Guest shows up—no reservation

Just letting you know about an Airbnb system glitch…

—-10/1 Guest Inquired about booking & asked if condo close to an sports competition venue; I responded this condo was in a different town and not close to the venue.

I tried to decline reservation & received message that guest had verifications pending. I could neither accept or decline.

No further communication occurred with the potential guest.

—-10/12 I attempted to block the days the guest originally wanted to book. Airbnb system indicated “verifications pending” with no accept or decline options.

—-10/15 Guest messages me for check-in instructions. There is not a confirmed booking.

Airbnb notation “Awaiting verification” & “check point”.

I notified guest there was a mistake, they had not booked my condo & I was calling Airbnb.

Since the reservation was not confirmed, I had access to neither their phone number or last name.

Guest texts back via Airbnb, they had paid & had a notice that check-in was at 3:00 today.

CS verifies they have not paid, they have not completed their registration, and they did not have access to see the condo address. I wonder where they thought they were going…

CS told them how to use IB & book another place AFTER they completed the missing piece of their verification. I’m confident they will find another place to book. There are really nice, oceanfront hotels booking at $50/night because of the many vacancies. (Same room as books for $250/night summer)

Hopefully they do not get to review for their “stay” I would not be surprised if you get a review prompt.

RR

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So did the guest show up at your door?

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Fair question—texted via Airbnb “Almost to the beach. Please send check in instructions”

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This happened to me a couple weeks ago. IIRC, the guest tried booking on Monday for a Friday arrival. I pre-approved their stay, she tried booking and then it showed as “checkpoint” for 3 days. It was held up in an Airbnb background check.

Both guest and I were frustrated. Airbnb let the reservation sit in limbo, blocking my calendar for 3 days. The day before arrival, the guest and I had to find each other offline so I could send arrival info. Air still hadn’t done their job to confirm the reservation by arrival day, so guest cancelled the request and paid me directly for their weekend stay.

I went back to Air and complained. My pre-approval should have held the calendar for 1 day, not nearly 80 hours, as it did. They acknowledged that their system failed and paid me one nights’ fee to smooth things over.

I’ll be curious to hear if they’ve fixed this issue. IMO something is broken in Air’s processes if background checks are holding up reservations this long.

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Agreed. Since this happened to us recently, this feels like a system problem we all need to watch out for.

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Sounds like they didn’t actually get your address, at least.

I had a guest show up at my door who wasn’t booked. My husband was out gardening, and found the would-be guest wandering the yard and came to fetch me to sort it out. The guest said he’d stayed there before and his girlfriend (who hadn’t arrived yet) had booked with me off platform. I told him he must have the wrong place and sent him on his merry way.

I had another guest check in the same day, so it was lucky the booked guest had arrived first. My husband or I could have easily let the wrong guest in. (I recall this happened to @konacoconutz once.)

This isn’t AirBnB’s fault, though, like it is with @Annet3176’s story above. I never found a record of a previous guest with this fellow or his girlfriend’s name, so it remains a mystery why he thought he’d had an off-platform booking at my house. I didn’t find evidence of a spoofed/clones scam copy of my listing either.

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