Washington DC cancellations

Answered!
Anthony608
Level 10
Silver Spring, MD

Washington DC cancellations

I was directly affected by the cancellation policy of AirBNB for Washington DC in that two week long reservations were cancelled.  I had received a general message beforehand that this was going to happen, but nothing about the specific reservations themselves - they were simply cancelled on my calendar without individual messages.  I don't know how or if the guests were notified, but one contacted me angrily wanting to know what was going on.  He was from another country and I think there had been a language barrier, and he seemed to understand that this was AirBNB, and not me who had cancelled the room, after I sent him several messages.

 

There is nothing on my account yet about reimbursement, the reservations are simply gone as if they never happened.  The AirBNB general message stated reimbursement would be issued.  I guess we will have to see how, when, and if they follow through with this.  Has anyone been impacted by this as well?

1 Best Answer
Katie
Community Manager
Community Manager
London, United Kingdom

Hi @Anthony608 @Alvaro329,

 

I just wanted to come back to your query on when reimbursements will happen: you can expect payments to roll out by the end of January. 

 

In the meantime you can find more info on the Captiol Safety Plan here

 

I hope this helps 😊

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26 Replies 26

So they've actually hidden your listing? I would have thought they would just cancel any existing bookings and block out any days around the inauguration. What if someone wants to book now for February or March? That seems really unfair to basically snooze your listing. Especially if there are other listings there that are still active. @Anthony608

@Sarah977 - No, I had filters on just for the troubled week ahead.  When I redid the search for February, all the room listings were back.  Still, I bet that one guy whose room is still listed this upcoming week doesn't know how lucky he is.  Strange, he has no books for months out, according to his calendar and his place looks to be a good price in a nice area.  Perhaps the pandemic, as that certainly is affected us here as well with the bookings.

@Sharon1014- I think this might be a bit different from COVID since this was a non-voluntary cancellation made by AirBNB.  The wording of the announcement, that sounds like just the way someone wrote it and not in a nefarious way to trick people.  There is already another site, quoting AuirBNB which simply says "hosts will be reimbursed for lost income" so I guess we will see.  AirBNB would catch hell  if they didn't reimburse hosts.

Katie
Community Manager
Community Manager
London, United Kingdom

Hey @Anthony608 @Alvaro329, just to confirm, you will receive the full reservation payout amount. 

 

@Sharon1014 @Sarah977 

@Katie- Thank you, that's good to know.  AirBNB has always taken care of issues for me.  I've had an unfair rating removed and a reimbursement for a guest who destroyed a bedspread, two problems which AirBNB fixed easily.  There has been a lot of chatter online about how sometimes the company is not nice to hosts, but I haven't experienced that yet. 

 

In fact, the only issue which AirBNB didn't fix was a guest who stole money from my house once, and AirBNB stated that I had to contact the guests through dispute resolution before AirBNB could do anything.  That obviously wouldn't have worked, contacting someone who just stole from you trying to get them to admit to it.  Not only would they never do so, but this person was somewhat local and could have easily come back to the house and caused an issue.  In that case (it was $85 stolen from a locked cupboard) I just let the situation go since I understood AirBNB's point of view.  Guests who commit premeditated crimes against hosts, and get away with it, is a broader issue which AirBNB has struggled with over the years.

Lizzie
Former Community Manager
Former Community Manager
London, United Kingdom

Hey @Anthony608@Alvaro329,

 

Lovely to meet you both. I hope your week has gone well.

 

Further to what @Katie has already replied to you here, I just wanted to update you on the timeline for hosts receiving the cancelled DC booking payment, as I've been following this on our side. All the payments to hosts have now been issued and so depending on your payment method, it could take between 3-7 days to reach you (but hopefully much sooner).

 

I hope this helps. 

 

Lizzie


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@Lizzie @Katie Yes, thank you for taking care of us!  I received my payment last week

Lizzie
Former Community Manager
Former Community Manager
London, United Kingdom

Great to hear. Thanks so much for the update @Anthony608 🙂

 

Enjoy your week. 

 

Lizzie


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Looking to contact our Support Team, for details...take a look at the Community Help Guides.

@Anthony608 @Joseph-And-Katie0 @Sarah977 @Katie @Lizzie, I’m still attempting to sort this out, so this thread has been very useful. I had a guest book a stay with us for inauguration week in D.C., and due to the violence at the Capitol and the ensuing cancellation of inauguration events, his stay with us was terminated on 12 January. On 13 January, AirBnB sent an email that all reservations in the D.C. area would be canceled and that hosts would be reimbursed for any canceled stays after 6 January. So, I expected I’d receive a pay out, since the terminated reservation fell within that time window. However, no reimbursement ever arrived. In talking with AirBnB, I’m still seeking a resolution. It seems, to me, that since we had a reservation in D.C. canceled due to the violence at the Capitol, I would receive a payout. For some reason, though, AirBnB agents have told me they need to look into it further.  @Joseph-And-Katie0, my situation sounds very similar to yours. How did you get your situation resolved, if it was resolved?

They refused to honor their commitment to both guest and host. They invited me to have a lawyer send a complaint to their legal department. I intend to do so.

@Joseph-And-Katie0 I fear you may be out of luck here. A similar thing happened with the original COVID cancellations whereby if people too the initiative and cancelled before Airbnb got their act together there was no compensation. It just shows not to act too quickly in case Airbnb come up with a different solution.

Lizzie
Former Community Manager
Former Community Manager
London, United Kingdom

Hello @Julie3825,

 

Nice to meet you. Sorry to hear this is still on-going for you. 

 

I'll highlight this to a colleague of mine and see if we might be able to get a bit of movement. 

 

Speak to you soon.

 

Thanks,
Lizzie


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Thank you for the last 7 years, find out more in my Personal Update.


Looking to contact our Support Team, for details...take a look at the Community Help Guides.