Hello,
I have received 2 recent reservation requests with either only a phone number verification or a phone and email verification. I have instabook turned on with verified government ID required so I assume that is why these come through as requests. However, when I have reached out to them asking that they please provide additional information on their profile and verify their government ID through Airbnb, I never hear back from them. I have tried to nicely explain that having this additional information is a requirement for booking and asked that they contact me if they have any questions or concerns (I even provide the link to verifying government ID through Airbnb). I have also explained that if I do not hear back from them, I will have to decline their request. As you know, we are penalized for not either accepting or declining within 24 hours so I will, eventually, have to decline their request. I typically try to contact them about 3 times before declining their request. I have had this happen before but these last 2 were within a couple of days of each other. Of course, now I am not meeting the basic requirement of accepting 88% of requests. This is also incorrect since Airbnb does not seem to factor in all of my instant bookings into this number. It seems a bit shady that they request to book but then never respond once I ask for additional information to verify their identity, etc. Since I have found this to be a problem, I try to reply instantly after their request in order to "catch" them while they might still be on the Airbnb site.
Any thoughts or suggestions on this matter?