Automated booking cancellation? confirmed booking

[Jamie206]

Recently, we had a confirmed booking with a guest. They had booked a couple weeks in advance. The other day Airbnb just cancels the booking without cause and disappeared the Guest. No explanation. Just more lost income for us. The guest did manage to send me one bewildered message just before he was ghosted from the system. Could they be testing some sort of bot?

[Alexandra316]

@Jamie206 It's happened to me previously: it's usually a trust and safety issue, and it usually indicates that it's a guest you wouldn't want anyways. Some possible issues that would cause the profile to go poof: 

- The guest has already been previously banned from the platform, but they came back and made a new profile. 

- Airbnb find that they have a criminal record (they do background checks in the US and some other places). 

- The credit card is being used fraudulently. 

It's always possible that it's a mistake on Airbnb's part, but it's entirely plausible that it's not. Airbnb won't disclose anything, but I'd just consider it a possible lucky escape and move on. 

[Jamie206]

Hard to tell, as we never get any information about the circumstances. It does feel like there has been a lot of weird things happening, that feel, as if, airbnb is testing some sort of automated system which doesn't work.

[Alexandra316]

@Jamie206 Well, we do seem to be their beta testers. Why bother making sure it works before releasing something? 

However, the last time I had this happen with a disappearing guest, they created a series of new profiles with increasingly desperate messages. A lucky escape, I feel. 

[Gillian19]

I've had this happen when Airbnb are unable to collect the second payment