Unintentional booking cancellation

[Mengen1]

Airbnb does not protect their guests at all and have ridiculous policies to protect hosts. I booked a 3 week stay by accident and I only recieved 50 percent of my cash back (around 700 euros) after I requested cancellation within 1 MINUTE. It's ridiculous, I'm a student and I cannot risk to loose this amount of money. And Airbnb customer service are very much useless. I'm extremely disappointed in this company and how they run things and all their unjustified policies.

Is there something I can do? The host isn't replying at all and Airbnb representative says they have contacted the host and does not want to return a full refund.

[Anonymous]

@Mengen1  Everybody makes mistakes, but this sure is an odd one. Which part of your booking was a mistake -  was it the wrong destination, or the wrong dates? 

If you haven't completed the cancelation yet, it's still possible to request a booking change for, say, a shorter stay. But if you've already canceled, the host would have no obligation to respond to any further contact. 

[Mark116]

I thought everyone had 48 hours for a penalty free cancellation where the guest gets back the full amount including fees?  Is this not the case for strict policies?

[Anonymous]

@Mark116 That 48 hour grace period only applies when the cancellation also happens to be 14 days or more before the check-in date. 

[Huma0]

@Anonymous 

Yep, and right now it seems like there are a lot of ill thought out, last minute bookings going on. I've had to contact Airbnb several times in the past week about similar cases so that the guest could get a full refund.

It's time consuming and annoying, but I don't feel right about taking a guests money when there is a small time space between booking and the mistake being discovered, e.g. a few hours or a day. 

The last Airbnb rep I spoke to told me it's normal at the moment because people panic book during the holiday season. 

[Anonymous]

@Huma0 One of my Top 10 reasons for not using Instant Book was that even in "normal" times, up to 20% of requests came from people who were trying to book the wrong home type, dates, or neighborhood. They often didn't realize that they'd have a binding reservation if I hit Accept. But in declining all these stupid careless bookings, I had to take a lot of warnings and threats from Airbnb that doing so would endanger my listing.

People always like to make someone else out to be a villain when their own mistakes turn out to be costly. But wasting someone else's time instead of paying attention to what you're doing - well, why shouldn't that have a price? 

[Huma0]

@Anonymous 

I agree. There should be a price. Our time is also worth something.

The situations I am describing are maybe a bit different to the example in the OP. I don't know what the 'mistake' was there or why the guest wanted to cancel. My examples are more along the lines of clueless guests who I cannot or absolutely do not want to host. They will only agree to cancellation if they get a refund, otherwise they (and Airbnb I imagine) are going to expect me to honour the booking and they end up at my front door.

What does one do? Either you get the guest to agree to cancel and ask Airbnb to do a guest cancellation with a full refund (the host's time wasted) or use one of your three penalty free cancellations (host's time wasted and limited chances to do this). 

I have never liked IB and successfully hosted for ages without it. I dislike it more now than ever, but I feel like I disappear off the map without it.

Before I turned it off the other day for one of my listings, I was inundated with enquiries/requests/IBs for the next available dates. After I turned it off, literally nothing. As a consequence, the dates never got rebooked.

With so many listings in London (I am sure there are lots in Berlin, but here it's a very oversaturated market), it's really a rock and a hard place. Without IB, my listings seem to be almost invisible. Anyway, I'm leaving it off for now on that listing and will see how things go.

[Jenny349]

How strange @Mengen1 , your story echoes the post by @Sylvie1386 . It’s an unfortunate mistake on your part and one which may turn out to be costly, unless you can find some way of reaching a reconciliation with your host, who is under no further obligation to you here.

[Sylvie1386]

The same thing happen to my daughter, except my daughter was not as lucky as you because she only got back a third of what she had to pay. The host is a big company (W HZ Investissement) and they own 11 apartment building. At the beginning, airbnb was a sharing platform but now it is a BIG Business Platform with no ideology of helping those who wants to travel cheap like young people. My daughter  is now trying to prosecute the owner to claim her money back. Airbnb hasn't help a bit and it's true that they are only protecting the host.

[Colleen253]

@Sylvie1386 How did the host violate the contract, to justify ‘prosecution’?

[Sylvie1386]

No contract was violated of course.... It's up to the juge to decide if it's was a contract of location or a contract of service. If he consider it's a contract of service and there was no service, then my daughter will win her cause. 

[Colleen253]

@Sylvie1386 Your daughter agreed to the terms of the contract when she booked the stay, then she (not the host) cancelled the stay and wanted out of the contract. I wish her luck getting a judge to agree she should have been allowed out of it and refunded all her money. Hopefully through this experience she learns the importance of making herself familiar with the terms of any future contracts she agrees to, before signing. 

[Sylvie1386]

In Quebec, there is a vagueness in the law concerning Airbnb : Is Airbnb a service or a location ? The court of Quebec has to yet rule. 

But Airbnb was a sharing platform at the beginning. Now, it's big business and Quebec is more community oriented than U.S.A.

[Helen3]

 Before your daughter confirmed her booking she would have been asked at least twice whether she wanted to go ahead with the booking and warned to make sure sure she understood the cancellation policies she booked under before she went ahead . However it   she ignored these warnings and went ahead anyway. 

There is no Airbnb cancellation policy that gives her a third back so not sure what cancellation policy she booked under.

It is a hard lesson for your daughter to learn that a non or partially refundable booking means just that, just as it would if she booked a theatre ticket, non refundable plane or holiday booking.  This is part of adult life that a contract is a contract.

Do let us know how she gets on with suing the STR management company for enforcing the cancellation policy she booked under. 

[Huma0]

@Helen3 

Say it was a Strict cancellation policy, so the guest gets back 50% of accommodation fees, but not Airbnb fees, the refund could end up working out to around a third, depending on the amounts.

However, @Sylvie1386 mentioned that the booking was for one month, so actually there should have been no refund at all. Perhaps it was more like 26 or 27 days.