It looks like airbnb unlike VRBO has fixed this problem. It was common practice for the guest to request a change of dates. The host accepts and then the guest cancels the reservation within 48 hours and gets a full refund. A guest asked to alter her booking dates from June 14 to June 6. I accepted the request and she cancelled ten minutes after making the date change request. She messaged me upset that she was only going to be refunded 50 percent of the fee. She stated that she was sure that the refund would be in full because the change in dates constitutes as a new booking and she had 48 hours to cancel. I called airbnb. If you have a strict policy like we do, the refund is based on the ORIGINAL dates not the revised dates. Here is the policy: If they cancel 14 or more days before check-in but not within 48 hours of booking, you’ll be paid 50% for all nights. Was anyone else aware of this? I offered to refund her the full amount if I am able to rebook the new dates.
So this change only applies to strict policies? That seems odd. I would assume it applies across the board. CS reps are not known for explaining things well.
I think it applies across the board. I have only had a strict cancellation policy so the CS only discussed the cancellation rules based on strict. I was just surprised that airbnb fixed a way to stop guests from gaming the system by basing the refund policy per our cancellation policy on the original booking dates not the revised ones.
Why are you helping her out?
I agree- while I would normally refund a guest who cancelled if I got replacement bookings (not fully, though- I don’t think guests should get away with taking up host’s time for free), I sure wouldn’t refund a guest who tried to scam me out of what they owed me according to my cancellation policy by asking for a date alteration, only to immediately cancel.
That’s just rewarding a scammer.
I may be a little slow but I don’t understand why the guest couldn’t just change the dates of the existing reservation which the host can approve after review?
Why the need of cancelling and booking again?
Is it because the original dates were more than 14 days away and the new dates in less than 14 days - which still wouldn’t make sense to me.
Thanks for clarifying.
The clock resets and guest can cancel for a full refund
That is what happens. But the belief is that the timing resets on the “days before” restriction of the cancellation policy.
For instance, the moderate policy is that the guests can cancel up to 5 days before check in and they’ll get a full refund. So, if it is three days before check in and a guest asks for (and gets) a date alteration to a month later, then the belief is that they can cancel and get a full refund because it is now more than five days before check in date.
We are on the Strict policy on AirBnB. I won’t accept a date change request if their check-in date is less than 60 days out (matches our 60-day full refund on Vrbo). Instead, I tell them to cancel their original dates and rebook for their new dates. I offer to refund their loss on the original dates if we get rebooked, but caution them that getting rebooked is not guaranteed. This keeps me away from the “change and cancel” question entirely.
Thanks for explaining this.
We did have several date change requests before and this never happened as the guests genuinely had to modify their dates based on some other circumstance - and most importantly - not because they were already in the 50% limit or anything of that kind.
But I’m glad that you explained it with such an example as I would be more cautious in such a scenario.
Reread the OP’s post. That’s exactly what the guest did.
Please do apologize @muddy - I thought I previously clarified that English isn’t my mother tongue, therefore I do get things wrong. I hope I won’t be needing your reminders to reread posts in the future.
OP started with a generalised description of how date changes are working and then switched over to “she” when in the sentence prior to that one it was “the guest”. It was my naive assumption that this was separate from OP’s issue. You might plow through those paragraphs like nothing but for me it’s a minefield.
Just put in your house rules and listing description that a change of arrival date to a later date is considered a cancellation. Never accept a date change request.
We say, “The best way to get your money back is to cancel right away in the app, then if we rebook the dates we can refund you some money, minus a cancel fee, etc.” (Whatever policy you want.)
If they need to cancel their original dates, they can do so under the cancel policy.
Then they can rebook dates later.
“The best way to get your money back is to cancel right away in the app, then if we rebook the dates we can refund you some money, minus a cancel fee, etc” What do you and Muddy and others charge for a cancel fee or admin fee?
For me, it would depend on how much time I had spent dealing with a booking. If the guest had sent a bunch of messages, asking a bunch of questions, or had not responded to my messages, prompting me to call Airbnb asking to please prod her to answer, or sent date alterations, I might consider my time to be worth $10-15.
If the guest had just sent a booking request with an adequately informative message, requiring me to do nothing but what I normally do for a guest with good review history, which is thank them for their request, say I’m happy to accept, and let them know that I’ll send them location and check-in info a few days before check-in, I wouldn’t charge anything.
This. My time is worth something. I once tried to help a guest who tried to alter a booking last minute and mistakenly cancelled. It took 22 messages with her and 3 calls with Airbnb to get her booking reinstated. And predictably, a guest that is this chaotic and passes their chaos onto the host at the start, continued this behavior throughout the booking. Deeply regret getting sucked in.