Is there a way for a guest to change the credit card they used to make the reservation?

[James-And-Heather0]

I have a guest that made a reservation and now they want to change the credit card they used. Do I have to cancel the reservation and have them re-book?

[Jimmy36]

@James-And-Heather0

Hello,

First of all, you are such an awesome host that you are concerned about this issue because it's your guest's issue, not yours. Your guest can just call Airbnb should your guest wants to change something about the payment, because guest pays Airbnb, not you.

Anyway, Airbnb charges as soon as a guest makes a reservation. So if your guest wants to change the credit card and wants the payment for your listing to be charged on a different credit card then there are two potential options. 

1) Yes, you can cancel the reservation and the money will be refunded to your guest's credit card in full, considering there is still enough time between now and the arrival date of your guest. And then your guest add a new credit card and pay with the new card for a new booking that will be made. 

2) Your guest can cancel the reservation as well if your cancelation policy is flexible, moderate, etc., by which your guest will be refunded in full. And subsequently, your guest can add a new card and make a new booking. 

My adivse is to let your guest take care of this with Airbnb. Either way, involve Airbnb because the booking has already been made. This is just to protect yourself. 

I hope this helps.

Thank you!

[James-And-Heather0]

Thank you for the advice!

[Marzena4]

@James-And-Heather0 My advice is to tell the guest it's pure nonsense to do that. The fee for airbnb will not be returned to them... So unless you win a prize for using another card, it doesn't seem reasonable.

[Jimmy36]

@Marzena4

That is not true.

Whether the service fees for Airbnb is refunded or not, depends on the cancelation policy - Flexible, Moderate, Strict, etc. and few other factors. 

So for example, if the policy set by the host is Flexible, the Airbnb service fee is refundable up to 3 times a year within the stipulated period of time. 

Below is the link which explains in detail about cancellation policies. 

https://www.airbnb.co.in/home/cancellation_policies#flexible

Thank you!

[Marzena4]

@Jimmy36 That stipulated period of time of yours is 48 hours and I doubt it was the case. Hence, I wrote "will" and "them" referring to this particular case. In no word did I attempt to state it was Airbnb's general policy. 

But if you're so hard at it, there may be other costs as well - bank fees and conversion rate. And I guess you will pop up with a solution here.

Thank you

[Jimmy36]

@Marzena4

My reply was based on facts, not based on assumptions. 

You assumed that it would be more than 48 hours already. Which very well may be the case, but you need to understand that this thread is not just for this specific user. In the future, there may be someone else, host or guest, who may be facing the issue and can refer to the thread. 

And when they read "The fee for airbnb will not be returned to them", it implies that Airbnb doesn't refun their service fees at all. Had you mentioned anything about 48 hours or 3 times a year thing along with your message then that would have been more helpful. Because that provides more clarity and helps other to gain knowledge about the policies by Airbnb. 

Simply writing a 3-4 lines message is very easy, but understanding the context and providing a concrete clarification to the issue which can also be helpful in the future to others, that takes some thinking, critical thinking.   

[Marzena4]

@Jimmy36 Instead of reading and linking an outdated guide from the Indian domain, go to the .com source: https://www.airbnb.com/home/cancellation_policies

which reads:

Flexible: Full refund 1 day prior to check in, minus service fees

• Cleaning fees are always refunded if the reservation is canceled before check-in.
• The Airbnb service fee is non-refundable.
• Accommodation fees (the total nightly rate you're charged) are refundable in certain circumstances as outlined below.
• If there is a complaint from either party, notice must be given to Airbnb within 24 hours of check-in.
• Airbnb will mediate when necessary, and has the final say in all disputes.
• A reservation is officially canceled when the guest clicks the cancellation button on the cancellation confirmation page, which they can find in Dashboard > Your Trips > Change or Cancel.
• Cancellation policies may be superseded by the Guest Refund Policy, extenuating circumstances, or cancellations by Airbnb for any other reason permitted under the Terms of Service. Please review these exceptions.
• Applicable taxes will be retained and remitted.

Look at that point 2 - is my command of English not enough to understand that? Or... 

[Jimmy36]

@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

https://www.reddit.com/r/AirBnB/comments/546iz2/airbnb_is_changing_its_cancellation_policies_and/

https://it.surveymonkey.com/r/Preview/?sm=xkCPhOFASyV05O7os8zQxuqxJ_2Bi2uQ6DpBjloQlIQGs_2BWEpgA6jrA7...

https://cityrelay.com/new-airbnb-policies/

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!!!

[Marzena4]

@Jimmy36 I feel really for your frustration, but how is it possible that you didn't notice that the contents of those particular national sites were being changed at that time? I pasted for you what I read at that time, and it WAS an outdated content because the cancellation policy was only recently changed. Compare my paste and the content of the linked site now. Can you see the difference?

And stop pouring all kinds sewage on hosts. Hosts are active in the CC because it is hosts who care. A vast majority of guests' religion is consumptionism. The more, the cheaper and so on. They come, stay, leave not even talking to a host. They can't even be arsed to write reviews. How can you expect them to be active in the CC? They mostly come when there is an issue. I haven't seen a guest here to come and just friendly talk to others. Or maybe vent their hatred. It is the Help section... 

[Marit-Anne0]

@James-And-Heather0

This is really not your concern at all. Ask the guests to contact airbnb.