help long term wants to cancel early

[Kelly2364]

Does anyone know what penalties I would face for permanently deleting a listing with a guest still booked? My guest is booked through December, but she wanted to cancel early in July and I was ok with this for her and willing to help her do so. However, I'm unable to make the alterations online and so is she, we both get an error message. Both of us have been contacting Airbnb support via phone and chat daily and they have been unable (or say they're unable) to cancel the remaining dates as well "due to it being such a long stay" is what they tell me. Anyway, her most recent payment didn't go through so now I have a booked listing and I'm not getting paid and she isn't actually staying there and has no plans on resolving the payment. I'm considering just permanently deleting the listing and starting over at a later date or leaving the airbnb platform altogether, but I also haven't been able to get an answer from airbnb on what penalties this would give me. Airbnb support just says it isn't possible to delete a listing with an active guest. Any ideas??? I'm beyond frustrated.

[Zheng49]

Whatever you do, don't just delete the listing. That just sounds like a band-aid fix.

Usually in cases like this, you can ask the guest to cancel. If there is a payment issue, then the reservation should not be confirmed in the first place. It should be stuck in the 'Awaiting Payment' stage. It should fix itself in 24 hours or so judging from prior experience. By that I mean the reservation will cease to exist, and it will be considered as if the guest cancelled the reservation. 

If it's a fact that it's been 24 hours already and the reservation is still there, then that's a bug on Airbnb's part. If you don't end up getting paid for this reservation, then you can contact Airbnb , and they should be able to pay out this reservation regardless of whether the guest physically stays or not. 

@Quincy @Sophia