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I have found that most people never answered my questions on the IB so I end up having to write to them anyway.
I also tend to accept even newbies if they respond to my questions within the first 24 hours (required). If I find that I have to use my IB cancellations up quickly, then I will switch to request to book.
I don’t understand how they could charge you a fee? Did you say that it was a calendar issue as opposed to an uncomfortable issue?
If you say that you were uncomfortable with the booking and responded within the free cancellation period you should not have been charged.
This was a good response from airbnb. Remember, choosing your place and then being cancelled meant the guest had to re-research. “Oops” is a lesson worth paying $50 - and I am pretty sure you will not open up again without thinking it through. Possibly at that time, a good fit might have been already booked. Kudos to airbnb looking out for their guests.
We always tell people here to be honest in their reviews. Being honest when cancelling a booking by a host should also be based on honesty.
I read too many “how can I get out of my reservation” by guests looking for ways to screw over a host to be ‘ok’ with a host doing same…
Me too. Not worth it to fight with these people.
a mythical amount can be anything they like.
doubt it. If he’s entitled then maybe the other hosts felt he wasn’t entitled to a review. Sadly people like that never think to behave well to earn their first great review, I see it all the time and I get a big number of newbies. They probably are clueless about the review system tbh.
I checked today and my oddball guest referenced above now has 3 reviews. He has a 4.5 average and all three reviews are problematic. But at least one host gave the worthless “good guest” review. All three of these reviews just appeared in the last two days so Joshua didn’t leave any reviews and the entire 2 weeks had to go by before other hosts will be warned.
I anyone isn’t aware, Airbnb now lets a host make specific comments about why they gave a poor review and other hosts can see it. I think this is a great tool for hosts if only our fellow hosts will use it.
Is this really true?! Last week, there was some glitch on the Airbnb site where it didn’t save a price change that I made over New Year’s, and someone booked my place at a price that was $500 less than what I had set it at. Within 5 minutes of the booking, I called CS to ask them to cancel it, but two CS people (after the first person connected me to someone else) said that if I did, I would pay a financial penalty and have those dates blocked on my calendar. It devolved into a Kafkaesque conversation where they kept reading from scripts and making statements that were completely unconnected with the matter at hand. But the one thing the CS agent was consistently adamant about was that I would pay a penalty and not be able to book anyone else on those dates.
I used to be but now some people are saying it’s not a policy any longer.
Help Center says it still is the policy: Canceling a reservation as a Host without adverse consequences - Airbnb Help Center
Yes, this is why I didn’t lie, there was zero reason to be uncomfortable. I told the guest what this issue was and asked first if I could reschedule to open dates. Hoping to avoid the cancellation. But their reply was a curt, “Just cancel me then!”
So I did.
Booking. com does this as well. Let’s say your house is synced via software to multiple sites. Syncing of availability usually takes under a minute. So there is always a chance (more likely during holiday rush) that one units gets booked on different sites within a minute. If so, host can be required contractually by BKC to find them another place and pay the difference if more. If the last house in town is $4k more than yours, they side with the guest and you are out $4k. So airbnb seems to have taken a que from that to make the guest have success at all costs. No thanks.
You convinced me. I’m switching every listing to RTB through the holidays. I can’t risk errors like this with no recourse. I will check every RTB manually for price and availability, even though I’m syncing through API. Mistakes happen on airbnb’s side (Maybe a price change didn’t save) or on my side typo. or through API updates getting bogged down during the holidays. too risky.
And since there is SOO much demand here, I don’t have to be worried about being shown down lower on search. I will get booked anyway.
You are required to rehouse the guest at a property that is at least equivalent to yours in quality. For us, most of those properties are hotels that are very expensive. We could be out as much as $20,000 even if we cancel within minutes. Of course, we wouldn’t cancel that guest - we’d cancel the guest from another platform which is what Booking wants.
That is the main reason I do not use Booking dot com. I might consider them if they had an RTB option to avoid the possibility of a double booking. But our home (three bedroom villa that sleeps six and is priced accordingly) doesn’t really fit their platform structure of hotel rooms.
I think it’s a matter of why you say it’s being cancelled. And I know some hosts disagree but If you say you are uncomfortable with guest you can cancel without penalty on an instant book. No need to share the real reason.
Since this was a "he said she said issue about it being an Airbnb glitch " you would probably get no where with trying to convince airbnb it was their fault and I would have just gone with saying I was uncomfortable with the guest.
All you have to do is tell the CS that you are uncomfortable with guest?!? You don’t have to say why (e.g. that you think they are going to host parties) or offer proof of your reason for discomfort?
