First post-COVID guests check in, cancel, and Air refunds them?

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Yep. Nice neat appearing young couple. Booked 10 days go on my Strict policy, so not entitled to “extenuating circumstances” that they cited in their one message after I asked if it was a mistake.

I was still doing touchup cleaning to the kitchen when they arrived, my first guests in 15 minutes, right at the 4pm check in time. No bags, they said they just wanted to pick their room (2 people renting a 3 BR apt) and then go eat, and asked for seafood recommendations. 3 nights @ $350, so I lost $1,050 that I desperately need and was really counting on to keep the lights and water on!

I told them that their silverware was in the dishwasher downstairs and I would take it up when it was done, but forgot until about 10 pm.

They had locked the upstairs door so I know that they had been there, but there is no evidence that any of the beds were slept in, much less even sat upon (I’m always smoothing the duvet cover when I do). I left the silverware in its tray on the stairs and went to bed, setting my alarm so I could message them at 7am.

Got up, logged in to message them, and the booking had been cancelled.

Messaged them “Is this a mistake?” and the return message was

“Sorry not a mistake. We had some extenuating circumstances come up so we had to cut our stay short”

…and Air fully refunded them! I don’t see how a trip to Alaska could result in ANY of these official Air extenuating circumstances:

Changes to government travel requirements.
Declared emergencies and epidemics.
Government travel restrictions.
Military actions and other hostilities.
Natural disasters.

I am NOT looking forward to making this phone call and having some untrained script reader in a foreign country try to tell me I’m wrong. This will be SO different from my one and only call to the Superhost line 18 months ago, which took about 2 minutes and solved the problem.

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So after numerous long waits with no music, and 4 voice menus designed to make me hang up, I got a person with an accent so strong I could not understand his English, and then accidentally disconnected.

Much better the second time around. Got a nice young lady in the Phillipines who told me that although I can’t see it on my transaction history, that they did not receive a refund and the payment has been released. Hoping that I see it in a few days!

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Any time you get a CS with “heavy accent” simply tell them that their accent is so strong you cannot understand them and want to speak to a supervisor.

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So today I log in, and discover that yes, I have a payout “being processed”.

Jul 9, 2021

processing

$1,165.50 2 transactions

Pass Through Tot +$147.00

Jul 8, 2021 - Jul 11, 2021

Downtown 3 BR a short walk from Downtown Juneau

Reservation +$1,018.50

Jul 8, 2021 - Jul 11, 2021

Estimated arrival Jul 16, 2021

In the past, I got payouts in my account the morning after check-in. Is this delay something new, or are payouts for cancellations deliberately delayed? I found it interesting that when I was first talking to the nice young Filipina that I didn’t see my payout under either completed or upcoming payouts, but after she looked it up, and said she had to check something, that it appeared under upcoming (it’s now completed).

Still hoping that it’s just the weekend delay, and the $$ will be there tomorrow morning.

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I don’t know on cancellations if this is a bad sign. However I’ve noticed that my payouts are now several hours later than they used to be. Instead of early morning, often before I got up in the morning, it’s late afternoon of the next day.

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Well, no payment today. Hoping for tomorrow.

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Got it! …and away it goes, to bills.

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So now I get a request to book from someone who just joined Air with 0 reviews, and he’s stupid enough to ask if I would do it off Air for cash.

The “Watch Out” balloon pops up and lets me report him and decline at the same time. I also flagged him and reported him for asking for cash.

So will this count as a decline? It was a RTB because he had 0 reviews and so didn’t meet my IB criteria.

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The guests who cancelled after check-in asked for a $300 refund on an $1150 stay with a Firm policy when they booked 4 days in advance.

Refund denied, and now I need to make sure to post a last minute review, hoping they don’t post one. AirReview doesn’t show them leaving any, though they had nice reviews from other hosts.

So if they review me, I’ll respond about the cancellation. If they don’t, should I post one or not? I don’t think that they are the types to do this often, but on the other hand they were so sincere and then cancelled…

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I noticed the day before the review deadline that they hadn’t reviewed, and they didn’t. I expected that since they had only left 1 review although they had half a dozen reviews from hosts.

I got caught in the middle of something and wasn’t able to file a last minute review, so this new listing still has no reviews, which is fine with me.

