Guests booking when accommodation not available.

[Michelle1134]

I have instant book on my property.

A guest booked when the property was not available. I messaged him to say it would not be available and he requested that I cancel the booking which I did. Now I have been charged £39 for cancelling the booking but the property wasn't available to rent out anyway. How can I prevent this from happening again? This is the second time this has happened. I've triple checked my calendar and the dates are greyed out so are not showing as available. 

[Helen3 · Accepted solution]

Rather than cancelling yourself, you should have called Airbnb and told them what had happened so they could cancel the booking. It's a well known technical glitch that their system allows booking on blocked out dates.

Call them now and tell them what happened. They should remove the cancellation charge.

[Michelle1134]

Thanks so much for the advice Helen. I really appreciate it as I am a newbie to this. Now I just need to find their number.....

[Helen3]

That's easy 🙂

All the ways of contacting Airbnb including the UK number are posted in the 'Contact Airbnb' post at the top of the forum that you are posting in, currently just above yours 🙂

[Letti0]

@Michelle1134  Here you go: United Kingdom +44 203 318 1111