Extenuating Circumstances Policy and Road Closures due to Snow in a Ski Area.

[Donna622]

The road to my home (267) has been closed for a couple of days as have many other roads (80) in Tahoe.   My renter can't make it there and we looked into the extenuating circumstances policy.  

An Airbnb representative called me and ask me to cancel the reservation or change the dates.  She said it qualified as an extenuating circumstance.  I asked her two things. 1) Why did it qualify? Note: it is a snow storm at a Ski Resort and road closures happen in the winter in the same way that hurricanes happen in Florida and 2) Is that anyway that I could get any part of my payout in this situation?   She said, she didn't know why it qualified and that I would not get any payout.  Her role was to facilitate the cancellation so would not have adverse consequences.

I decided I was better off talking to my renter than involving her at that moment. 

After a half hour and still no change in the road situation,  I called in to Airbnb to cancel the reservation.  The renters had already missed 2 days of their vacation.  When I called in,  that Airbnb person said that it did not qualify as an extenuating circumstance and apologized for the previous Airbnb person.  

I cancelled and was told that there would not be any adverse consequences. 

So back to my original question:  

1) Do road closures to get into my house qualify as extenuating circumstances? 

2) If this happens again is there anyway that I can keep my payout? 

My new question:

Is there anything I can do now?

Many thanks in Advance. 

Donna

[Mark116]

@Donna622  From the host in almost all cases.  In your case, since there is no notice of a host cancellation, Airbnb did it on your behalf but it means that the guest will be fully refunded, you don't get paid.  

It appears, based on this thread, that different CS reps are coming to different conclusions, some considered it a covered event due to road closure+emergency declaration, others looked at it like a normal 'road closure' that is not covered.  Not surprising given CS track record.

[Quoc19]

Does Airbnb also refund the service fee or just what was paid to the host?  

[Sarah977]

@Donna622  If Airbnb refunds under the EC policy, the host does not get paid. Application of the policy effectively forrces hosts to be de facto travel insurers.

[Kia272]

@Donna622 I know I'm likely an outlier here, but I would do my best to make the guest whole. There are no guarantees in the hosting business, and although I understand that you'll be losing money, I'd suggest that you flip the scenario and imagine yourself in the same situation. They booked a fun ski vacation getaway, and were literally unable to get there. 

Road closures  are well beyond the control of both your guest and you, but I'd let my conscience be my guide. Personally, I'd feel very bad simply keeping their money. 

I would definitely offer them the opportunity to reschedule, but if they couldn't, or you are fully booked, I would just refund what they paid (obviously not the AirBnB fees), and move on. 

The kindness will come back to you in other ways. 

[Bruno1306]

@Quoc19 Sabrina1017 I'm in the exact same situation. We had a booking near Tahoe on Nevada and and the roads were closed 1-2 days before booking started and there was a local state of emergency declared by the governor of Nevada. Still, all of our efforts to request to the host and airbBnB CS failed and they did not give us a full refund. We are convinced our situation fit under the extenuating circumsntances policy. We tried escalating calling multiple times but Airbnb doesn't want to do right by us. May I ask if you got your full money back? It is not fair and If you haven't we can push them for it.

[Quoc19]

@Bruno1306 I had to call in and get my case transferred to another agent. Upon review, she granted me the EC.  The first couple of agents didn't even bother reading the documentation I provided and quickly rejected my request without any explanation.  As said in many other threads, CS is flaky and you have to push them.  I  get that it can be hard to understand each situation, but I was disappointed in their lack of interest to find out the circumstances before passing judgment. It looks like they rush thru it because the last agent told me they all have a list of events that are considered as EC and the storm in Tahoe last Dec is on the list. So it was not hard to qualify if you can connect to an agent that will do the proper search on their list.  Hope this helps.