Instant Book Issue

What the hell?! I thought that with Instant Book, you were give three chances to cancel if need be?
I have never cancelled on and Instant Book before.
For some reason my calendar wasn’t booked off and it should have been and I got a reservation. I wrote her back right away saying it should have been booked off and I would have to cancel as I didn’t have space available.
When I went to look at my stats, Airbnb is charging me $138 in cancellation fees?!?!

The “free” cancellations are for reasons of guest behaviour issues, not for calendar issues. It’s not very clear.

Booked off with Air or another platform? If blocked off with Air the double booking is their fault and you should get your fee refunded.

No it isn’t, and it was only a promotion.
It’s not longer applicable.
I’ve turned off Instant Book the moment I found that out.

With Airbnb (I have that room booked off till the end of December but somehow in the middle of the month it allowed someone to book). I don’t use any other booking services.

Please call them right away and explain you had the calendar unavailable and somehow a guest got through! They should be reasonable with you and refund that fee.

I have already called them and the person I spoke with said they were assigning a case manager to look after it.
Have sent them a follow up email regarding it.

That’s terrible! I hope you get it resolved. Keep us posted.

Airbnb took care of it!

"Hi Tara,

My name is Liz, I’m part of the Trip Experience team and I just received your case regarding the reservation you cancelled with Liselotte and the penalties you incurred when you cancelled.

I’m sorry to hear that your calendar was not blocked when you had it blocked and that Instant Book was enabled without your knowledge. If you are not hosting at this property for the year, you can always choose to either Unlist your property or “Snooze” which means you would choose the date you would like your listing to become available again.

Since this reservation was booked in error, I’ve removed all host penalties associated with this cancelation so that your account is not affected. The cancellation fee has also been removed from your transactions.

If you have any questions, please let me know."

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Can you tell me how you got in touch with someone at airbnb? I just listed our house last week and somehow instant book was enabled without me realizing it. Because our property is on the other side of the world (and for several other reasons), instant book is not a good idea for us. But, I can’t turn it off. I’ve tried to call the customer service number and I’ve tried several ways to get help, to no avail. Any thoughts?

I just listed our house last week and somehow instant book was enabled without me realizing it. Because our property is on the other side of the world (and for several other reasons), instant book is not a good idea for us. But, I can’t turn it off. I’ve tried to call the customer service number and I’ve tried several ways to get help, to no avail. Any thoughts?

I read somewhere that Instant Book is mandatory for new hosts in some areas? That might be nonsense, but it’s worth looking into. Call 855-424-7262 or email them and ask.

I posted this info about new hosts being defaulted into instant book, and someone else also posted it. If may be that it’s something that can be changed very easily, but it does look like it’s automatically opting a newbie into Instant Book rather then allowing a newbie to select it. Some the hosts least equipped for this feature are the ones being forced to use it. Very dumb.

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