Cancelling a reservation at the request of a guest

[Timothy409]

I have a firm cancellation policy requiring a 30 day cancellation to obtain a full refund. My guest is asking for a full refund due to family issues. I want to grant it, as he is only at 29 days out. He wants ME to cancel, so he can get the refund. If I cancel at his request, will my rating be affected?

Thanks for any help you can provide to a brand new host!

[Ricardo85]

Not only Will be affected, but the days Will be blocked.

[Lawrene0]

The guest must do it, @Timothy409 . Once he has, you can agree to the refund and it will be made. 

Do not cancel this yourself. Only ever cancel when it is you who needs to cancel. 

You can make the guest feel better by telling him you are putting right in the messaging that you agree to a refund once he cancels. That is his "guarantee", as Airbnb can look at it later if anything goes wrong. 

[Mark116]

@Timothy409  Yes.  Airbnb will put on a note of host cancellation on your listing and charge you a fine.

Don't do it.  And if you get a 'do you accept this cancellation' message on the app say no. 

The guest has to cancel and then will get taxes and your fee refunded and they can fight with Airbnb on their service fee.

[Deborah350]

I have referred CS to the message thread showing that I have agreed to the cancellation at the guests request. The CS called  the guest and confirmed, cancellation done with full refund to guest and no penalty at my end. Remember they are guest centric.

[Colleen253]

https://www.airbnb.ca/help/article/990/host-penalties-for-cancelling-reservations

As a new host, it’s important to educate yourself to avoid costly and painful mistakes. Do spend some time in the help pages reading up. @Timothy409 

[Jay1731]

This happened to me when a frequent guest had an argument with another guest, then asked air BnB support for help, they asked me to resolve the problem so I accepted two cancellation requests not even thinking that I was doing the cancellation, it seemed like I was just approving. Now I have been fined and had my host stats effected. What can I do?

[Sarah977]

@Jay1731  Is your listing under a different profile than the one you are posting here under? Because there is no listing showing for you. I looked in order to see if you are a brand new host. 

If so, you could try to plead ignorance to Airbnb, because in fact there is nothing to indicate to hosts that approving a guest cancellation is in fact counted as a host cancellation. 

It's one of the sneakiest, most host-unfriendly things Airbnb does.

You should never cancel yourself, and in a situation  like you had, you should have contacted Airbnb, and as they already had been advised of the situation, asked them to do a neutral cancellation with no penalties to you, as this sermed to be the only way of resolving the situation for your guests.

And if guests do not want to continue to stay, they should be the ones to cancel, not you. Even if your cancellation policy means they wouldn't get a refund, the host always has the option to return money to the guest through the resolution center if they choose to.