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Until today, when I got an email telling me that the guest had canceled based on my cancellation policy, I was always offered a big red button, saying ‘issue a full refund’. Pressing that button started a very simple process where the guest got fully refunded.
Today, I did the normal procedure, but it asked me for a dollar amount. I needed to call Airbnb to ask what the dollar amount was since I have no idea what that is! Airbnb graciously canceled on my behalf for the full amount by phone. It appears this is a glitch, has anyone else experienced this yet? Seriously, does Airbnb want a phone call and a discussion when we want to refund the full amount?
It’s been years since I’ve issued any type of refund but what I recall is that I was shown the button to “issue full refund” however the next screen did ask me to type in the amount. When I called to check why I was seeing this screen I was told that the full refund was only the host payment that I would have received. In order to have a true full refund issued to the guest the Air fees and taxes would be added in and would come out of my next payment. I was a very new host, didn’t quite understand and issued the full refund. They did indeed come out of my next payment.
I have no idea what their procedure is now but it sounds like it’s similar to what I experienced.
Why on earth would anyone do that if a guest cancelled? Pay their Airbnb fees?
The only situation I can think of where a host might be willing to refund the guest service fee is if the host was trying to get the guest to cancel what by rights should be a host cancellation, but they are trying to avoid the penalties.
As I said, it was many years ago and I was a new host. I didn’t understand the intricacies and after promising the guest a “full refund” I felt this was my only option.
We’ve had many topics over the years discussing how new hosts are targeted due to their inexperience, I fully believe this was one of those situations as there were some not so veiled threats made by the guest and I was worried about how it would play out without the refund. Looking back at it now, I was definitely hustled.
Oh, I didn’t mean why did you do it- I meant why would Airbnb think a host would want to refund their service fees, since it’s not something the host can “refund”, as it’s not something the host ever gets.
I guess they do it to confuse hosts, or make them think it’s the right thing to do.
