Cancelation Fraud

[Rosalilia0]

On 10/13/2020 I reserved and paid for a stay via AirBnB in Kapa’a, Kauai for the dates of 12/5/2020-12/12/2020 through a host known as Amber. I paid $667 for a five day stay and $185 cleaning fee for a total of $852. At the time of booking, her site clearly indicated "Free cancellation until 5 day before check in. After that, cancel before check-in and get a 50% refund, minus the first night and service fee". On 11/28/2020  Amber notified me via email that my stay, would need to be due to Kauai’s new Covid19 policy that would not allow guest to avoid a 14 day quarantine. I asked to cancel my reservation to which she stated I would have to do so on the AirBnB site. On 11/29/2020 @ 10:12 am, 6 days prior to my trip, I canceled the reservation via AirBnb. Once the reservation was confirmed as canceled, a cancelation page popped up stating “You canceled this reservation. You aren’t eligible for a refund based on Amber’s cancellation policy”. My balance indicated that I would be refunded the $185 cleaning fee. 

 I canceled the reservation 6 days before check-in and she refused to refund any portion of the room stay, refunding only $185 of the cleansing fee. Two days after I canceled, she changed her policy to "cancel before check-in and get a 50% refund, minus the first night and service fee". She still did not refund even $50 of the fee. I will be bringing legal charges against her and AirBnB as I see many complaints about cancelation fraud on various sites and forums including Money Magazine. AirBnb needs to do a better job to protect guests from fraud.

[Debra300]

@Rosalilia0,

I am sorry to hear about your situation.  It was Airbnb that had your money, and processed the refund.  Hosts only get paid after a guest has arrived (or cancels, in some cases).  When a reservation is cancelled, the refund is automatically processed by Airbnb according to the cancellation policy that was in effect at the time of booking.  Even if the host were to have changed the cancellation policy several times before your arrival, the original policy remains attached to the reservation.

You may want to check your payment statement to confirm that you paid the full amount.  Typically, at the time of booking Airbnb offers a payment plan that collects a percentage of the reservation amount, and then the gets balance shortly before check-in.   Based upon what you've written, it does sound like Airbnb calculated the remaining days before check-in differently than you, and kept the majority of the deposit amount (= 50% of the room rate and their service fee), and refunded you the cleaning fee as would be the normal case for a reservation with a Moderate Cancellation Policy.

I am sure you were very extremely disappointed about having to cancel your trip, but you should be able to recoup your financial losses through your travel insurance.

[Sarah977]

@Rosalilia0  Airbnb handles cancellations and refunds according to the host's cancellation policy that was in place when you booked ( anything  hosts change on their listings only applies to bookings made after those changes) Which in this case, according to what you wrote here, would be the "Moderate" policy. If you really cancelled this reservation 6 days before check-in, you indeed should have received 50% of the total room cost, plus the cleaning fee,  back. 

This has nothing to do with the host perpetrating some fraud, if there is an error in the refund, that's Airbnb's doing and you need to pursue this with them, not the host.

They do make errors- once one of my guests was charged double my room rate and both she and I saw the error right after she booked. Airbnb did refund her the overcharge.

If you happened to use the "pay less upfront" option when you booked, then you wouldn't be due any refund, because the 50% is based on the total cost of the booking, not on what you paid upfront.

I wouldn't jump to conclusions that you've been somehow defrauded without contacting Airbnb to find out why the refund appears to be incorrect.