Guest cancelled booking "because the property had no furniture"

[Manksco0]

This is the second Air BnB booking to go wrong in, well let's see, two bookings.

The guest has cancelled "because the apartment has no furniture". Air BnB has sent me a condescending email, saying that notes have been put on our account and that our pay out has been reduced.

The thing is, the property is fully furnished and no one has contacted us to tell us otherwise!

I suspect that the guest has somehow managed to gain access to the wrong apartment. We do have one in the building that is undergoing refurbishment. However, no one from Air BnB, nor the guest have contacted me to query the situation and the directions to the apartment were quite clear.

Our last booking went wrong too, when Air BnB cancelled a guest booking in error. It took hours to resolve and I am still not sure that we will receive our full pay out.

It is almost like we've entered a parallel universe where none of the usual rules apply. Is this what we have to look forward to if we continue to use Air BnB? I have never come across anything quite like it.

[Manksco0]

@Helen3 

There is no legislation or case law stating that tenancy rights don’t exist for 3 months, as far as I am aware.

it is possible to inadvertently create a tenancy or licence with basic protection in law sooner than that.

If that happens, and an occupier refuses to leave, a court order is required to gain possession. See Protection From Eviction Act (1977). Currently that can take many months.

I remain happy to be corrected if you can find something to the contrary that I have missed.

[Manksco0]

By way of a conclusion to this, Air BnB has agreed to reimburse to us the money they refunded in error. We would rather the booking had been a success, which it would have been had they or the guest contacted us before cancellation, but there you go. We've learned from it - every day's a school day.

@Anonymous Your comments have been taken on board. We will look at how we might further personalise the check-in experience. However, with guests arriving 24/7 I am not sure how we will do that without employing night staff, which is not viable currently. 

@Helen3 You should take a look at the law surrounding guests, licences and tenancies, starting with Street v Mountford [1985] UKHL 4 (02 May 1985). In short, the legal status of an occupier is defined by the actuality of the situation, not what their contract says or what the property owner would like it to be.

It is quite possible to create a tenancy in less than three months, without intending to do so. It is alternatively possible to create a contractual licence. Both of these situations require a court order to evict an occupier, if they won't leave voluntarily. This can take many months currently, due to court backlogs and delays.

Is any of this a problem? After all, 99.99% of guests will come and go as agreed. Increasingly yes, it is.

Local Authorities are, in many cases, becoming desperately short of places to put the homeless. If an Air BnB guest presents themselves at the Council claiming that they are about to be made homeless it is entirely possible that the Local Authority will try to argue that they have tenancy rights or at least basic protection in law, requiring a court order for eviction. They will run this argument even if they know it is untrue, because it buys them time. By the time you get your property back the situation could be many months down the line and you could be very out of pocket, with little prospect of recovering the loss.

The nub of it is, you need to ensure that the situation relating to your Air BnB doesn't allow a guest protection by the Protection from Eviction Act 1977. "Short Term Rental" on its own is not enough to protect you from a potentially very expensive situation.

[Anonymous]

@Manksco0   It's not necessary to offer 24/7 check-in. Your listing can specify a window that reflects the time frame you or your co-host are available to greet guests (e.g. 3 PM to 8 PM) and require guests to schedule an appointment for their arrival time in order to access the unit. 

Setting stricter parameters on the listing still leaves you the flexibility to make exceptions, when the guests communicate well and earn your trust. For those times, it's useful to have a self-check-in option in your toolbox. But until you have a sturdy firewall of reviews, it's best to make sure you can deliver an optimal experience every time, even if that means losing some potential bookings from night owls.

[Kia272]

@Manksco0 

Your property description, regardless of the photo issue with the "empty" room, is woefully insufficient. I wouldn't book based on that. You have no description and not enough photos. Add more photos, and use the captions as well as the property description section to add details about the apartment. 

I'd also like to mention that allowing up to 4 guests at the price shown of $67/night is a real mistake. It's hard to understand how you can profit at that rate, and you'll only attract bottom feeders, who tend to be problematic guests. 

Good luck. 

[Manksco0]

Hi Kia

Thanks for your input.

I can update the listing now that I have more photos. I might wait till Air BnB responds about this most recent problem, though, in case the change of photos confuses matters.

The limited listing was really because we have 15 of these apartments that we are trying to get ready and we thought we'd see if we could get some of them to work straight away. It wasn't a profitability decision, more to see how the Air BnB proposition worked.

As you point out, the accommodation is cheap and we won't make any money. However, it is our intention to increase the price when all the apartments are finished and operational.

With regard to bottom feeders, again you are correct. This place is cheap, but we've had a number of people wanting it even cheaper. We have also had one or two problematic applicants, who almost certainly misrepresented their intentions.

But the single biggest challenge has been Air BnB themselves. As I mentioned, last week they accidentally cancelled the booking of a guest in situ and could not reinstate it. This time they have allowed a guest to cancel inappropriately. No correspondence, no checks regarding the veracity of the guest's claims, just cancelled.

I raised it with them first thing this morning, but have received no response. Nor have I received a response from the guest.

[Kia272]

@Manksco0  The most important thing you should know about AirBnB is that it should really only be considered a listing platform. It gives you the ability to put your property/ies on the market and get them booked. Beyond that, there is very little support, as you are now experiencing. You should learn to not expect anything beyond the limited marketing of your property. 

I'm not saying that that's okay (because they imply differently), but that's the way it is. If you use it solely for that purpose, I'd say it's a pretty good deal. Guests can view and book and pay, for a mere 3% on your end, as opposed to having your own website on which you have to put all of those tools in place. 

However, you can't expect much in the way of support for other issues, as you've experienced. They won't even do much to fix mistakes that they have made, as you've also experienced. The outsourced customer service agents are generally poorly trained, and seemingly incapable of understanding and implementing AirBnB's own policies. 

The best thing you can do is get your properties in good shape, decide on YOUR pricing (never use smart pricing), and run things as well as you can to avoid problems with guests. That includes good photos, descriptions, and clear house rules. Take the time to describe anything potentially unpleasant, like street noise, quirky features, or anything else that a guest might choose to make an issue of. 

At that point if you do seek help from AirBnB, you're in a better position to defend yourself against guest accusations or any other things that may arise. 

BTW, when you reply to someone on the forum, tag them in the post with an @ and their user name, so that they get notified of your reply. 

It seems like you've already invested a lot- 15 apartments!- without really knowing how AirBnB is going to work out for you, but hopefully it will work out. I think your early foray into the market with the units not quite ready may have been a blunder, but sometimes we blunder and just have to pick up the pieces. 

Good luck with all of this! Kia

[Manksco0]

@Kia272

The problem is that Air BnB controls the money. They appear to have refunded this guest, despite us having done nothing wrong. They cancelled a guest in error last week, refunded them, and then could not work out how to reinstate them.

As you point out, the support staff appear hopeless. All platitude, no substance.

As for 15 units being a big investment. We already owned them; they used to be tenanted. We have a great many more besides, but will keep those tenanted for now.

We are looking at hiring someone to look after these places. The applicant we are looking at already looks after serviced apartments for other people. Early dialogues suggest that she is not all that fond of Air BnB and believes that she has better options.