I live in a different state from my Airbnb. Last year I had a last minute booking. We communicated well. He said he would follow all of our house rules. Etc. after he left I received a message from Airbnb that the renter was claiming credit card fraud. After investigation all of the money was deducted from my acct. what is the best practice to ensure the person checking in is who they say they are when you live in a different state and cannot meet them at the home to collect their ID, credit card etc?..anyone have any great tips? Thanks in advance!
Whilst I am sorry this has happened to you, I don’t understand why; it sounds quite unreal, given that Airbnb take payments on your behalf when a guest books on the platform via a credit card, and my experience of their checks is that they are quite ferocious? All sounds rather odd.
This happens once in a while. There have been topics about this before.
When AirBnB gets a charge back, it is forwarded onto the host. And nothing the host can do.
And AirBnB checking ferocious, yes, thorough no.
There is no solution for this, unfortunately.
This is one of the risks of remote hosting, one which AirBnB never informs about.
The only solution would be to get a co-host to do this for you.
In my house rules I require that all people sleeping and visits the suite provide government issued photo ids before I send them check in info. Additionally I require that the person booking have a current photo on their Airbnb account and that they have to be the first person to check in. When they arrive I also have a camera (disclosed in listing) at the main front door and I verify that the correct number of people are checkin in and that the photos match. (I once caught a guest bringing in a dog and another guest brining in extra people.)
1 Like
Do you do that live, or do you usually review the footage later? Just curious.
I can do both. I very rarely view live. I can set it up so I receive notifications but there are too any false positives. I basically just check to see that the correct people are checking in and that their photos match. I once caught a woman sneaking in a dog and once there was an extra guest.
Even though I live below, I sometimes go out of town so it’s also great for peace of mind.
1 Like
I’m fairly sure that indeed, this was a chargeback situation and there is not much you can do to avoid it. The guest who booked was who he said he was, so ID’s would have matched. Guest stayed, decided he didn’t really want to pay, and so told his CC company that he didn’t make the charge on his card, somebody else must have, so the CC company issues a chargeback.