Recently I decided to check our transaction history in Airbnb and discovered that one of the payments for the past bookings (guests left a couple of months ago) has a pending status . I immediately contacted Airbnb regarding that matter and they replied that there was an alteration for this booking which was approved but not paid by the guest. Now there are trying to connect with the guest asking them to pay the difference but I am in doubt they will succeed. I was completely unaware about that (guest alteration request non-payment) and if I was at the time of checkin I wouldn’t allow guests staying with us. Has someone had the similar issues and how Airbnb usually deals with such matters? Do I need to treat it like a lesson and verify every booking, take cash payments for booking alterations or what? It seems to me that it is Airbnb responsibility to collect payments, verify guests credit cards and they get commissions from us as hosts, isn’t it?
Normally you accept their reservation alteration request and the payment is automatic. This obviously escaped your awareness at the time, and now it’s more difficult to fix. I hope they pay if not that Airbnb will compensate for the extra night or whatever.
Hello @moby989, Yes, I had this problem , which I discovered during the stay of the guests, they made the reservation and paid using two credit cards, before check in, they edited their payment information and they placed a new credit card number that took time to be entered into the system and consequently the payment was not released. I had to call and alert about the situation, which was finally resolved by the guests.
But I think that this can happen all the time and it is a gap that scammers can use to not complete payments, and especially when guests are using more than one credit card at the moment of the booking. Since that episode I am always controlling the status of payments before check in. Hope you can get your issue solved. And I think it’s an airbnb fault not ours.
thanks @Mirta_Gubetta and @Jess1 . yes, exactly - it basically means now that you always have to control if the alterations have been paid or not otherwise you will know it only on the payment day or after. Airbnb doesn’t have any rule on that - for ex. to deny the alteration request if the payment has not been made in a reasonable time - the booking still has confirmed (and we assume “all paid”) status. Weird.
@moby989 i have the same thing with about 10 reservations
@Jess1 They wont compensate
@Mirta_Gubetta @moby989 how do you control the status of payments before check in?
Hello @Ivan_Joorevic, to control the status of your reservations, go to “listings” and then to “your reservations”, you will be able to see the status of them as “accepted”, "canceled " or “awaiting payment”, in this case air gives the guest 24 hours to complete the payment. But a lot of weird things can happen, for example I had a reservation with the status " canceled " but in my calendar was confirmed and marked in green. Also sometimes the guests didn’t complete the payment during the 24hs. but the reservation is not cancelled and your calendar continues blocked.
@Mirta_Gubetta there are a lot of issues with payments on airbnb and i frankly think it is ridiculous that airbnb involves hosts in that as it is the only thing they are responsible for
I agree with you, and we must always control the calendar, the status of reservations and the status of payments in the transaction history.
Our case was related to the non-payment of extra night stay. The reservation status has not changed after the guest approved the alteration ie it was still confirmed. To check if it is paid or not you have to contact Airbnb directly every time which is a weird thing. We are still arguing with them about that booking and still have the whole part of our fee pending from Airbnb. It is just a learning experience from us how to do next time. Cash is a king. Ever.