Instant booking cancellation hidden penalty

[Dimitra-And-Kostas0]

hi , we have and instant booking listing and had recently ( 2 february,2019) requested to cancel a reservation were the guest had a bad review for drugs etc from a previous host. airbnb actually cancelled the reservation on our behalf and reassured us that there is no penalty for us. what  a lie!  airbnb without any explanation has put our listing under ''request to book'' and guests cannot instant book till today and we dont know when this will  be fixed. actually fro any booking request since then we receive below message

qte

.... wants to book your place

Why am I seeing this request?

We sometimes require hosts to accept a reservation request even when they have Instant Book turned on. You’re most likely to see this when you haven’t updated your calendar in a while or you’ve recently canceled a reservation.

unqte

We have sent several times requests to airbnb in order to check our issue but noone is able to give us a reasonable answer nor when the issue will be fixed

has anyone any advise for us please?

thanks

kostas

[Helen3]

Try them on their social media.

[Tim-and-Holly0]

@Dimitra-And-Kostas0:

Have you verified the instant book setting has been changed in your admin panel and, if so, tried to turn it back on?

Secondly, as the email stated, "You’re most likely to see this when... you’ve recently canceled a reservation." You recently cancelled a reservation, thus the email for your next booking. We've been hosting for over three years and have had to cancel a couple of guests due uncomfortable circumstances. I think it was after the last one that we received the same email. Guests were allowed to IB again after we accepted a reservation.

[Dimitra-And-Kostas0]

hi thanks for the reply, since the cancellation we have hosted 4 different groups already and the issue still exists. our last 7 reservations are ''request to book'' as well.  In booking setting IB was always on. even now its on but we cannot accept and IB guest.  they told us that after 72 hours of our last hosting it will be fixed but nothing. we have received from thier support at least 5 different possibilities for the problem but none was correct.

[Jennifer1421]

@Dimitra-And-Kostas0 
This sneaky penalty has happened to many hosts, regardless of whether ABB cancelled the booking on the host's behalf or not.
I was in this Instant Book jail for 5 weeks for having a 3rd party booking cancelled. CS can't (or won't) change this, stating that "it's the algorithm that does it, and it can't be manually changed".

Recommendations from CS are to be active within your listing (updating calendar, pricing, photos, etc. daily), but I suspect the only way out is actually to accept every request that comes your way (whether you are comfortable or not) until you meet some unspecified stat within the algo. Apparently you are "reassessed every 7 days", but there is no information as to what criteria you need to meet in order to be switched back to IB.
The time frame others have reported seems to be anywhere between 3 - 6 weeks.

[Dimitra-And-Kostas0]

thank you very much Jeniffer , we thought that this is like that.  so actually even you are IB there is no penlaty free cancellation and airbnb lies on this issue!

[Susan653]

Yup, I was kicked off IB for at least a month when I last canceled a reservation. I'm about to cancel another (which I hate to do, but the person drunk-called me last night and has only provided a photo of a dog). Airbnb will sit me in the corner just as guests are shopping for our upcoming high season here. So much for "no penalty."

[Susan17]

Ah but this is not a penalty, according to Airbnb's usual unique twist on things @Susan653 - it's actually an incentive, to "encourage" hosts never to cancel, under any  circumstances. Yaaaay! Just what we always wanted... 

[Sarah977]

@Susan653  Reminds me of some bully dad giving his son a beating, saying "Believe me, this hurts me far more than it hurts you."

[Ann489]

@Dimitra-And-Kostas0 

Happened to me twice now after I asked Airbnb to cancel two reservations I was not comfortable with(this happened over the course of a year).  Each time, my instant-book was disabled for about three weeks.  I honestly didn't care because I received plenty of booking requests regardless.  It gave me the opportunity to do some extra "vetting" of my potential guests.  😉

[Susan653]

@Susan17 , LOL--yes, I feel so incentivized!

I actually just spoke to a customer service rep about this (as she canceled a whacked-out instant booking on my behalf). According to her, I shouldn't have been booted from Instant Book when I had customer service cancel that booking last fall. She said that when you speak to customer service and they cancel the booking for you, it shouldn't go into the penalty bin. She said it sometimes happens anyway with hosts who haven't been active in a long time, but I don't fall into that category and she couldn't figure out why it happened to me. *shrug*  Ah well, at least she tried. 

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Dimitra-And-Kostas0 

as others already said it happens I think from September last year. It doesn't matter if you cancel or ABB rep cancels, it doesn't matter on whose behalf and someone said it happened to him after few of his guests canceled as well.

This restrictive system reminds me of certain past regimes  ( emphasis on PAST )