I’m tired of being pushed around by AirBnB, mainly because they won’t honor a $250 refund on a cancelled Covid trip, but also for being required to jump thru hoops when I tried to contact other hosts on my area to provide health care workers housing and they cut me off from my own listing. I just reached yet another nice, but harried, sounding Support member and my call was dropped.
Where are hosts going to start over. Is there a new or different cool platform for unusual listings?
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I am looking into other platforms.
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Why did they ghost you? What happened?
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What do you mean by ‘they wouldn’t honour a ‘£250 cancellation under Covid” - were you the guest?
And why are you contacting other hosts if you want to offer your listing to key workers? @Peregrined
There are lots of companies that provide platforms for STRs. Have you used Google to do searches for the type of accommodation you offer i’e houseboats to rent, Amsterdam or cave houses, Cappadocia and see what comes up?
I’m confused. Please help me understand.
Refund? Were you the guest? Or Do you mean payment?
Contacting other hosts in your area—-were you contacting them via Airbnb inquiry? Were you encouraging them to offer health care worker rentals through Airbnb?
My family rented 2 separate houses in Lake Placid NY for Memorial Weekend. We were dealing with separate hosts. We cancelled due to the virus. We were denied refunds on both properties, instead offered credits . Airbnb is NOT giving full refunds despite what the media says.
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Glad that Airbnb is supporting host cancellation policies…
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If I understand this correctly and you are offering health care worker housing, there may be a good direct route. You might contact the HR department of your local hospital handling COVID patients. Many are getting temporary workers who will need housing. Also, they may have current staff who are not willing to work unless they have this option.
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I contacted AirBnB about providing deeply discounted (to cover costs of operations, essentially) stays for health workers, after contacting the local hospital, who was keen on getting options into their intranet. It was before AirBnB was trying to connect hosts and hospitals, so they said I should give it a shot. I looked around at the following week in the area around the hospital and made inquiries of the hosts with available listings to try to round up some emails. I posted on FaceBook and a neighborhood app, as well, with good responses, however I triggered the Air-algorithm and it kicked me out, losing the connections I’d made and severing from my listing. Thankfully, my co-host could still access the listing. They made me jump through several hoops to get back in—
I’d love to hear what you come up with. My place is super-unique, so it doesn’t fit in some of the standard places–
The saga is: I had some guests for a month-long stay who were working in town with the public. They extended their stay by 10 days (this is all within the timelines required for the 25% refund) and then lost their contract and short-term rentals were also shut-down because of Covid. They tried to first contact AirBnB first and then me, who also tried to reach AirBnB, who were understandably swamped. I didn’t have the foresight to know there was a pandemic coming, but should have made them do a 2nd booking for the extra 10 days. At that point, I’d heard AirBnB was refunding all money despite cancellation policies and mine was strict, but I didn’t know what to do, so I refunded the guest their money. I asked them to cancel on their end, which amounted to an alteration since I didn’t have the foresight to get them to do a separate booking, so rhetorically, not a cancellation, according to AirBnB. I heard from AirBnB, finally, 11 days later, and since, have been hung up on, talked down to, etc. It’s been a principle of the matter, because we’re only talking a few hundred dollars— I just don’t see that they’re being very supportive of their hosts and haven’t from the start of this—
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I’m surprised to hear this— do you know if the hosts offered the credits or the platform?
I was a host trying to do the right thing by forgiving the cancellation under my strict policy, having been unable to reach AirBnB for guidance and trying to gather other hosts’ contact info to share with the local hospital (with AirBnB’s blessing) to offer stays for health workers before AirBnB got that up and running—
I believe we will see a sharp increase in cases soon and do wish I could have gotten some contacts for the local hospitals, but unfortunately have had no luck yet.
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I set up with some colleagues a FB group for key workers in our area to connect with those who have accommodation. We got hosts on board through word of mouth on local host groups and other area social media. @Peregrined
We have nearly 1000 people registered on the Group and have matched nearly 120 workers with accommodation.
I still am not clear on:-
a) what you mean about Airbnb not honouring $250 refund…is this to the guest
b)what you mean by ‘they cut me off my own listing’ - why did they do that
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I think that @Vermontbuilder is saying that they got a travel credit instead of a refund back to their credit card. The host still got squat. Is that correct @Vermontbuilder?
Seems to be a problem reported elsewhere as well. Hosts are approving full refunds and then the guest only gets a travel credit. It happened to two of my guests. So, I don’t get any payout (which is fine because I agreed to them getting a full refund) and they didnt’ get a real refund, only a travel credit. Airbnb kept their money. Travel credit is only good for 1 year. They are ticked and so am I 
I offered refunds to my guests and two of them were given travel credits instead. It had nothing to do with me, I would never agreed to do that to the guests. I don’t believe that there is an official way for the host to offer credits anyway. The button I clicked was under, “Do you want to give a full refund to this guest?”, it said nothing about a travel credit instead. I am not sure how they are deciding who gets the refund and who gets the travel credit 
I could be wrong here, but I’ve got a sneaky suspicion Airbnb tries to “sell” the guest a voucher, and only if the guest says that’s not acceptable do they offer a proper refund.
Bear in mind that many of these guests are not completely clued up on how Airbnb operates. They may simply be grateful that they got something back, from what was previously a non refundable booking. To them, the voucher = refund.
JF
Wow— even more underhanded than I’d imagined! Was the credit for the same rental/host?
Helsi,
I posted to FB, too (the local Covid info page), and haven’t managed to get a good connection yet. When you say local host groups, are they something other than AirBnB?
a) The 25% kickback for issuing a full refund. The refund on the refund, so to say, though it sounds like it would be quite difficult to get that on a voucher—
b) They blocked me from it. I couldn’t access it. At the top of my page it said Become a Host! Meanwhile my listing was active— I got my co-host to snooze it