Up to $150 to first person to cancel this Reservation! Safety issue! desperate!

[Kaylee-D-0]

$50 automatically to first person to get it removed.  Additional $100 for accomplishing it in a single phone call.  Super serious!  Desperate for help!  Cancelation can be done via whatever means necessary!  Please write down my number: Airbnb will remove this post again.  

call *personal information removed*

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Mark116  down is a link to her first post, for unknown reason, Kaylee signed up with another profile for her second and third posts.

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Help-Long-term-guest-renting-room-Worse-than-your-worst/...

[Mark116]

@Branka-and-Silvia0   Thanks.  Nice listing.  I've still never heard of a situation where you can't just go to the reservation and cancel it, have you?  If you're willing to take the penalties, at least at the outset, it should be easy, unless this is some new thing that Airbnb introduced in one of their updates from hell.

ETA...they must have changed it, I just went into my current guest reservation and when I clicked on cancel the message tells me it is 'too late to cancel online' and I have to call.  So, now hosts are actually prevented from cancelling a current reservation??!!!  What the Holy F???????

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Mark116  I never had to do that but I think Kaylee is right,  you can't cancel by yourself after the check-in date, you have to call Airbnb to do that. It is frustrating to get someone on the phone these days... I tried a few weeks ago and the machine told me I am 15th in line. As it was an international call it was too expensive to wait so I hang up.

[Mark116]

@Branka-and-Silvia0  I've never cancelled anyone, so maybe I have been ignorant all of these years, but I thought you, as the host and OWNER of the property, the party who is LIABLE for any issues/damages or mayhem in your neighborhood....that you could cancel a reservation at any time as long  as you were willing to deal with the penalties. 

That appears to be wrong.  We're now being forced by Airbnb to host people in our own house and cannot cancel w/out their express permission????  Which we know, and can see from this thread, that Airbnb will do almost anything to avoid making a decision like this.  How disgusting.

[Michelle53]

@Mark116 @Branka-and-Silvia0  Can one still change the reservation to put in an earlier check-out date ?  I tried that with an existing reservation and it seems to be available to me. I didn't test the "cancel" option. 

I've never altered a check-out date before - would it require the guest to approve the change ? I have only used that to change pricing before. 

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Michelle53  yes, that's possible, we have done it a few times but the other side ( in this case a guest) has to accept it. I doubt Kaylee's guest would accept it.

The same problem as Kaylee has now, each of us can have tomorrow. The host can't cancel by himself, without the guest's consent or Airbnb's help. Now, when Airbnb CS is practically unreachable this becomes a real problem. The only way out of such a situation is to call a few friends and physically kick the guests out. It is frightening, especially for female hosts 😞

[Michelle53]

@Branka-and-Silvia0   It is really serious - I'm not sure I know who I would even call. A neighbor, I suppose. 

[Mark116]

@Michelle53   Hosts should really not be put in the position of having to orchestrate a potentially dangerous confrontation with virtual strangers simply because Airbnb customer service is incompetent or worse, are trained to purposefully stall as long as possible to prevent any cancellations.  If a guest is unbalanced, argumentative, unreasonable the idea of having to force a group confrontation to get them to leave is like setting up a huge bonfire in the living room and hoping no one has a match.  Very dangerous.

[Michelle53]

@Mark116  I had a situation one time where a guy booked for himself, but when he checked in, I heard through my open window, at 1.30am,  at least two other people get out of a car and validate the address. Clearly, he brought unpaid guests to stay. 

Later, I sent him a resolution center request to pay for the additional guests, but never heard anything back. I called Airbnb to help follow up (in the days when you could actually get a helpful person on the phone).

The CS person asked why I didn't deal with it when they showed up. I said that, sInce it was 1.30am, I wasn't going to go down into the street in my pj's and have an altercation with them, since they may also have been drinking.

The CS person did follow up with the guest, who (of course) had "no idea" he had to pay for extra people, and I got my additional room charges paid. 

Good old days.....

[Mark116]

I'm still confused whether this is something new or not.  Do I have to class myself as someone who is so dumb I didn't realize that guests could stay forever if they want and no one will help me, I am dependent on the good graces of the useless CS staff?

Thank goodness we've always discouraged locals and don't do long term guests over 27 days.

But, seriously this is a big problem, because in most places the police will not assist removal unless the reservation is cancelled, and sometimes not even then. 

[Michelle53]

@Mark116  I've been going around in the "help" articles to see what I could find. 

The only thing related to it is this :-

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/166/how-do-i-cancel-a-reservation-as-a-host-of-a-place-to-stay

It doesn't say you have to call in to cancel, only if the stay is within 24 hours of check-in. 

"If the check-in time is within 24 hours, the option to cancel online may not be available—you'll need to contact us."

EDIT:

I found another article :-

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/1501/can-i-change-or-cancel-a-guests-reservation-during-the-trip

"Canceling a reservation

We don’t allow hosts to cancel a reservation mid-trip without contacting us. If something comes up and you need to cancel the remainder of a reservation, make sure you message your guest to let them know what’s going on, then contact us for help."

Since these articles don't have dates on them, it's hard to know if it's a new thing. 

My editorial:  the second article has the tone of the cancellation being the host's fault. It doesn't seem to consider what to do if the guest is dangerous/threatening/abusive/deranged/drunk or any other combination of things. 

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Mark116 @Michelle53  exactly. 

And now immagine the scenario when your drunken / intocsicated / aggressive guests sre trashing your property and police waiting for you to cancell and you are on rhe phone listening Airbnb’s directions: if you are calling for x press 1, for y press 2....you are 15th in the line waiting.... all ambasadors are busy....music.... Jesus!

[Colleen253]

@Mark116 The OP has made several posts on this issue, and in them she has said she doesn't want the guest refunded for the remaining nights after cancellation. That's why she ran into roadblocks.

Generally, I think the difficulty with this new process will lie with how long it takes to reach CS on the phone, to get a cancellation. Once you do, as long as you are willing to refund the remaining nights, there should be no obstacle to having Airbnb cancel. @Kaylee-D-0  was digging in her heels on refunding this guest. That's where her trouble lay. I think at this  point, it's become so blown up and there are now so many levels of escalation, that's it's moved into some sort of 'investigation'. 

[Sarah977]

@Colleen253 I think you may have nailed it there- her insistence on not refunding may have kicked this to another level (although she probably just wants the guest gone at this point, and the money is no longer a factor), and she also said she hung up on a rep, which I'm sure gets noted and not the path to a successful resolution.

But we also know how CS is luck-of-the-draw. She could have gotten a good, helpful rep in the first place, who took it seriously, patiently explained the cancellation/refund policy, and taken action to cancel the rest of the booking. But she didn't.

[Mark116]

I checked out @Michelle53 links, and it reads to me as if you can't cancel a reservation that is in progress without penalty unless the guests are having a party.  The extenuating circumstances doesn't cover anything like threatening behavior, use of illegal drugs or harassment.  So, you could literally be providing documentation of criminal behavior and Airbnb isn't going to cancel penalty free and you can't cancel yourself.  You could report the criminal behavior to police but not get the person out of your property.  How truly insane.