@Marzena4
I can't speak for your command over English because I haven't spoken with you as reading and writing can be done by using translator as well.
I absolutely didn't want to say this because English is just a language and I don't care how your English is as long as you create value for the Airbnb community in general. But I don't think you do as you are only after replying to all the threads as fast as you can, NOT as best as you can, unfortunately. Besides, unlike you, my language of communication is Common Sense and Knowledge.
Let me tell you one thing, Airbnb is a VERY personal matter to me and when I invest my time in responding to a thread, I INVEST myself 100%. And my replies in this community is a testimony of that. I don't want to share on a public forum as far as what I do professionally and why Airbnb matters to me, but I am one of the biggest supporters of Chesky and his vision in the Valley. Again, I repeat, Airbnb is VERY personal to me.
The problem with this community is, it is litterd with hosts and as a result there is no vision or perspective from a guest's side. There is a very tiny number of guests in this community and most of them are non-active. As a matter of fact, majority of the guests don't even know that something like this community exists. And from a business model perspective, in a way, it makes sense because a host is more active with his/her listing than a guest who travels.
I remember Kirstie sending me an email some time earlier this year, after reading few of my posts here, where she had requested to create some guide which can explain aspects of being a guest. I wish I could do that but unfortunately I just don't have enough time to do that.
Most of the hosts don't realize that when you decide to become a host, you enter yourself into a business where you need to keep your emotions and sentiments aside and deal with the situation. Yes, hosts open their doors and allow guests to stay with them or let them rent the whole property, but you are charging money for that. So just like any other business, profit and loss, good and bad, and anything in between will be part of that. But as I have said this many times in other posts, with Airbnb, there is more good than bad because majority, over 90% I would say, of the guests are good.
Kirstie had mentioned "As you can see, the majority of the Community Members are hosts, and we are therefore often missing out on seeing and understanding the guest's perspective. Sometimes hosts aren't aware of how the platform works for guests as they don't travel themselves" and I couldn't agree with that more.
Airbnb has created a category and an industy. But it is more for the hosts than guests. Let me explain you why. For example, no one decides to visit London from New York, just because there is an Airbnb available in London. You get the idea. The number of travelers all over the world hasn't increased because of Airbnb. Those who stay at Airbnbs used to stay at hotels or hostels before Airbnb came in the picture. But what Airbnb has created is the community of hosts, a community of enterprenurs, a community of retired people with extra room or an additional home, and a community of people who make money because of Airbnb. There are many people all over the world who are full-time hosts and this is what they do, day in and day out. So tech-forbid (I am an atheist so I don't use God-forbid), if Airbnb goes out of business tomorrow, it will impact the hosts more than the guests.
We got a little off-track here, but anyway, I think it was necessary.
Having said that, I definitely question your command over technology.
First, Airbnb is not a news paper website where they are going to have some "outdated" guide and that too something as critical of an information as "Cancellation policies".
I mean seriously? Outdated? Airbnb is running a 24x7 business. Do you think they will have "outdated" cancellation policy page which is active? Please use some common sense if you have left any.
THE LINK IS NOT OUTDATED. IT IS UP-TO-DATE.
Before I shed some light on the technology, let me share few more links.
When I sent you the first link, I was in India, so obviously Airbnb detects that and automatically directs your URL to the local one if there is one and India does. So the link was this - https://www.airbnb.co.in/home/cancellation_policies#flexible
Now, I am in the UK, so the link is this - https://www.airbnb.co.uk/home/cancellation_policies#flexible
Before I came to the UK, I spent some time in Japan, Spain, and France, and to make sure that I prove your technology ignorance, I made sure to get the local links, so their respective links are as below.
https://www.airbnb.jp/home/cancellation_policies#flexible
https://es.airbnb.com/home/cancellation_policies#flexible
https://www.airbnb.fr/home/cancellation_policies#flexible
Do you know what is common between all these - ".com", ".in", ".co.uk", ".jp", "es.airbnb.com", and ".fr"? The cancellation policies, especially the one for "Flexible". They are all the same with "3 times a year" and "within 48 hours".
So these are the references from the main Airbnb website. Now let me share some community refrences.
1) https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/Flexible-cancellation/m-p/411514/highlight/true#M60210
2) https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/Flexible-Cancellation-Refund/m-p/445797/highlight/true#M106...
3) https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/forums/v3_1/forumtopicpage/board-id/listing-and-reservations/thr...
They all talk about 100% refund and align with all these links.
Now let me share few non-Airbnb references.
http://all-about-airbnb.com/post/150660669911/new-cancellation-policies-and-increased-host-fees
https://www.change.org/p/airbnb-s-new-cancellation-policies-are-absolutely-wrong
These people talk about the same thing as well. If you really care about the community and Airbnb in general then spend some time reading these materials.
Apparently, Airbnb introduced new cancellation policies some time in the later part of the last year. They started this with Italy and with few hosts in the San Francisco area. And then they rolled out all over the world in the beginning of this year.
Now let me explain you what may be happening from a technology perspective.
Airbnb is in 191+ countries around the world. That's actually pretty much most of the countries in the world. Now, Airbnb has some policies which are only pretty local and applies to only that specific country. The good example is tax related policies. Airbnb has "hard coded" their specific taxation policies for many countries. It is not an ideal thing to do from a coding perspective but they need to follow the law, hence, the hard coding and country specific tax policies.
So it is still possible, from whichever country you are from, the cancellation policies may be the same as before in your country. And in this case, doesn't matter which country's link you open, .com, .in, .co.uk, or any other link, they will show the policies which are applicable to your country, and not the one in the US or UK or India.
As I said before, I INVEST myself when I reply to a thread, so I don't want to keep this hanging and misguide some people and not respond to your ignorance. I could have just ignored your ignorant message and saved my 3 hours from researching and repling to this thread, but again, as I said before, Airbnb is VERY personal to me.
I rest my case!!!