelers take advantage of situations like this.
Entirely possible and who knows, you may have dodged a bullet with this one.
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I’m glad Dorian didn’t cause your area any problems. Thanks to tornados & flooding the SC coast is having challenges. Also I live in NC and hope to go to the SC coast tomorrow. Flooding is causing detours about 100 miles away from the coast.
100 miles isn’t far from the coast and hurricanes can change paths and devastate inland quickly. Look at Matthew, Florence and many years ago Hugo. Being 100 miles from the coast wasn’t any protection.
May be the roads she needed to travel to get to Lexington were low country and prone to flooding. I-95 flooded with H Florence last year, H Michael in 2018 and I think with H Mathew 2017.
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Hosting in Miami, I experienced three adjusted reservations: one shortened their stay (for no reason arriving on 9/4 instead of 9/1), and two cancellations - one was refund immediately by Airbnb without asking me. The other the guest went back and forth debating if they should come, I told them they’d be entitled to a refund if their stay was impacted by a hurricane and to contact airbnb. They never came, cancelled the day before, and I was paid out - they never followed up with me regarding a refund. In the past I have been able to have Airbnb reverse unilateral extenuating circumstance refunds by showing neither the guest’s location nor mine was actually impacted or had official evacuations order - this, the ordering of a evacuations, seemed to be the key factor that triggers the extenuating circumstance refund.
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We are northwest of Orlando so we get people extending stays due to hurricanes. This year folks came in a day early.
Two years ago we were new hosts, and were relieved our guests were leaving before Irma was due. But it turns out after our stay they were supposed to head to southern Florida, and felt they were safer here and asked to extend a week. Turns out they were right. Despite Irma going directly over us, all in our bubble were safe. We didn’t lose power, our water supply stayed drinkable and our roads were passable. They now come back every year in hurricane season.
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Update on Hurricane cancellations: She rebooked and is own her way here. So, a Friday arrival turned into a Sunday arrival and a 5 night booking turned into a 4 night booking. So, I am pleased with how it turned out. If I had been hard core with her she would not have booked again with me. I talked to her and she seems very nice. Good Outcome.
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Amazing what that can do, huh?
No doubt. Too many hosts let that 10% chance that they are being taken advantage of taint the other 90% of their guest experiences.
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