I hope this doesn't turn into too long a read, I'll try and simplify it.
6 weeks ago, I got a booking from a gentleman. I forget whether it was instant booked, or he sent a request, and I don't know whether all that is relevant to what happened; but his booking got confirmed by me. I proceeded to give him my contact details as I do with all my guests. It was a same day booking. A few hours later, the guest messaged me to say his booking had been cancelled, and whether I had cancelled it. I said no, and asked him to contact Airbnb. I also messaged Airbnb Help to ask them what the issue was.
The guest later messaged me and told me he had contacted Airbnb and they informed him that his account was under investigation and there was some issue with his payment. Fair enough, I told him that was out of my hands, and once he had sorted his issue out with Airbnb, he was welcome to make a fresh reservation. That was the extent of my conversation with him.
I later received an email from Airbnb saying that "the payment for reservation XXXXXXXX was fraudulent, which is a violation of the Security section of the Airbnb Community Standards, which you agreed to in the Terms of Service."
It went on to say - "We realize that you may not have known that this incident violates the Airbnb Terms of Service. These situations are often known as “money mule scams” and they're not limited to Airbnb. They can happen when a guest books a reservation, but then says they will not stay at the property and requests a partial refund outside of Airbnb."
I figure that this guest was probably trying to use someone else's card to pay for his reservation (credit card fraud is common in this region of the world), and had been caught out. What I don't understand is, how does that make me a violator of Airbnb's terms? I did nothing but accept a booking request. This guest didn't ask me about refunding or paying outside the system, so I'm not sure what scam I'm supposed to have taken part in? As far as I was concerned, I was also a victim together with Airbnb, so why did they suspend my account? On what basis? Is it up to us hosts to weed out the criminals?
I have spent the past 6 weeks trying to get them to reactivate my account, and that just happened yesterday. But this experience has made me very worried that another fraudulent payer could choose my listing and then if/when he gets caught, I could get punished for it? I have 7 listings with Airbnb, am a superhost and have made significant investments to improve my guest experience - but the fact that I could just be switched off for no fault of mine has me very rattled.
They turned me back on yesterday with a warning that if this happens again, I could be kicked off the platform permanently. I've been trying to get them to give me more details on what my part was supposed to have been in this scam, but I've gotten no response so far.
Have any of you been through something like this? And what did you do?