Got AirBnB support to decline booking

1

We are superhosts and we use Instant Booking. It works very well for us. One of our requirements to book instantly is Govt ID.

We received a booking this morning from an AirBnB member on behalf of another person. The booking is for ten nights. This was the message:

“Hi，my name is xxx，this booking is for my friend yyyy，because she can not download the airbnb app so I booking for her.she is a very nice girl and traveling a lot of place，now she is in Sydney. I hope you can host her. cheerful”

So, it is a third party booking.

We rang AirBnB support this morning and asked them to decline this booking for us on the basis that it is a third party booking which violates AirBnB’s terms of service. They agreed and said they would cancel it and sent an email to us to confirm.

"Hi,
This is aaaa. I’m the Case Manager that you spoke with over the phone. Thank you for contacting us and for letting me assist you. It has been a great pleasure speaking with you.

This email is a confirmation that we spoke today about the reservation of xxxx. Since you are on Instant Book and you are uncomfortable with xxxx, we cancel the reservation with no penalty on your side."

It is now ten hours later and the reservation is still on our calendar. Even though support says that we will not be penalised in any way for declining this booking I would prefer that they do it from their end.

Also, shouldn’t this generic email response be saying:
“Since this booking violates AirBnB’s Terms of Service we are cancelling the reservation with no penalty on your side”. - just saying.

Any thoughts folks?

2

Reply to the email and confirm it is not being cancelled because you are uncomfortable but because it violated their terms as a third party booking and why is it still showing in your calendar as a booking ten hours later.

1 Like
3

I did that ten hours ago - no reply. Maybe the email just doesn’t accept replies. Quite weird - there is no case number associated with the case.

4

It turns out that they cancelled the wrong booking.

5

Some of their emails are from a template they use. They can fill in some of it but other parts are pre-written and the CS person can’t always edit some parts.
I say this because I too had to cancel an IB a couple of weeks back as it turned out that my guests were arriving at midnight which I can’t accommodate which is clearly stated several times before they are supposed to book.
The CS person told me that I shouldn’t take note of the part about the penalties as she made sure that it wouldn’t affect me. She was of course right but it wasn’t that comforting when the e-mail had all kinds of warnings - which you would think they could manually remove.

In this case I’d call them again as it seems they’ve made a mistake.
Have them correct the mistake, have them confirm the corrected mistake and request a confirmation that you won’t be penalized and that the correct booking has been cancelled on their part.

1 Like
6

Yes they do accept return emails. But always best to call if you have waited ten hours and received no update.