Got my money, and dodged that bad review bullet, so OK. And the current guests are great.

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Phew! What a strenuous issue, for sure. Glad it turned out properly, as it should have from the start, without the drama.
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Jealous of the fresh seafood that you must have access to. Not jealous of the scary local wildlife. Not sure if we should be more scared of a moose or a bear …

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No moose on our road system, thank goodness, but in river valleys a 3-4 hour boat ride away.

Black bears come through the neighborhood, usually at night, but I have a bearproof garbage can. Strict rules about leaving bear attractants like bird feeders and dog dishes outside from April through November, with high fines. Garbage out only after 4am on pickup day, but bears seem to know the schedule.

Fish are in the creeks now, so they won’t come for the back yard raspberries and cherries that are a little late this year.

A Tlingit friend who passed several years ago trained his sons well. I am one of several elders and family that they always bring fish to, as I once brought fish and garden produce to their grandfather.

So I spent last Friday home canning 3 sockeye salmon (7 quarts) and cutting & freezing 2 smaller ones. And had a fresh salmon steak for dinner.

Yes, we ARE spoiled for seafood. All the sushi is super fresh. :slight_smile:

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Sometimes, our local stores do get Alaskan wild caught salmon. Ironically, it is usually a bargain when it comes in, $5-6 a pound.
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A downside is the good stuff just ruins us for the typical farmed stuff …

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I would get more fish if I had a boat, but the house eats up the money I’d be throwing in a hole in the water, as my old man used to say.

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One can buy a lot of fish for the cost of a decent boat. I would assume that you long ago figured out where to get a good deal, with so many local fisherman.
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Out of curiosity, how much does salmon run your way? (pun intended)

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It depends on where I get them! These were given to me.

I often try to contact commercial fishers I know near the end of the coho season, when they may catch so few they’d rather sell whole fish off the boat than run to the packing plant. Prices then are usually around $5/lb, when processors would pay $3-$3.50/lb for coho. Gillnetter friends sometimes give me big steelhead (sea run cutthroat) that get caught in sockeye nets that they can’t sell. They are great smoked.

The commercial king salmon season is very short, and prices are sky high, so any king I eat comes at $15/lb from our best local smokehouse unless I’m lucky enough to catch one. Fortunately, most of the rare springtime white king salmon is sold locally, a special treasure we don’t share much. :wink:

We had no spring king salmon season this year, thanks to endangered runs in BC, CA, OR, & WA, or I would have at least tried catching them from shore with a spinning rod. I have several friends with boats, and usually manage to get out for halibut at least once a year, and salmon several times. Everyone here has big freezers.

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$5 a pound is darn fair for coho. Do any of those local fishers also have options for shipping (east coast)? We would totally be up for that, not so much for the "big online places with inflated pricing.
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Coho would work very well indeed! We only had white king once - a real treat. Darn … now I want salmon …

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Salmon from the PNW does get shipped to the East Coast, in season you can find sockeye and king. But, it’s never $5/#, more like $12-$15.
When living in the Seattle area, salmon from Alaska, particularly Copper River was always at least $15 if not more.
You can find places to buy fresh online but shipping is expensive. You can have frozen shipped, but not the same product IMO.
Having lived in the NW for almost 40 years, my favorite fish of all.

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You won’t get it that price unless you’re at the dock at the right time and you know them well enough that they’ll call you when they’re on their way into the harbor.

We have quite a few folks now with small on-board blast freezers and lots of foam boxes for Fedex. They gut them, head them, and freeze them to -20F, and have them boxed when they dock, where they go straight to Fedex. It arrives at Midwest or East Coast addresses within 36 hours, usually within 24 hours.

When it’s been frozen for only a few days, you cannot tell the difference, just thaw it slowly in the fridge.

The folks closest to me are Taku River Reds, who are a group of local fishers who market together. The site I’m giving you has local community supported fishers (like community supported agriculture) all over Alaska, the most well known being Sitka Salmon Shares, who have been sponsoring a lot of public radio cooking shows in the the US. They prefer to sell direct to consumers.

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I wonder if it had (or has) something to do w the stated check-in time window. I always have had flexible ( which AirBnB tries to cal 3pm) and always (usually) get paid around 4pm the day after check-in.