Request for refund after cancellation

Research
56

Thanks for the clarification. Definitely has happened to me with that stupid 24 hrs. to pay that Airbnb allows. Lost a booking for those dates from an inquirer, who needed to ask a few questions before committing (that’s fine with me- I’d much rather a guest makes sure it’ll be a good fit for them if there are things they need to know that aren’t mentioned in my listing ad). Only to have that request sit there with “Awaiting payment” for 23 hours, then withdrawn.

I think in the future, if I get a request from a newbie guest, or one who shows no recent bookings, when I have been dialoguing with an inquiry that seems serious about booking once things are clarified, I’ll let the inquirer know that I have a request blocking their dates and ask them if they want to book for sure, in which case I would decline the request and take the Acceptance rate hit.

I find that experienced guests with lots of good reviews, especially recent ones, have their payment info in place and an accepted booking is immediately charged and confirmed, so I wouldn’t decline a booking from those guests over an inquiry. It’s those newbies who try to book before they’ve had their payment info verified who end up causing “Awaiting payment” blocks.

58

The calendar doesn’t get blocked awaiting payment on a request unless the host accepts the request. Airbnb only tries to charge a guest if the request is accepted. If you decline the request, the dates open. Maybe you are referring to an IB booking?

60

That’s weird. That request I had the other day, which it took me a couple hours to respond to because I was out in a noisy place and didn’t hear my phone alert didn’t say “awaiting payment” until after I had exchanged a message with the guest and clicked on “accept”. That you couldn’t either accept or decline or message the guests sounds like some kind of Airbnb glitch.

62

That’s true, and many of them don’t even read the cancellation policy. One recent guest asked about the cancellation policy two months after making the reservation. He chose the non-refundable option and then complained :

I don’t need to cancel, but that will make it where I never do Airbnb again. Why would they do that?

Is there a story?

If they were such responsible people, they would not book a non-refundable rate. Airbnb makes it too easy for guests to contact the host for silly things. Most companies don’t make it so easy to message or talk to a human (it’s too expensive).

I like the fact that many hosts offer refunds to guests. Most of them think I am a host, just like the others they have screwed before. They book my place, expecting I will fall for their sob stories. Then they get a rude awakening.

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63

You know, I don’t think I’ve ever read you saying anything good about your guests or anything positive about hosting. You seem to think of all your guests as just marks and annoyances who you really don’t like at all except for the money it earns you.

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64

This seems a little foreboding.

Like, I’m imagining the next scene out of ‘Psycho’ with the the three stabs and those long zings accompanying.

65

Again, this is why my airbnb is successful - because of ‘hosts’ who treat guests like they probably treated their poor pets when they were growing up. Please continue to paint yourself into that corner… and we other hosts will reap the rewards of having ‘one less competitor’…

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66

guilty as charged. I should post more about the good guests I get.

I’m not a homeshare host and I don’t live in the same building as my listing. I run a well oiled operation where majority of the guest needs are anticipated and taken care of, so my interaction with the good guests is limited. Half of my stays are completed with scheduled/saved messages and require no customized messages or non-standard processes. Sadly, I tend to have more contact with the bad guests, because their needs are non-standard and that’s what I devote most of my time to: protecting my good guests from the bad ones. I believe bad guests are a burden on the good guests because it requires me to charge more and be less flexible to recover the losses caused by the bad guests.

Just because I don’t let the bad actors take advantage of me that doesn’t mean I treat the good guests poorly. I have maintained SuperHost and profitability since I started hosting… I’m not going out of business as I know how Airbnb works and use it to my advantage. The prospective guests will never know how I deal blows to the scammers. And if they are good guests, then they get treated nicely, I get five star reviews, and business continues.

3 Likes
67

I find you to be refreshingly honest, with some strong beliefs that you stick to. I don’t always agree with your attitude (I just gave a direct booking guest a big discount as a thank you for contacting me directly, and it’s a 4 night stay which is awesome for me, I imagine you wouldn’t have done such a good deal), but I appreciate the practical advice, even if I choose to ignore some of it. I personally need to get a bit stronger when it comes to bad guests, although thankfully I don’t get many of those.

You’ve got some Sean Rakidzich vibes but then you wrote this:

haha, that’s not something Sean could honestly boast about, his reviews are appalling

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69

It’s an easy job for me, too. And I imagine most people who have a lot of interaction with the general public get a lot of dumbasses to deal with. People used to ask me the dumbest questions way back in the seventies when I sold my leatherwork in street markets and say the dumbest things.

“Oh yeah, my brother makes those”. No, your brother doesn’t “make those”, dummy- it’s my original design.

I’d just gotten the impression, which might very well be incorrect, that houseplants doesn’t really like dealing with guests (or maybe other people in general), which if that’s the case, seems like hosting is a strange occupation to choose.

