Awaiting Payment being used by guests to play games

[Nanxing0]

The awaiting payment situation has been increasing on me in my hosting history. I don't understand why Airbnb can allow a guest to submit a same-day or next-day booking without finishing the payment ahead, but it certainly doesn't make any sense. We've been having several guests doing this trick in the past couple weeks and we feel some guests might have learned this trick to play games with the hosts. Essentially they submit a same day or next day reservation without payment and when we accept it, it starts showing "awaiting payment" and Airbnb allows the guest a whopping 24HRS to finish the payment, without even giving the host the option to reject the request due to no-payment. It's a MAJOR FLAW in the system now and  I just had a guest did this today and asked me for check in instructions while it's awaiting payment. I told him he needs to finish payment first and then he stopped responding. Under the current COVID_19 situation it's almost impossible to reach the customer support either. I'm feeling helpless.

To resolve it it's quite simple. If Airbnb simply steps forward one step and do any of the following action it will make a big difference.

Option 1. Require full payment ahead for reservations within the next 72 hours(or 48 hours).

Option 2. Give the hosts option to cancel/reject the reservation when it's awaiting payment. 

Option 3. Show the host whether the guest has finished full payment or not when asking host to decide to accept or decline a request. Declining a request due to no-payment should not count into the acceptance rate. This can also give incentive to guests to finish payment ahead instead of playing games.

[Mika8]

@Nanxing0.. months or years ago, it was like #3 .. after clicking accept the system informed about the payment issue and let you the option to either accept or decline the booking ... but if clicked decline or if you closed your browsser or even if you throw your laptop out of the window (ok I haven't tested the latter one) .. the booking went to 'accepted'. I informed airbnb several times about this glitch .. and yeah, I guess, they could not handle it, therefore they had the genius idea to not ask anymore about the second accept or decline option.

The really worse thing is, that as you wrote, the host could not reject a booking withhin this 24 hours and also the guest could not withdraw his request. I had once a guest, informing me that he would not need the room, but he was not able to stop the booking process ...

This glitch is so old .. I'm pretty sure more than two years .. airbnb is so verdant.

[Nanxing0]

I remember this option as well. I also tried the "decline" button and it NEVER worked. The guest DEFINITELY CAN withdraw the request but I seldom see guests doing this for courtesy to the host (I had guests done this but very rare). Some guests might be new to the system and not sure how to do this though but most of them simply don't care since it doesn't affect themselves. 

I know the glitch is old but it's been so annoying to me these days given that with the current pandemic it's almost impossible to reach the customer service. Some time before when this happened i could at least get to a CS representative and ask him/her to contact the guest to ask for their intentions. Sometime they could help me cancel it. Now it's impossible to do it and we end up losing potential income during this difficult time.