At the very early stage of Covid, when only China was in lockdown and only a few cases in the U.S., I had two guests who wanted to cancel. Both their countries and my country were not at all affected, so of course Airbnb denied their requests for a full refund.
They then came to us, asking very nicely that they still wanted to stay with us and if we could keep their reservations for a later date. Seeing that they were genuine and seemed to really like our place, we agreed and moved their reservations to 2021.
Then recently, one of them cancelled the reservation and automatically got a full refund. It shocked us and then we found out about Airbnb's new "Extenuating Circumstances Policy", saying if the reservation was made before Covid (Mar 2020), and with a check-in date within the next 45 days from today, it can be cancelled for free. Meaning even if the guests were not eligible for a full refund at the begining, the move of their reservations (based on the saddening lies of "still wanting to stay at your place") had successfully helped them find the loophole in Airbnb's policy and the guests can now get a full refund.
When we asked Airbnb support team, they simply repeat that this refund policy was above all other policies and they will automatically process the refund if the reservation is eligible.
Shouldn't the refund policy always stick to the original reservation? If at first Airbnb denied the refund requests, meaning they also didn't think it was fair for us hosts, then why would Airbnb now agree to that request? Nothing has changed.
If you say it was us who agreed to move the reservation, that was us being kind, and how could you let the guests take advantage of that kindness and cheat off us?
Now the check-in date of the other guest (who hasn't used this policy yet) is drawing near. Saddly he hasn't been replying to us anymore and we fear that when he found out about this policy, he would also use it to get a full refund, too, in a heartbeat.
These two cancellations will cost us about 2,000 USD. That's not a small amount given travelling is still down in our country. What do you think? How could we defend our rights?
