Guest cancellation Exploit

Elliot131
Level 1
New York, NY

Guest cancellation Exploit

There is an exploit guests are using to get around and avoid paying cancellation fees by doing chargebacks on their card. When they do this they get their full refund and Airbnb cancels their reservation and the hosts gets nothing. Your dates are booked for a period of time and when the guest does a chargeback it makes it harder for the host to find a last minute booking. This is 100% Airbnb's fault and they don't reimburse you anything.

2 Replies 2
Lawrene0
Level 10
Florence, Canada

I can't remember where I found the news article, @Elliot131 , but I did read a month or so ago that, yes, guests do this (there are blogs/sites that suggest it to them), but if they try it a second time, their account is suspended. The system puts up with it only once. 

That doesn't help individual hosts who are their first-time victims, but since chargebacks on credit cards are possible, I'm not sure what else Airbnb could do. 

Thank you for your response. Please share feedback about this to airbnb if you have not already. They are a publicly traded company and can afford to reimburse hosts when this happens. If they can allow this to keep happening its on them.