I've been with airbnb for over 1.5 years, and I recently thought of listing one of the rooms at my place; however, at the time of the listing, I wasn't sure if I was ready to host guests, so I turned off instant-booking entirely - that is, I checked "No one. Guests who meet Airbnb’s requirements must wait for your response." under "Who can book instantly".
Nonetheless, 4 reservations from 3 guests were instantly booked. Even worse, when I try to cancel the reservations, the website says I will be charged $50/cancellation.
So I 1) submitted a case online - I got a response from a representative saying a case manager from the trip team will be in touch soon; I never heard from anyone for over a week, 2) called in yesterday to speak to a representative, who told me that there was a glitch in the system (he confirmed that my instant-booking had always been disabled and that those 4 reservations should never have been made in the first place), and referred me to someone from the trip team; the representative from the team sounded quite confused, said he will need assistance from another person on the team, and promised me to send an email with his point of contact and to have another person from the team call me back within the next 24 hours - the email he sent was from response@airbnb.com, and no one got in touch with me in the following 24 hours, and 3) called in today to speak to a representative, who said she and her manager "promise" I will get refunds for my cancellation fees and I should thus go ahead and cancel the reservations on the site; she also said she will send me an email confirming her "promise" - I have not received any emails from her.
As you can imagine, this whole process has been very frustrating, and I would appreciate any input as to how I can best handle this. I want the listing to be removed from the site and my guests to be refunded fully. I have already reached out to the guests individually, apologizing for the confusion (although I feel that this was not my fault), but I am far from having the reservations cancelled without charges. Do you guys have any advice?
