Cancellations

[Lornette-D0]

Has anyone been experiencing bogus bookings - guest cancelling a few days before arrival claiming COVID reasons.  Huge loss of revenue and inconvenience.  AirBnB Ambassadors need to be aware of these types of guests and investigate before refunding.  Especially as host does not have any means of recouping those lost of revenue.

[Sarah977]

@Lornette-D0  The only way a guest can do this and get refunded outside your cancellation policy is under the EC policy regarding having a positive Covid test. 

Airbnb supposedly asks for proof from the guest, but of course hosts don't have any way of knowing if they are actually doing that.

And yes, it seems a lot of savvy guests may be aware of this and are fudging it so they can cancel with a full refund.

Not really anything hosts can do about this, though.

[Lornette-D0]

That is exactly what happened to me today.  I thought that Airbnb would at least have asked me first before canceling.  I checked out the guest's story before contacting support and knew she was fibbing.  They are also getting their hands on fraudulent positive COVID tests which the authorities have warned against.  So deceitful.

[Sue1883]

I had a cancellation 2 hours After the supposed check-in and have heard nothing from anyone apart from Airbnb saying guests have cancelled. Am I still entitled to some money due to the late notice?

[Judy182]

I have a moderate cancelation policy and have had 3 cancelations in the past month.  These were week stays and canceled just before they would be docked money.    Has this been happning to other people?

Judy

[Lornette-D0]

I change my cancellation policy to strict when this became chronic.  You will get fewer booking but at least you retain an income for your hard work.  

[Barry133]

        We were getting reservations, then cancellations while we had a "flexible" cancellation policy.  We changed to a "firm" policy with the hope that it would eliminate people who play the  "we'll book it early until we find something else/better and then cancel" game.  That has not been the case.  Seems like people are making their reservations, then cancelling just before getting charged.  

          I would suggest that Airbnb initiate some sort of penalty or monitoring of people who cancel their reservations on a regular basis.  As a host, we should have the ability to refuse a booking based on the number of times a potential guest has cancelled previous reservations.  This would be the same kind of scrutiny we give potential guests based on their reviews from previous stays.  I would like to hear if anyone else has this problem, and whether or not this seems like a reasonable solution to a growing problem.

[Angela-And-Carrie0]

The same thing just happened to us. We had a cancellation 6 days before check-in. The guest never contacted us and went through Airbnb who canceled the reservation without consulting with us at all. The guest claimed they had Covid. Even the state of MA says that you only have to quarantine for 5 days and then you are free to travel, yet this was 6 days from their correspondence with each other. 

Why does Airbnb think they can make this call on our behalf? Do they not realize they don't actually own our properties and they are just a booking agency? When the state laws are more lax than their cancellation policy there is an issue. And, they really do owe the hosts more respect. 

[Matt570]

I have had about 50 percent of my summer bookings cancelled. All of the other years I only had a total of one booking cancel. So something definitely seems strange this year. Also, I was getting alot of request to book from people who's reviews had many different names. If mike wanted to book, his reviews said "mike was great", Tony was great",  "adam and his friends were great". All in all I am very unhappy with airbnb this summer. Never have I had such hesitation revolving around some of these bookings. But back to the cancelations. Most bookings I was able to rent out to another party, but the sheer number of cancelations this year is very strange. I am guessing it is the "I found something better" routine.  It seems airbnb is being infiltrated by scammers, more so then ever.