Car insurance mail

The one that always gets me is when guests “don’t understand” and are outraged that they didn’t get more money back on a cancellation policy where they were due back 50%, but only paid half up front to start with. They think they should be getting back 50% of the 50% they paid, even though the cancellation policies, if they are read in full, do say that refunds are based on the total nightly fees of the reservation.

I do think Airbnb should make this more clear to guests- that the option to pay half up front is simply a convenience to the guest so they don’t have to come up with the full payment in one shot, but that it has zero to do with the cancellation refund on the total reservation amount.

I once was trying to explain this to a guest who wasn’t getting it, and he only finally understood when I gave a hypothetical scenario.

"Joe books Happy Home on the Lake, with a strict policy, and pays the entire one night’s booking of $100 when he books. Joe has to cancel, so gets 50%- $50 back.

You book Happy Home on the Lake, with a strict policy, for $100/ night for one night, but only pay half up-front. You have to cancel. So you get nothing back, because you only paid $50 to start with.

Why should Joe be out $50, but you out only $25, just because you were offered the convenience of only having to come up with half the payment upfront?"

When I explained it like that, the guest finally said, “Oh, duh, I get it now.”

How exactly does one make it more clear? It’s absurd.

Maybe instead of more clear maybe they should just be more plain about it: “This is your refund cause math.” :joy:

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Actually, you can most definitely insist. But you have to suffer the potential consequences if you do.

In my mere 1.5 years of experience doing this, one thing I know for sure is that guests are usually confused and uniformed about even the most basic AirBnB rules and policies. So I would get my lease signed or cancel this guest.

This is the host’s real estate. Just because you’re an Air host doesn’t mean you give up your title rights, which include the right to keep people off your property.

But there are consequences if you cancel the guest—fines from Air at a minimum.

Without a floor plan I don’t know enough about the configuration here, and how it affects the host’s space. If the host is worried about residency this suggests something more than just sleeping in the bedroom across the hall.

In my part of the USA there are many homes built with what I call “guest wings,” but are locally called attached casitas. They have a private entrance and sometimes a sturdy deadbolt barrier door between the wing and the rest of the building. Kind of a separate apartment but not quite.

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By giving an example like @muddy gave.

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One more thing about this. Most of you reading here have never had to go to court to evict a tenant. I have, or more precisely lawyers I hired to do it, have.

There is nothing fun about an eviction. Going to court to get somebody out of the place would cost far more than any fine Air might levy for a violation of rules.

If Air kicks you off the platform completely that would be a problem, but there are other booking platforms out there. And would Air really do this? When Air is offering me a $750 bounty for every host I refer to Air? If the host has any kind of reasonable defense I think the host will be fine.

What Air says is that if a guest overstays (a holdover tenancy in this case) you are to contact Air and they will help you. I have no idea what the help is like, but that is what they say.

Bear in mind too, this sounds like a cooperative guest. At least for now. The time to get tenants to do what you want is BEFORE they get the keys. Approached properly, if the guest willingly signs a lease, then there is no issue with Air anyway.

My husband knows someone who is living in AirBnBs full time. She stays a month or two and then moves on. She can’t get a regular lease with a professional landlord so this is how she solves her housing problem. She’s a good guest too. Nothing wrong with this so long as she moves on when it’s time.

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Wow. I’ll bet the places with the just-cause requirements also have a long-term rental housing shortage, too, and blame it on AirBnB instead of their own policies.

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The host who started this thread wasn’t worried about residency, she only asked about a guest receiving mail. It was other posters who got off on the tangent of tenancy and leases. And she said in her original post that she rents out her master bedroom suite. I would take that to mean bedroom/private bathroom, not an entire locked off apt. with a separate entrance.

Sorry, @muddy - not true. The OP stated:

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Correct, I missed that part.

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I agree this is likely a fuzzy area for Airbnb. Even its own policy on contracts provides for a lagged receipt of contract and cancellation, likely reflective of Airbnb’s posture of pressuring hosts for immediate approval of booking requests:

“If a Host tells you about an additional contract after you’ve made a booking request, you should review the contract within 48 hours of receipt of the full terms. If you are not comfortable with it, you can decline to sign it and ask your Host to cancel your reservation without a cancellation penalty.”

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I take it that means without a cancellation penalty for the guest, not the host.

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I just continue to be AMAZED at your breadth of knowledge, its specificity, your always cogent and articulate analysis, your humor and your generosity in sharing on this forum.

Thank you.

Your posts make me recall those scenes in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when Butch and Sundance kept asking about those tracking them (they were REALLY skillful) “Who are those guys???!”

Thank you for this!

BTW there is an AirBnB host on TikTok that makes ALL her guests sign a contract no matter how brief the stay. I think that’s going too far but that’s what she does.

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Isn’t a reservation with Airbnb the same as a lease?

If you read the rest of the thread you’ll get you answer. I don’t do Airbnb bookings for more than a few nights at a time though. If I did, I wouldn’t rely on Airbnb to be any help if I had a guest who wouldn’t leave at the end of their reservation. I’d also want a deposit in advance.

@pcannady If a guest refuses to leave when their booking ends, all Airbnb can do is send them a message telling them they have to leave, and will tell the host it’s up to the host to get the guest to leave. The don’t have a swat team they send to boot out trespassers.

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Easily. When a guest chooses the “Pay half up front” option, there could be a pop-up that says “Please Note: If you should need to cancel this booking, cancellation policy refunds are based on the total price of your booking and are unrelated to what you have paid upfront.”

It already says the following two things, including an example, when you choose “split payment” on the reservation page. I don’t understand why you think your example is any different or why you, who often say that “guests don’t read”, believe that this is going to be the thing they choose to read:

And:

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The very last part of the screenshot you posted, that you marked, where does that appear? In the Airbnb info on cancellations, right? Many more guests would read it if it popped up in their face when they were choosing to pay half up front.

It’s no different from hosts messaging guests when they first book or send a request, questioning them as to making sure they have booked for the correct number of guests, making sure they are aware of house rules, etc, because we know that many guests don’t read a lot of the information.

Airbnb doesn’t really acknowledge that guests fail to read the provided info, going so far as to hide House Rules at the very bottom of listings, requiring a click-through. What I’m saying is that Airbnb could provide crucial info to guests at the appropriate stages of the booking process, and they don’t.

But the change in showing guests exactly when they can cancel for what percentage of refund is definitely an improvement. The part about losing their whole deposit if they only paid half up-front should be included in that.

The link to it pops up when you choose the split-pay button. You can’t miss it.

I agree but those things are actual “information”. They aren’t common sense like, “we’re not going to give you money that you never gave us”. Nonetheless, they do say it in two different places and it will only be missed by someone who is willfully not reading anything at all. It is some of the only information that you don’t have to even scroll to see. You can’t help those people. They need to be weeded out, lol.

Really, no one is that stupid. People act out when they don’t get what they want. And in the US specifically, there is a habit of acting out by acting stupid. It is disturbing and bad and it should not be validated.

It is bad enough when people act stupid about not getting a full refund that I’m not going to entertain these people who want twice as much as they paid as a refund.

There is no place in the universe where you get a refund of what you paid that is twice as much as what you paid :joy:

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