I have a guest who won’t provide his full last name. He is arriving tomorrow. I asked him for his full name. He says, AirBnB already verified me, why do you need my full name? I said because you’re going to be staying in my home. I’m on hold with AirBnB to find out what I should do if he does not want to provide it. Do I end up with a $100 host cancellation fee for cancelling him? Has anyone else had this experience?
Wow. And airbnb won’t provide you the full name of a guest about to set foot in your home? And will charge you money to cancel him? I would personally be more than wary of any guest that wanted to come into my home, and therefore had my name, address, and access to anything else he wanted to find out about me, whilst I was clueless about him. What do you do if you have an incident that night requiring police? Have to get on a long wait call to airbnb to see if they’ll give up his name before calling 911? Personally I wouldn’t trust airbnb to do the verifying for me in this instance. People use their friends profiles to book, and things get overlooked. I find it offensive that airbnb expects you to open yourself up entirely to someone you know nothing about, not even their name.
As it turned out, AirBnB told me they would not reveal his name to me…but encouraged me to keep asking him for his. I read all the guests reviews, saw a previous reviewer had actually named him, then looked that name up. that name turned up nothing. I talked some more to the guest and he finally told me his name (he was hesitant to reveal his name because all his previous hosts had never asked and thought I might be into some weird ID theft) and it all turned out just fine. AirBnB did promise to waive the $100 host cancellation fee if it turned out that the guest did not ever give his name up.
Phew. Glad you managed to work that out. I didn’t realize he had reviews CS. I thought from your post he was new, but verified. Communication pretty much always works with reasonable people. I probably would have been ok with a few good reviews - but maybe I’m a sucker
I had a guest named Elisabeth who was English and who traveling with her BF who was Norwegian. When I greeted them, I thought it was really odd that he seemed to wear the pants regarding the reservation while she was meekly standing in the background. He was a bit aggro and impatient with my greeting and guest info conversation, always a trouble sign. Later, they started breaking the rules, in that they took long showers ( I specifically request water consciousness) … And after they left I discovered they had burned a mosquito coil IN the room!!! One mosquito coil releases the equivalent particulate matter of 175 cigarettes, and are very toxic. This horrible smell was embedded in my entire apartment, including in all the linens. I had a same day check in and was frantic trying to get the room clean. I confronted the guest and he was nasty as heck… Paid $100 of the deposit because he admitted this…I left a bad review…but the point of my story is that obviously this guy had burned through his own account and was traveling on hers.
So the whole identity thing is something Air needs to work on.
Air takes safety very seriously and also verifying IDs. I’m really surprised a guest can even register without a last name and who would do that unless hey had something to hide.
Hope they will let you cancel, and reverse the fee, but I guess the lesson in the future is that if you get a confirmed reservation with no last name contact Air that minute to get it resolved. I would be nervous too. Hope it works out. He’s probably harmless, but yeah, I feel your discomfort.
Oops, I just read the other comments and see this was resolved.