Air bnb policy for Reimbursing guest for cancellation

[Corinna76]

I’m really frustrated. I had a guest who booked my place back in March for 3 nights over 4th of July . They needed to cancel. I have a strict cancellation policy. The guest asked for a full refund. I told him if it rebooks I will  happily refund him the remaining balance. It just rebooked. I went in to double check my payment transaction to pay him the correct amount, and saw that Airbnb has a pending transaction for the 50% reservation fee on my account which won’t pay to me until July 2nd but they withdrew half of that the moment he cancelled out of my account to reimburse him. In essence they are expecting Hosts to float the burden of cancellation reimbursement without ever getting the money in their account until the day of the original start of the reservation. This is Bull**bleep**! I’m so irritated. Anyone else find this reprehensible???

[Emiel1]

@Corinna76 

I do not understand the issue.

First: there are other (better) options available

- If the guest had sent you a change request, the booking (if OK with you) was shifted to other dates, no need to cancel/refund at all

- Now the guest has already cancelled and made a new booking, you can also "refund" the guest by using a change request on the reservation and amend the price.

When this reservation was cancelled: indeed 50% is paid to you after the original check-in date of the reservation and the other 50% is instantly refunded to guest.

[Lorna170]

@Emiel1   The way that I read this is that the guest wished to cancel.  The host would refund the first guest if ANOTHER guest booked the dates.  The first guest cancelled and was to receive 50% of the fee under the cancellation policy.  Another guest has booked, and the host wishes to refund the remainder of the money that the guest would have lost due to the cancellation policy that was in effect.

However, the refund of the cancelled guest 50% fee has been taken from the host's account before the booking payout occurred.  This is bad practice on the part of AirBnB.