I’m torn. On the one hand, I want to be able to control who stays in my place that I care about very much. On the other, allowing people to cancel because they are “uncomfortable” sounds like a backdoor to racism, so I can see why the platform would be wary about it.
I’ve only done it once and I was really uncomfortable with the guest. It was a while ago so things may have changed.
Okay, I just spent some time mucking around on the Airbnb website after the useful links and information provided in this thread, and indeed it is the case that you have 3 penalty-free cancellations per year where you don’t have to provide a reason, they just give you a warning about not discriminating. The article is here: Cancelling a reservation as a Host without adverse consequences - Airbnb Help Centre
And when I clicked through the steps in this guide (How a Host cancels a booking - Airbnb Help Centre) …
Here is the decision tree I found:
“Why can’t you host Sam?” Options are:
If I chose the “I’m looking for a different price or trip length” option, I would have paid a 25% penalty for canceling the reservation, but if I chose the “I have concerns” option, then I get these further options:
“What was your main cause for concern?”
Some of those options require evidence (“…in our message thread”), but the “I have other concerns option” takes me to this result:
This cancellation will be penalty-free
Know that hosts aren’t permitted to discriminate against anyone’s age, race, sexual orientation, nationality or gender, according to Airbnb’s Anti-Discrimination Policy.
This is your first consequence-free cancellation this year. You’re able to cancel two more times on your own, and after that you’ll need to contact us.
Hosts should feel comfortable with every guest, and guests should feel confident planning a trip.
That’s why you can cancel consequence-free up 3 times per year if a guest indicates they’ll behave in a way that doesn’t align with our Community Commitment.
As I read a lot about hosts being afraid to turn off IB because of the 3 free penalty-free cancellations they will no longer have, I thought I would talk a bit about this for any hosts who feel like this and are accustomed to having most of their bookings be IBs.
There should be little to no reason to cancel when using Request to Book only. The reason those IB cancellations exist is because bookings are confirmed before you have a chance to communicate with the guest or check out their reviews. This is not the case with requests.
I have never used IB. Once you get used to dealing with requests and get a system down for it, it’s easy, at least it has been for me.
First of all, don’t feel pressured to decide whether to accept a booking right away- you have 24 hours to decide, so use that time if you need it. I have often clicked on accept right after I get the request when I respond to the request. I would do this if the guest sent an articulate, informative, friendly message with their request, and I see that they have several good reviews that sound believable (reviews from hosts who offer similar listings to mine, homeshares, are most useful to me- if a fellow homeshare host says the guest was lovely, I know they are suited to such a situation).
If the guest doesn’t send an informative message, if they haven’t said anything that tells me they actually read the listing info, or don’t have any reviews, or reviews that are iffy, then I will just message the guest, thank them for their request, and ask them some questions. The questions I ask are not along the lines of why they are coming or any other personal questions- I ask questions the answers to which would tell me if the guests has read the listing info and realizes exactly what they are booking. Once I get a suitable answer to that, I can then decide whether to accept or not, or let them know my place might not be a good fit for them.
Some examples:
One guest accompanied her request with a message asking if her friend could stay, too, for an extra fee, they could bring an air mattress. I explained that the room isn’t big enough for that, and she should look for a place that accommodates 2. She wrote back right away, saying No, no, she still wanted to book, she’d just tell her friend to look for a place of her own. I accepted. She turned out to be a lovely guest.
Another message from a guest just said “Arriving around noon”, as if he had IBed. So I wrote back my standard questions (these would be different for each host- the questions should be things that might be a deal breaker if the guest hadn’t read thoroughly). In my case, the questions are whether they are aware I have pets, in case they have allergies, that it is a 20 minute walk to town and the beach, and that it is only for 1 guest. That guest replied in a more forthcoming manner than his original message, and that yes, he had read all that and it was fine, he liked to walk and liked animals, and was travelling solo. He was also a fine guest.
As I only host for 1 guest at a time, and homeshare, so guests can’t get away with things they might try to in an entire place listing, my vetting is fairly simple and I realize some hosts may need to dialogue more with guests before accepting, declining, or asking the guest to withdraw the request, as it’s not a good fit for them, but the basic routine is the same- fielding requests isn’t nearly as scary because you won’t have 3 penalty-free cancellations as you might think.
I have never had any reason to cancel a request I accepted, and have honestly never had a bad guest, and almost all have been really great guests.
I find this frustrating as many of you are. I noticed my last two guests didn’t shoot a message in terms of reason for stay. This sparked me to look and see what has changed. If we are taking an informal poll, I have discontinued instant booking. I also called Airbnb to find out how to formally express my concerns, and was given directions via Airbnb that led me to a dead end. I am sure I am not the only one that has considered doing this. Was anyone successful at filing a formal concern? What was the process?
