Hello fellow Airbnb enthusiasts,
I am currently renting a place long term (August 30 until November 30) and I have come across some issues. I contacted support but they appear to be dodging my questions and resort to copy and paste. So I was hoping that one of you guys could give me some advice or explain the things that I am missing to me.
The situation:
We moved to a different country and rented long-term for 3 months, because we want to have a place in the beginning from where we can look for a permanent place to live. Now, we have just found such a place (which was really hard), but we have to move in November 1 (so one month before our check-out date). Ultimately, we want to stay until November 2.
The obvious solution in our case was to contact the host first. But she first got mad, then offered us a private contract without Airbnb, and then got mad again when we politely declined.
So, we looked up the long-term cancellation policy, where it states the following:
"If the guest books a reservation and decides to cancel the reservation during their stay, the guest must use the online alteration tool in order to agree to a new checkout date. Regardless of the checkout date chosen, the guest is required to pay the host for the 30 days following the cancellation date, or up to the end date of the guest’s original reservation if the remaining portion of the original reservation is less than 30 days."
So if I understand correctly, I can change the reservation now ("cancellation date"). Note that this is still 36 days prior to November 2 ("new checkout date"). So we should be able to change the reservation, pay for the remainder until November 2, and then move out.
I tried to do this, but instead of getting cheaper, the total price would go up by € 1,300. This is even more than one month's rent at our current rate! So, for staying one month shorter, for which I should be refunded, I would have to pay even more?! This does not sound correct to me. The long-term discount should still apply (we are still staying for a total of two month and the threshold is 28 days), but apparently our host has increased her rates tremendously.
This is the point where I contacted support, but without getting anywhere. I did not receive any answer to my questions (which by now I have already enumerated to let them stick out of the text, without success). The closest that I came to a conclusion was when I received a copy&paste from the paragraph in italics above -- which I actually had sent to her/him one message before, and the advice to settle everything personally with our host. Well..., our host's offer is to allow us to move out earlier, but with 0 refund.
One last thing that came to my mind was cancelling the entire rest of the trip now, move to the new apartment immediately and get a refund for the time after 30 days from now. This would still be more than a month worth of refund (around € 1.000)! But when I try to do that on the website, it states that I would only get € 70 back.
How can this be possible? Am I severley missing something in the cancellation policy? I have traveled and moved with Airbnb dozens of times and I never had this issue and I have always been satisfied with the support, but this time everything turns out to be a nightmare 😕
I hope that somebody of you guys can help me out with this. At least to tell me where I go wrong or reassure me that I am right.
Thanks already in advance!!!!
-Florian
