How long does a guest have to respond to a request for additional payment?

[Huma0]

Hello, I hosted a couple of girls recently who arrived hours after my check in window because they had missed their train. The train was not delayed or cancelled, they simply missed it because they were being disorganised. When I found out, I messaged, reminding the guest of the late check in fee that is stated in my house rules. She asked how much it is (already stated on the listing) and I told her again. She said nothing more about it.

I have sent a request for the fee, even giving the guest a discount just to be kind. However, I have had no response from her at all and she was always quick to respond to messages whenever she needed anything. My question is, how long does the guest have before they must accept or decline? At what point should I escalate this to Airbnb, or do I not need to do that, i.e. will Airbnb deal with it if she doesn't respond in time? I am not sure because guests usually pay for any agreed fees straight away.

[Huma0]

@Helen3

I'm afraid I made another error on this one as I missed the deadline to leave her a review. I was definitely planning on giving her a thumbs down as this was only one of a number of issues with this girl and her friend. However, I had asked the Airbnb rep if they would remove a retalitory review if the guest left one. They took so long to get back to me that it I had missed the review deadline by one day.

I really, really wish I had left a review now.

[Helen3]

Oh dear lesson learned @Huma0 they are normally good at sending reminders.

Airbnb will never confirm to you that they will remove a retalitory review. Only if it breaks the T&Cs for their reviews.

[Huma0]

@Helen3

It wasn't that I didn't receive the reminders. I was just hoping to get an answer back from the Airbnb rep before leaving a review.

Sure, the reps seem to give out the standard answer now that the review doesn't break the T&Cs or that it was the "guest's experience" no matter whether the review is accurate or not. However, I had a review removed a few months ago for being inaccurate and retalitory, not for breaking the content policy. I think it depends on the case manager you get. Some are more sympathetic than others and in that case, the rep removed the ratings as well as the review!

[Huma0]

Also, I tried to find out what the Airbnb policy actually is on this as sometimes CS reps seem ill informed about policy (I don't know how many times I had to explain the 88% Acceptance Rate criteria who kept insisting that hosts aren't penalised in any way for declining requests) but couldn't find anything on the subject in the Help centre.

Does anyone know or can they provide a link to any info on the Airbnb website about this?

[Gerry-And-Rashid0]

@Huma0

Hi - lovely place and I see you do mention a late check in fee. However, I think you need to clarify it. I am not clear if it is £5 or more than that. So if I say I will arrive at 12.30pm you will have someone there from let's say, 12.20 to 1.20 for £5?

Good luck with getting payment however as it's unlikely AirBnB will chase for such a small amount. However you can of course reflect it professionally in your review by saying something like: nice guests however they did not pay for agreed extras. Also give them a thumbs down.

[Huma0]

Thank you @Gerry-And-Rashid0

The charge is per hour for each hour after the check in window. Okay, I will try to clarify it on the listing, as I can see why it's a bit vague there. I was trying to keep the word count down as my house rules are already very long!

However, the guest knew exactly how much she would be paying before she arrived. She asked me and I broke it down for her in £s hour by hour. My mistake was not sending the request straight away.

Oh well, lesson learnt. I never had an issue with this before. Either guests were slightly late and I just waived the fee or they themselves offered to pay it before I even needed to ask.

I don't really care about the money, it's more the principal of the thing. These guests had no concern about keeping me waiting until the early hours and then proceeded to bang around making noise until around 3am (realised the next day this was them turning a shared bathroom into a laundry) and also checked out two hours late.

Hotels take guests' credit card details on arrival so that they can automatically charge them for unpaid extras and I assumed that Airbnb did the same, but it seems to me that a guest can just ignore a payment request and there's nothing the host can do about it. 

[Gerry-And-Rashid0]

Hi @Huma0

The only thing I can suggest is telling the guests that you have sent through an updated reservation and they must accept the revised price before they check in. Most travellers can easily do this on their phone etc...

It's annoying when people are dishonest - I don't mind a silly mistake, but in this case it's just bad behaviour

[Huma0]

@Gerry-And-Rashid0

That's a good idea. I hadn't thought of that. The only thing is that if you add on the extra fee the reservation amount, won't Airbnb automatically charge them extra guest fees?