Guest basically asked to shorten their stay and get a refund - what to do?

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Thank you all for the replies! I will definitely not refund, I just hope Air won’t do one of those unjustified cancelations without a proper extenuating circumstance that I’ve heard they did to some hosts… :frowning:

@KenH This is precisely what I told her. If she thinks that she has any grounds for a refund, she should contact Airbnb. However, I have a strong feeling that this is not the case and she is trying to pressure me into altering the reservation.

@Mirta_Gubetta Did you manage to uphold this stance or the guest got the refund?

@Astaire Yes, at this point I hope she’ll cancel altogether so that I can book anew and refund her partially in the end.

@AlexSJ She did not send me any kind of request for alteration so far, and neither did I. Your idea is great, but from her communication I gathered that she is stil hoping for a full refund for the first week, so I’m not sure she’ll accept it.

The last message I got from her was that she will think about it as she has “to organize everything” and then get back to me in the morning. And added that she hopes we will reach a compromise. Wtf?!?! This already IS a compromise! :angry:

Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m getting pretty sure that there is no family member in the hospital, but they simply made different plans and hoped to get out of my reservation painlessly. It is even possible that she was hoping to alter the reservation and then try to get 50% of the refund for the next 6 days… I find it very weird that she didn’t discuss my proposals at all and that she is obviously reluctant to contact Air… That is probably because she has no good excuse.

I’m afraid that what will happen is that they will show up on Sunday and pout and try to complain about something. I really, really hope I’m wrong, but her short replies and insistence on compromise make me think this will be the case…

How did you handle similar experiences, if any?

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If it’s getting bothersome, maybe just get Airbnb to cancel the whole thing, try and get a different booking.

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Now the guest wrote to me that she will accept my offer, but then sent me a request to alter her reservation. I’m not entirely sure whether she simply does not understand how Airbnb works or she is trying to push her agenda. Be that as it may, I declined and wrote to her that this is unacceptable to me as it would render my cancellation policy worthless and make me renounce half of my income for her sake. I instructed her to follow my instructions from the previous message (cancel altogether, rebook for the new dates, getting refunded for the new dates, and then waiting to see whether I’ll manage to rebook any of the remaining dates of the first week.

Update: she just cancelled. This was my first cancellation ever; I had no idea that Airbnb still charges me the service fee for the cancelled reservation?! I don’t care so much, but I had no idea this is how it goes…

She rebooked and is very thankful for everything. It turns out that suddenly a different person is coming with her instead of her boyfriend so I guess that was the source of changing plans. A new lesson learned, and mostly because of you, good people: never trust the hospital story. :wink: If there are real extenuating circumstances, let them prove that to Airbnb.

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So she got a new dad too?!!

Your conclusion seems just about right.

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