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Just accepted a booking and now have 2 problems
Am i correct in thinking as this is a first timer they may not have payment instructions in place hence not able to contact guest. Why use someone elses picture ?
Of course all AIRBNB lines are busy … and just hang up when i call.
Your wisdom is appreciated
Peter
you can cancel penalty free if it is instant booking
I don’t know if this would work retroactively (I suspect not) but for the future, make having a real profile photo one of your ‘house rules’ because then maybe (hopefully) you would legitimately have grounds for refusing or cancelling the booking.
One of my house rules (which I cribbed from someone here, I can’t remember who, but thank you!) says, “Please have a complete, verified profile with Airbnb including personal full face photo (not a pet, cartoon, or anything else!), so we can match your face with your Airbnb profile. (No third-party bookings.)”
2, If you use Instant Book, one of the requirements you can request is a profile picture.
3, In my house rules, I state that the picture is of your face, no sunglasses or hat and with no one else in it.
(Note - sometimes people have a second person or their face is slightly cut off but I let that go as long as I can id them.)
I explain that I need a good picture of the guest to verify that they are the person checking in.
4, I also require this along with other info within 24 hours of booking. (In my instant ant book, in my message and in my house rules.) If I don’t get a response, I sent them a text using my personal text account (as long as they are within my country) and tell them that this is info request to complete the booking and that they need to check their Airbnb messages and respond in the app and not the text message. If it’s a foreign booking and I haven’t gotten a response within the 24 hours, I contact Airbnb to reach out to the guest.
5, This is often when I discovered that it’s a third party booking and help them set up an account for the actual person staying and accept the new booking. I get Airbnb involved in cancelling the old account. As long as you get this done within 48 hours, the guest will not lose any money and is incentivized to get it done. (I know many accept 3rd party bookings but I don’t and it is against airbnb rules.
6, I also have it in my rules that the guest booking must be the first person checking in. I have had guest play shenanigans with have the guest of the guest arrive and the original guest never shows up.
Hey Lynick4442, I must say you look rather lovely in your profile picture…just sayin’ 
I’ve had better luck sending Airbnb a message instead of calling. I once had a guest book and her profile picture showed her with a cellphone over her face. I messaged Airbnb and the next day I saw the guest had changed the photo. Try sending a message to Airbnb. When they message you back, take a scteenshot and save it. I’m always leery that Airbnb will remove their message so I save it just in case.
I don’t care about the profile picture at all. I’ve had good guests with good pictures, I’ve also had everything else. A majority of my guests don’t look like their picture and so I don’t know if it’s the same person or not because I don’t check ID’s. You could always do ID checks at check in like hotels, bed and breakfasts and other accomodations who don’t check pictures in advance.
I care about their reviews, or lack of them. I would care about not being able to message them. Once I could I’d say “I love Ali G too but please send me a photo of your government ID since you didn’t provide a profile picture.” Definitely don’t give them any check in information or door code until you get what you need. Cancel if necessary.
This has turned into a real headache - I ended up sending a message and of course massive confusion - seem unable to understand that i cannot message the guest. Told i cannot cancel without penalties - I thought as a superhost you could cancel 3 times in a year but advised that stopped 2 years ago. If relevant i am in UK as is the guest who is a first time user. I have dug my heels in and the chap in India is calling back in 60 mins. There is a phone no. for the guest but he is not picking up.
Not according to AIRBNB today (I am Instant book)
So you’re saying this was an instant booking?
I cancelled an instant booking a month ago under the three-penalty free cancellation rule for instant bookings.
When you say that you cannot message the guest, what happens? The message is not sent? You get an error message? The guest does not respond?
The guest not having their payment method in place has nothing to do with not being able to message them. I’ve had several “Awaiting payment” requests I accepted, which means they don’t have their credit card details entered and approved yet, and I could still message with them in the interim.
When you say you can’t message them, you mean no message box appears?
It sounds like either a tech glitch or this guest’s account has been flagged for some reason and Airbnb is running some kind of verification.
When i click on the message icon it takes me back to all the messages from my other bookings. There is no error message.
One thing i have got confused about - it is not a instant booking as i said earlier - it was a request to book. Whilst i am on instant book it is restricted to those who havemade previous bookings on AIRBNB. I would like to thank everybody who has contributed.
One thing to try is to restart your computer and then try again. If you still can’t send the message, try sending the message using a different browser. Sometimes this procedure helps with other sites, maybe Airbnb?
Good luck.
You mean when you click on “Inbox”?
Do you get email notifications of requests? If so, maybe try clicking on that.
Hopefully you can see the screenshot. When i click on message it reverts to all the messages from my other bookings
I assume you have tried clicking on “Inbox” up top, where it shows you have 2 unread messages? If you’ve tried that, and clearing cookies and cache and tried with another browser, then it’s obviously some tech glitch that only Airbnb can help with.
Spamming this forum, by recommending a product you are trying to sell, isn’t allowed here. Hosts here aren’t stupid- it’s obvious what you are doing, no matter how you try to pretend you are just another host offering helpful advice.
Not to mention, your response here has nothing to do with the topic of this thread.
Hello!
Airbnb is a lot of bugs, that’s for sure. The correct way is to open a live chat with an agent and try to just go to the point.
When it’s the check-in? Does the Guest try to contact you?
Also, Airbnb has a strict Policy when it comes to cancellation. The Host has 2 free cancellations per year, if you didn’t use it you can enjoy it now. Otherwise, it will be applied the penalties with the fee, the loss of the SuperHost, the blocked calendar, etc. I think we don’t want that!
The only way here is to open a chat with Airbnb Support or lose some patience with the voice calls.
That isn’t correct. Only Instant Bookings had the possibility of 3 free cancellations a year, and although I have never used IB myself, my understanding is that Airbnb has gotten stricter about allowing those cancellations for just any reason.
Requests to Book (which the OP’s booking was) have never had the option of penalty-free cancellations. Which makes sense, as the host can either accept or decline a request, and has the opportunity to communicate with guests before making that decision. There would have to be a really good reason for cancelling the booking after you had accepted it, and you would have to be lucky enough to get a CS rep who you could convince.
Please have a complete, verified profile with Airbnb including personal full face photo (not a pet, cartoon, or anything else!), so we can match your face with your Airbnb profile.
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See here.
