Guest unable to make payment to Airbnb

[Peter29]

I have a potential guest who has been trying to make payment to Airbnb in order to confirm the reservation. Apparently this has not been successful and her booking keeps getting canceled. She has offered to pay offline but I have declined. Has anyone experienced this before?

[Norul-Maisarah0]

yes me too. im frustrated. this is my second time use airbnb. it used to be easy. im so so so **bleep** frustrated! 

[Georgia40]

I'm currently facing this problem. Unable to make payment. Not sure what's wrong. 

[Nurten0]

Check the post code written in your bank account. The postcode you are entering must match with the one in your bank account.

[Cathy157]

I have had a similar problem, so frustrating and because I'm still new to hosting I wanted to go all out to ease things for the guest.  I saw that booking was cancelled and when I contacted the guest (who was already en route) they didnt know about it and seemed quite distressed.  They then booked again, and this was cancelled too.  I assumed cancelled by airbnb but it could have been cancelled by the guest, I am unable to tell which it was.  They said that the amount had now been deducted from their account and begged to be allowed to stay for the planned time and then would rebook once they had been refunded and in this way i would receive my payment.  After a month of backwards and forwards I have still not received any booking from the.  Clearly I have been scammed.  My question is how do I tell whether a guest has cancelled or airbnb has cancelled the transaction.  And is there some way that these scammers (if this is what my 'guests' were) can be flagged? 

[Marit-Anne0]

@Cathy157

Your message is not 100% clear to me. Did you actually let them stay without a confirmed booking ? If so, the solution is simple; never let anybody stay without a confirmed booking.  It will show as confirmed in "your reservations".  

It does not really matter who cancels - a cancelled reservation is a cancelled reservation and will show as such in "your reservations".  

A pending reservation due to payment issues or verification issues will expire and after expiration show as cancelled in "your reservations".  

A confirmed reservation will show as confirmed in "your reservations" and will have an unique booking number.  Then and only then do you have a reservation and you will get paid 24 hours after check-in.  Do not fall for any sob stories and do not honour anything pending.  

If you have correspondance with these "guests", you will have access to their profile in this message.  Once accessed, you can flag their profile.

[Cathy157]

Thanks for your reply - yes, I did let them stay (it was a family who were already driving to my place).  I wasn't the one to open up for them but the person who did said they seemed like a nice family.  And so we learn from our mistakes!  I have found the little flag next to the person's profile and hopefully they won't be able to do this kind of thing to the next person. 

[Alan137]

I have tried multiple cards as well as paypal to book a reservation today. The Airbnb app simply says "error" with no explanation.  I had this same experience a few months ago; the host allowed me to pay upon arrival. I have noticed that in both cases, I was trying to pay using fund sources in the US while I am physically located in the host's country. Is it possible that there is some security issue when the app detects that my IP address is not in the same country where my funds are located?

[Marit-Anne0]

@Alan137

I would guess issues with the app is the reason.  There was an update to the app (android) as late as yesterday - do you have the latest version ?

[Alan137]

OK, I think I figured it out. Since I am currently in the host's country Philippines, I set my preferences to display in Philippine pesos. But when I tried to pay, it was in USD.  It appears that the payment routine was trying to do a double currency conversion and croaked, because when I set my preferences to display USD instead of PHP, it accepted my payment.  

Hope this helps somebody else.

[Alan137]

Make sure your payment is displayed in the same currency as your source of funds.

[Minerva7]

OMG! You literally helped my life! You solved my problem. I was trying desperately to make a payment but it was failed multiple times and about to give up until I saw your post. Thank you so much!!!

[JeanChristophe6]

wow thanks a lot...i think it s PHP currency that bugs...i was using PHP and BDO card, but it couldn t go through, furthermore the payments could only be done by card, when i swapped PHP to EURO i had then the paypal option and i could pay with my filipino card.

My french HSBC premier card wasn t working too, of course with that PHP setting

i was so frustrated and then upset when i was reading here we were scammers in some answers....

[Sivasakthi0]

@Cathy157

not all are scammers cathy. i myself a female with another female friend, we had to sleep int ehcar for the night when we had serious life threatening issue with the previous airbnb host place, no the host, but it was a shared place, and there was a guy threatening us. so thats past, adn we had to sleep in car, but airbnb had really faulty payment problems that we could not book in other place which was very disturbing. whcih is actually. i have been trying to book sicne last night and today i tried clearing caches and cookies and log out log in and even remove and clarify with bank and airbnb and re add it back the account detaisl, both wasy was clear, and i made booking, the payment has been succesffully deducted but booking has been failed, and now i have to move out on 18th and, airbnb take 5-15 working days to refund the money back to us which is very stresfull. we made a payment last week which was MYR550 and now this week MYR1000. now both is going to take time to reach back to us, and that not all hosts can keep the dates available for us, because they want their confirmation by making succesful payemtn, and i seriously hope we dont end up sleeping in the car like last time we did. i ahve never had problem to this extned until i ahve started to lvie on my own. i miss my family and most importantly, im seriously hoping if there can be good people like who can help out. what they did was definitely wrong and i apologize on behalf of them since they were guests like any of us. but i wish we could meet more good people like you in Malaysia.. sorry for the scam and loss you had by this guest, but god blesses you for the good heart you had..

[David1591]

One other situation I'm going through now is that the "Payment Pending" message has been there for more than 3 days. If there really IS a 24 hour window, it should have released the dates and cancelled the attempt. IF that had happened, the guest could have re-requested the dates.

Something is broken. And I'm not able to fill the rental for the 5 days of our town's annual jazz festival.

Not happy.

[Sivasakthi0]

hi