what is booking on airbnb?

[Elaine772]

is it when host accepted my reservation or when i requested to book?

[Sarah977]

@Elaine772  A request is exactly that- you are requesting to book and the host has to accept or decline. Only if they accept will you be charged by Airbnb and then have a confirmed booking.

[Elaine772]

i asked what booking is because there is no link on this site explaining it. while what you telling is most logical explanation. my question was about booking and 48 hour free cancellation countdown that starts from the time booking made.  according to support it is from time of me requesting to book

Elaine:

 so countdown starts from time i requested to book?

 Support 4:40 PM

Yes, Elaine.

i requested to book (>30 days booking, 45 days from now), host took 30 hours to accept. i was not able to cancel using website while i was long before my 48 hours was up. 3 hours with support and pleading with host to allow me to cancel, i got my money back. 

[Sarah977]

@Elaine772  Yes, I read through a bunch of their cancellation policy info and you are correct, it just says you have 48 hrs after booking, but doesn't explain what "booking" actually means.

And the CS rep could have given you incorrect info, they seem to mostly be clueless and often just spout things that aren't correct.

But I don't quite understand why you had to beg the host to refund you. If you had 48 hours to cancel, that the host didn't respond for 30 hours is still well within the free cancellation period.

This would have been a long term reservation and if the check-in date was less than 28 days in the future, the 48 hour free cancellation period doesn't apply.

Long term

This policy applies to all stays of 28 days or longer and overrides your standard cancellation policy for those stays.

• To receive a full refund, guests must cancel within 48 hours of booking, and the cancellation must occur at least 28 days before check-in.

[Elaine772]

clueless rep is this site signature. not sure if this started after this site became public company.  i never had any problems prior to this event. my 48 hours from time i requested to book passed when i decided to cancel. but i was long before my 48 hours was up  after host accepted my reservation. i could not cancel on website. so it took me many hours to cancel with a rep who had to go thru multiple levels to get cancellation. at the same time i was sending messages to host begging him to allow to cancel. i dont know what went behind the scene.  if he agreed or it was just support decision. all i know 30 hours passed from time i requested to book and host agreed, and i was under assumption that i have 48 hours from time host accepted, but it simply did not work like that. i made multiple requests for link explaining what booking is for purposes of 48 countdown in reservation that is more than 30 days and more than 30 days in advance. i cant get it and nobody can. is it part of revenue generation  scheme? i dot know . al i know i will never request to book anything in a future

[Huma0]

@Elaine772 

From what I understood, the 48 hour cancellation period starts from the moment you book, not from the moment you send a request to book. I could be wrong, but I did not understand it to be from the time you request as, until the host accepts, the booking is not confirmed. I could be wrong though...

However, something I don't understand about your post is you said the host took 30 hours to accept. I don't think that is possible. The host has only 24 hours to accept or decline a booking before the booking request expires. It is in the interest of the host to do this because their response rate will go down if they don't and this can affect Superhost status.

Therefore, I don't think it's likely the host accepted after 30 hours. They would not have been able to unless the request expired and you sent a new one.

[Elaine772]

i will review all my communications with host who is superhost and post sequence as far as timeline.  but i am telling you with 100 percent of certainty, i was long before 48 hours was up from time host accepted my request to book and i was not able to cancel on my own. and it took 3 hours on a phone with rep to cancel. 

[Sarah977]

@Elaine772  Back when Covid first hit, and Airbnb basically cancelled all reservations, they also fired thousands of CS reps. Then they farmed out customer service to a third party provider, whose employees are for the most part clueless, give out incorrect info and advice and seem to be totally uninformed about Airbnb policies. You pretty much have to find the appropriate policy and spoon feed it to them.

And it's no different for hosts than guests- hosts sometimes spend an unbelievable amount of time trying to get CS to deal with something that should be simple and straightforward.

[Huma0]

@Elaine772 

Exactly what @Sarah977 said.

In a lot of cases, I find the only way to get anywhere is to directly quote the policy back them. It makes it much harder for them to fob you off with misinformation.

The problem here, is where does it officially state that the 48 hour period is from when the guest requests or from when the host accepts said request?

Does anyone know where to find this information in Airbnb's policy statements? 

[Sarah977]

@Huma0  I read through several pages of Airbnb's help articles regarding cancellations, and couldn't find any explanation of what "booking" referred to.  Obviously if it was an IB booking, it would reasonably be from the time the guest booked, but for a request, it's totally unclear. It sure doesn't seem like it should be from when the guest submits a request, because a request isn't a booking until it's accepted.

If Airbnb claims that the 48 hrs. starts from when the guest submitted the request, and a host takes a long time to respond, that seems quite unfair to the guest.

It's an interesting question @Elaine772 posed, one I've never seen brought up before.

[Elaine772]

well corporations are not about being fair, they are about generating maximum profit. and this site profits generated from service fees paid by guests. hosts pay very little in service fees. this site ipo lockup expired just recently for class a shares. not sure when other class expires.  may be i have isolated case related to some technical issue. i have no way of knowing unless more people post their experience.  But there is fact that noone can solve is link on this site explaining what booking is for 48 hour countdown. and that link clearly missing. needless to say i had multiple questions to this site support and most of them  say 48 hour starts from time host accepted booking, but one reply was from time i requested to book. the only way to this site to do right thing is to post link that member can read to support is to post feedback, file complaint with state this site incorporated (ca?), file complaint with financial protection in dc.  i could be out of thousands of dollars if i could not get free cancellation.  i was within 48 hours, i got address after host accepted my reservation, went there, had security chase after me, decided place is not for me. went to website, ask to cancel and got nowhere on my own.

[Elaine772]

sorry i meant to reply to you but i replied to Sarah

[Huma0]

@Elaine772 

To reply to someone here, you need to tag them. Use the @ and then start typing their name. A drop down menu should appear and then you can choose the person you want to reply to. If their name doesn't appear in the menu, you can either manually type it in or copy and paste it from previous replies.

That way, the person you are addressing will be alerted that you have responded to them.

[Elaine772]

i doubt reps this site fired any different from reps they hired. just CSR contract to lowest bidder. just pretend there is support. In reality it is support from hell

[Sarah977]

@Elaine772  Yes, they actually were different, which isn't to say that they were ever great. But years ago Airbnb used to be much more supportive of hosts, and when you called, you would often get a rep in San Francisco, or if a host was based in Europe, from their Irish office. They weren't third party reps- they were, in fact, directly employed by Airbnb. Many of those reps were actually well-versed in Airbnb policy. Now it seems that all calls and messages are shunted to the Phillipines.