Reservation awaiting payment

[Alex893]

I received a reservation request on Tuesday for Wednesday through Friday. This was strange in itself because I have IB. After I accepted it, it said “awaiting payment from guest”. My calendar was blocked. Wednesday night I messaged guest who did not reply. Calendar remained blocked. On Thursday morning I got a message that payment was not received. Since I don’t take same day reservations, I was left without a chance to fill those dates and I had no choice in doing so. The original request never said it was an unpaid booking. Aren’t you supposed to be guaranteed the reservation and the payment once you accept it?

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Alex893 Read the Airbnb terms and conditions. To be clear whilst one of their key roles is to collect money their terms and conditions make clear they are not responsible in any way for doing so! They also often fail to collect money when the guest is stying so in some ways you dodged that bullet at least.

[Alex893]

@Mike-And-Jane0  That’s another way of looking at it! I guess I could’ve ended up with a free loading guest

[Colleen253]

 “This was strange in itself because I have IB” @Alex893 

A request to book with IB on could mean a few things. If you have certain requirements set for IB guests to meet and they don’t, they can’t IB. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but if a guest has received a thumbs down from another host they can’t IB anymore (not sure if this is with any future host or just the one who thumbs downed). Either way, it can be a red flag, though certainly not always. Though in this case there is the added red flags of no communication and no payment confirmed. 

 What I do is message the guest to ask them what the delay is with payment. Usually they have a reasonable answer and it works out. If I were to receive no answer from the guest I would message again and ask them to withdraw their request/cancel their booking due to non payment,  and that without payment completed, they would not be getting access to the house anyway.