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71

I appreciate Airbnb as a listing service for the guests it has brought me. And I have made sure I rarely have to deal with them on other issues. Certainly have never contacted them about issues with guests, other than asking them to try to contact a couple of guests who weren’t responding to crucial messages, nor ever made a damage claim.

I just dislike their host-unfriendly policies, their general attitude towards hosts, their gushy hypocritical PR, their review and ratings policies, and their incompetent CS reps who can’t even manage to comprehend or answer a simple question without users having to re-explain the same thing endlessly.

If they just stuck to being a listing platform and paying hosts on time, something they seem to think isn’t important, and stopped trying to micromanage hosts and punish us, I’d like them a lot better.

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72

I have not listened to Sean Radkevich. Perhaps I should. Does he have more tricks to beat up scammers and get the most rates

If everybody uses it, it will stop working. So I only share a few of the tricks I employ. The others I will take with me to my grave :stuck_out_tongue:

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73

hmm, he has some tips and tricks, some are kinda dubious. And of course, he claims that the best tips are only accessed via the course he runs…:roll_eyes:
he had some interesting commentary on the algo change a few months back :+1:t3: and then did a video on how you can move your decor around the apartment (and even into other listings) for the photos to make it look better, and then take it all away. :-1:t3: this is actually an old real estate trick, but no one is buying a house because of the decor, but for an airbnb, the decor you present should be same or better IRL. I still watch his vids, cos he often will have one good thing to say, or he’ll spark an idea in my head, so it’s still a positive for me.

Happy for you to share some tips with just me then. :laughing: We are 20000miles apart, not even remotely “competitors”.

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74

He definitely pays attention to what Airbnb is doing re the algorithms, so I’ve found his explanations in that regard informative, but yeah, the rest is dubious and of course he’s trying to get people to pay him for his courses, which I doubt would contain anything of value to most of us.

Re “staging” an Airbnb that won’t look like that when guests arrive, I imagine that’s one reason for his bad reviews. Us little guys would likely get suspended over accuracy complaints like that, but he likely brings in so much money for Airbnb that they ignore it. The thing about staging houses for real estate sales, of course, is that no one pays any money to view a house for sale, and they normally don’t expect the furnishings to be included unless the sale is listed as house and contents. RE agents are selling houses, not decor.

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75

I just saved this in my “quick replies” in case I ever want to use it.

76

We have had so many guests feel entitled to100% refunds for last minute cancellations, that I can say this has been a major source of stress and a problematic aspect of hosting. We’ve learned that some people will literally sell their souls for a few nickels. No integrity whatsoever. They will lie, cheat and harass to get their few nickels back…and not care who they harm to do it.

Had I known this in the beginning, I would have realized that (in our case) that it would have been less costly to just give the refunds than to get the hit with angry/retaliatory reviews…and no, Airbnb does NOT remove retaliatory reviews (for us!) because we have asked multiple times for their removals and gotten nowhere.

With that said, I am clearly the outlier in this conversation because (in my market) I would definitely refund a guest with a September booking who is politely asking to cancel in March.

Every market is different, every listing unique, and yours may have a niche market that gets fewer views and be booked a year in advance, etc. where any cancellation is problematic, so then stating a refund can be given from rebooking would be generous.

But if you’re not in that kind of market, then even though you’re not required to give anything that falls outside of your cancellation policy, we can also be reasonable humans who can empathize with someone losing money. If it won’t cost you, then being rigid with your policy just for the policy’s sake seems unreasonable.

I give refunds fairly often, because people can have legitimate reasons why they need to cancel travel plans, but I have zero bookings six months in advance, so not allowing the refund in this case would likely end up with my being paid twice for the same dates.

However…the last-minute cancellations from entitled guests who will lie, cheat and sell their grandmothers up a river (i.e. call Airbnb and make a fuss or make up some bs) to garner refunds they aren’t entitled to, should not be pandered to and even though Airbnb knows this grift, they allow these garbage can guests do this to hosts anyway.

We have a few scathing reviews from guests who were furious they weren’t granted immediate 100% refunds, even for same day cancellations that could not be rebooked because the guests held the listing hostage while they whined to Airbnb. The bad reviews cost exponentially more than the refunds would have, in every case. Live and learn.

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77

There’s a difference between cancellations that happen once the reservation has started and cancellations for reservations months in advance.

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78

I also have a strict cancelation policy, but believe in being fair,

My own approach would be to advise the guest that the property has not yet been rebooked for the cancelled dates and that I will consider an appropriate response to their request once I can see the extent of any further bookings. I would not put any concessions in writing.

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79

Hi there. Can a guest hit you will a review for not refunding, even if they don’t actually get to stay in your villa? Thanks.

80

How are these discussions done? Surely you do not speak with a guest in the hallway, or over the phone after they have canceled or in the process of canceling? This puts you at great risk.

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