Like the heading says:
A first time guest was able to instant book my listing - where I have "Good Track Record" turned on.
As the description of "Good Track Record" reads "Only allow guests who have stayed on Airbnb without incidents or negative reviews", and this guest apparently has never stayed on Airbnb, this booking should not have been possible, right? The guest does not have a good track record, he has no track record.
Several things also concern me about this booking - and if it was only 1-2 of these things, I wouldn't be too worried, but all of them put together, including the no track record matter, makes me a bit uncomfortable:
- The guest joined Airbnb in 2018, but has not stayed with Airbnb yet
- He is a local, living in Stockholm
- The booking is for just 1 night, a Monday
- The booking is for 2 people, and my house rules state that full names of all guests should be included in the booking - there is no name for the second guest, so the booking guest has either not read my house rules (another requirement), or ignored them
- The guest sent no introductory message, saying a few words about who is coming and why, how they look forward to coming etc. I have never, in over 50 bookings, experienced this.
- Instead, he simply wrote "just wanted to inform you we'll be checking in early in the morning, like 8-9 a.m. And check out will be at 5 p.m"
I contacted CS within 3 minutes of receiving the booking, and chatted with a chatbot first. The chatbot concluded "This reservation is eligible for penalty-free cancellation. If you cancel, we will notify your guest and assist them with next steps.". But I checked "No, contact me with a person", and added that I did not want to use one of my 3 penalty free cancellations for this booking that should not have been accepted by Airbnb in the first place. I kindly asked CS to cancel the booking for me. I then sent a polite message to the guest, explaining that an error had occurred on Airbnb's side, that I would sadly not be able to accept the booking, and that I had sent the matter to CS. But that it might take some time for them to come back, so if he wanted to get on with looking for another place to stay, he could go ahead and cancel himself (I have flexible cancellation policy).
This was 26 hours ago, haven't heard from CS yet, the booking is still there in my calendar, and I pushed 12 hours ago.
I find this unacceptable. I just know that if I go ahead and cancel, and then ask CS to make sure this does not count as one of my 3 penalty free cancellations, they will for sure tell me they are "unable to do that afterwards".
I turned on IB for the first time a few weeks ago (before the Winter release).
Thus far it has not created that many more views to my ad. But it has given me 2 bookings;
Nr 1 was from a guest who had one positive (well, it was rather short and neutral, really) review as a guest - but two horrible ones as a host. One of which started with "Avoid at any cost, cleanliness totally unfit for a stay"...
Nr 2 is this one - a guest that should not have been able to IB.
So far I am very unimpressed with IB, I must say.
And one thing is for sure: Unless I wake up tomorrow morning and CS have handled this matter in a satisfactory way, I am turning IB off again. For good.