Surely there must be a cut off time that the guest can cancel on the day of arrival to then claim extenuating circumstances in the current Coronavirus chaos?
I got a cancellation yesterday evening around 9pm (about the time - the guest had written to say he was arriving). He wrote in his initial message he was coming to London to attend an event and that he would be at Heathrow at 7.10 pm and would arrive at ours about 9pm. His cancellation came through at 8.45 pm - I had turned down an offer to go to a work re-union so I could wait in for the guest. His cancellation message said "due to the current coronavirus situation in Italy I have decided to cancel my trip (to avoid quarantine or similar nuisances) I have submitted an extenuating circumstances claim to air bnb" .
This was almost 2 hours after his plane was due to land, never mind take off from original departure destination? So he knew hours beforehand, but he gets a full refund, and I get zero even though I have a strict cancellation policy.
I am livid, I missed a ten year work re-union to sit in and wait for this totally inconsiderate guest. So I decided to do some research, turns out his social media accounts have him living in Leeds currently and Manchester in past. He was born on an Italian Island miles away from the affected area but all social media accounts states he lives in UK now. He may have been intending to fly out to Italy afterwards but there was no mention of that in our correspondence. So I suspect he got an offer to stay with a friend whilst he went to the event and decided to use the current crisis as an excuse.
Anyway customer services tell me there is no time limit for guest to cancel and they can cancel whenever they want...... yes I KNOW that but surely there should be some onus on the guests to cancel as soon as they know they are NOT going to make it, if they intend to claim extenuating circumstances.
Sorry RANT Over....... this so annoys me as over the weekend I toyed with cancelling a guest as she was coming from near Veneto (one of the regions affected)...she was just over the border in Trieste but pretty close. Anyway my 84 year old mother had booked a train ticket to come and stay with me in my house to celebrate her 84th birthday over the weekend. We let out two private rooms in our house. The guest was so excited about coming to visit her son, I couldn't let her down. I didn't want to put my mother at risk, as she has had pneumonia two years ago and has a weakness in her lungs, so I booked a ticket and went to mums for a night and left hubby to check in the guest. I am not seeing my mother again for a number of weeks so there would be no risk of passing on anything.
I have Italians scheduled to arrive on Thursday - I think am going to send them a message checking that their flights are on schedule.
I have had other cancellations this month for extenuating circumstances, from chinese guests. There must be a better way to deal with all these cancellations..... what are the other platforms doing i.e. booking, VRBO etc. doing? Why aren't guests given travel credit - or the option to stay/rebook at a later date.
Phew feel better for getting that off my chest.