@Josiah So if a store has a 30 day return policy, do you consider them to be thieves if you bring something back 35 days later and they refuse to give you your money back? If you buy a non-refundable airline ticket and have to cancel it, do you call the airline thieves because they won’t refund you?
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I’m beginning to think that we’re all getting a little carried away with the rights and wrongs of the issue. That’s probably because there are no rights and no wrongs - they vary from host to host.
The only importance that the side gig issue has is that no matter what the host’s situation, we should all act in a professional manner. By not doing so we are bringing into disrepute ourselves and the company we have chosen to advertise with; Airbnb.
Because we don’t all fall under a corporate blanket surely there is room for us all to differ in our approaches to various situations.
I can’t remember ever NOT allowing Airbnb to refund a cancelling guest but mostly the stays have been well in to future and I know that I’ll be able to fill those dates.
Not all hosts, especially new ones, don’t have the contacts and the wherewithal to do that.
So am I setting unrealistic expectations for future hosts by giving refunds? Probably. Are hosts who refuse to do so giving guests the expectation that all hosts who advertise on Airbnb won’t give refunds? Probably again.
Then there are the in-betweeners - those who refund if the dates are rebooked. Again, guests are getting a message that we wouldn’t all uphold.
I think it takes bigger brains than mine to work out the answer to all this though.
The only thing I wish is that hosts, guests and Airbnb advertising would stress that there’s no such thing as ‘an Airbnb’. We’re all different.
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I’d like to book a stay at your place. I will not cancel my stay and I won’t show up. I will claim a refund later as you did not “earn” the income since I did not stay.
@houseplants What you and others are conveniently skipping is the context that Josiah has provided. He was replying to the OP. Someone booked but then canceled one week later. The hosts payout under the policy is getting full payment for an entire month. In Josiah’s opinion that’s unreasonable. He’s also added some other context. Using the word “steal” inflamed people who immediately assumed he was calling all hosts who use strict policy thieves. All in all, a poor choice of words to describe his strong feelings. I agree with Josiah that keeping one month’s rent for one week of the calendar being blocked seems unreasonable. But using the word steal was pointlessly inflammatory.
Now you’ve gone off in an even less relevant direction. If you book a stay and don’t show up the host has no opportunity to rebook and recoup the lost income. As Josiah said, make sure you’re comparing apples to oranges, not apples to orangutans.
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Imagine if Southwest Airlines made an ad saying all the other airlines steal from customers because they don’t allow free rebooking like Southwest does.
What the OP didn’t mention anywhere, as far as I can see, is how long before the check-in date the booking was made, only that it was for a 3 month stay and cancelled one week later.
If the booking was made 2 months prior to check-in, I would agree with Josiah, that it seems unreasonable to retain the first month’s entire fee, especially as the OP said it’s his prime season- surely he would get rebooked.
If the booking was made 2 weeks in advance, and cancelled a week later, that’s a different scenario, as the host may have to scramble, reduce the nightly rate, etc, to fill dates.
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Agreed. The OP did say their inclination was against a full refund because they probably missed several reservation requests in a week. It’s a good problem to have. LOL.
The advantage of just sticking with policy is that there’s no moral calculation to make, no debating how much or how many you missed, no thought of right/wrong or fair/unfair. Legalism exists for a reason.
This is really the crux of the matter. If guests were all reasonable and understood your statement that “all Airbnbs are different”, then there wouldn’t be any issues about guests expecting that just because one host accommodated something doesn’t mean all hosts will. So there wouldn’t need to be any resentment by hosts who stick to their policy, towards hosts who easily refund, in terms of it setting unrealistic expectations.
Guests wouldn’t consider a host who wasn’t willing to refund, in contravention of the cancellation policy, to be a scammer or a thief, they would just realize that it was nice of their previous host to do that, but that it isn’t going to happen every time, and that they need to be willing to accept the terms they booked under, without getting stroppy about it.
That, of course, is a “wouldn’t it be nice if guests…”, but not, unfortunately, reality in most cases. I know there are guests who, while they may be disappointed to lose money, accept that is the policy they agreed to, and accept it like a responsible adult- those are usually the guests who ask politely if the host would be willing to refund something if it gets rebooked. But I know there are also the ones who immediately accuse the host of being an unfair greedy scammer.
I once reported a guest post on the CC where the guest had said the host was refusing to refund if the guest cancelled, and the guest said if the host wouldn’t refund, his intention was not to cancel, show up, and then trash the host’s house- “I’m going to totally trash the place and shit all over the floors” was what he said.
When I reported it, I told the mod that is seemed not only should this guest be banned, but the host should be notified in case this a**hole actually followed through on his threat. The mod said, “Whoa, thanks for bringing this to our attention- we will definitely deal with it.”
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Just because a guest has not stayed doesn’t mean the host has not put in work. The host often has to answer questions, make plans with cleaners, maintenance people, and move plans around for friends and family to make the booking work for them. Sometimes I don’t have to do much of that but I have to read the message from the guest and that can take a few minutes, and I need to be compensated for that. Most of them will go and complain to Airbnb about a refund so I have to read the message from Airbnb as well and respond to it with. More time spent. One guest contacted Airbnb 6 times before he quit. And he would message me every few hours.
If a guest books and cancels later, I’ll keep their money. The guest should not have booked in the first place or booked a flexible policy. If life happens, they should have bought insurance.
I’m allowed to keep the payout per the terms, so there is nothing wrong with it. Everything else is a rationalization.