HELP ADVICE please extenuating circumstances wrongly paid to HOST

[Rowena29]

Hi everyone,

I'd like your advice please.

I recently asked one of my guests to cancel her booking for 13 - 15 April.

If she had come, she would have been violating our  states essential travel only restrictions.

I assured her that she could cancel without any penalty as she fell within the covid 10 extenuating circumstances penalty free period - 

She booked in mid February. Her stay was for  13 - 15 April.

She cancelled today.

I got a message from airbnb saying and I quote 

"

According to your cancellation policy, your payout has been updated to $676.90 AUD. Your guest was refunded $0.00 AUD.

This payout will be released 24 hours after the check-in date. You can review the updated payout in your Transaction History.

You can also refund the full amount to the user by clicking the button below.  

  I dont' understand. Am I missing something here?

I realise I can click the refund in full button, but I thought the whole point to this policy was that guests were automatically refunded

Is there a trap to this? 

I'm really perplexed

[Huma0]

@Rowena29 

You are right to be wary, both about receiving your 25% compensation (and if you have a Strict policy and the cancellation is less than seven days before the stay, I assume it is 25% and not 12.5% that you are due) and also about the refund sending your account into negative.

I've been on the receiving end of 3 out of 4 cancellations being messed up by Airbnb recently (and this includes both wrongly refunding guests and overcharging guests) and, once the mistakes have been made, it's very hard to get them to do anything about it. In most cases, they just left it to me and the guest to try to clean up the mess. I've spent who knows how many days calling and messaging CS and, 3.5 weeks later have only managed to get some of it resolved, although I've yet to receive a penny of the funds I'm due.

I would definitely follow @Susan17 's advice.

[Sharon1014]

@Rowena29  Agree with @Sally221   Don't under any circumstances, refund your guest until you have received payment from Airbnb 24 hours after the due check-in date.  

[Roxanne77]

I would force ABB to handle it. Tell the guests you don't know what went wrong and don't have the ability to refund them because ABB is supposed to cover 25% and so they have to do it in their system or you won't get covered. I had these folks once cancel because of a hurricane in their area claiming extenuating circumstances. Turns out they were 200 miles inland and nowhere near the hurricane path. I fought ABB until they let me keep the reservation funds and they refunded the guests our of their pockets. Maybe they will do that for you?