Third party booking- no disclosure

[Akanksha14]

Hi,

I am in a strange situation, I received a booking from a person who's been on Airbnb since long, and we accepted the booking. He didn't inform us that he is booking for someone else, and in all our chats said 'I will' or 'I am'. Then the guests checked in and due to covid I didn't want to meet them for a few days and they self checked-in. We finally met yesterday and I asked them to converse with me on Airbnb and then they told it's a third party booking. I raised the issue immediately with Airbnb who are asking me to send videos of the booking person, who never checked in. I sent them videos of people who did. 

What are the next steps? I do not wish for the current guests to stay and ready to make refunds, because this whole thing is super fishy. What can I do? Airbnb support is taking forever to resolve this. 

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

[Emiel1]

@Akanksha14 

If the guests are behaving well and Airbnb is willing to support the reservation (ask !), then maybe continue it ?

Other options are:

- Shorten the reservation ("change" option)

- Ask the booker to cancel the reservation

- Ask Airbnb to cancel the reservation

Be aware of maybe receiving bad review when cancelling......

[Akanksha14]

Thanks for the reply Emiel. 

The guests are overall behaving fine, but I wish to cancel this booking due to many reasons:

1. The requestor was talking to me as if he is doing the booking for him and his family. This is deception. 

2. The guests also didn't say anything about this. They only informed me when I insisted on them using the app to communicate, which was because the guests were communicating by ringing the doorbell multiple times a day, which is not what should happen. 

3. After getting to know what's happening, I talked and found some deceptive behavior and comments like we don't know English, whereas so far we've been talking in English clearly. 

4. My insurance will not cover me till these guests are in my property or even if they leave, any damage caused during the stay is not covered either. 

Airbnb support didn't let me cancel the booking and now I'm at the mercy of these deceptive people to allow me to change the booking. I feel helpless and it's personally a dangerous situation to be in, where they might try to take out their frustration of this situation on my place or me.

[Akanksha14]

Can someone guide me on this-

If I ask the guests to leave and I will refund them back for the remainder of days, and they don't accept. What can I do?

[Colleen253]

@Akanksha14 If you want to end the booking due to it being third party, you need to contact Airbnb again and insist they cancel it with zero penalty to you. Below is the policy you can refer to.

https://www.airbnb.ca/help/article/427/booking-for-friends-and-family

Once it’s cancelled, it’s up to you to make sure the people (not ‘guests’…technically ‘trespassers’) leave. 

[Huma0]

I easily got Airbnb to cancel a third party booking for me with zero penalty, BUT the guests had not checked in yet and it was an Instant Booking, so you get three penalty free cancellations a year.

What I have gathered, from other posts here on the CC, is that, even if the booking is third party or otherwise in total breach of Airbnb policies, CS will often apply the host cancellation policies regardless, which is totally unfair.

@Akanksha14 

I would therefore follow @Colleen253 's advice, but if Airbnb CS tell you that you will still incur host cancellation policies, stand your ground and insist that's unacceptable. It's not okay that you should be penalised because the guests violated the policy.

Be calm and firm and quote their own policy back to them (over and over if necessary).

[Colleen253]

In that case, @Akanksha14 might be best to use the chat function to communicate @Huma0, as they can then link to the policy. Since many Airbnb reps aren’t even familiar with policy, it helps to place  it right in front of them.

[Huma0]

@Colleen253  is right. Often reps can be pretty clueless about policy (I breathe a massive sigh of relief every time I deal with someone show seems to be actually trained).

I have found the best thing to do when they tell you some kind of nonsense is to respond:

"No, actually, it IS in breach of Airbnb policy, because your cancellation (or whatever policy it is) states: XYX."

They might still try to argue otherwise, but there's only so many times they can pretend to be that obtuse when you keep quoting the policy back to them!

[Akanksha14]

Thanks Huma and Colleen. I got in touch with the support team again, this time around they are helping me cancel the booking. 

I agree, this is trespassing and that's why I am uncomfortable with this situation. Hopefully it gets resolved peacefully.