cancellations

[Kathleen198]

I am a Host.  I had a guest book for April 18-24.  The following day she messaged me that she couldn't get the time off from work and asked me to cancel her reservation.  I cancelled it, no problem. 

I now see that I am not supposed to cancel their reservation because I will not be able to get superhost for a year from that cancellation.

I don't know how to get a hold of airbnb to ask them to view the messages between me and the guest to see that it was cancelled per the guests request.

What do I do.

[Matthew285 · Accepted solution]

@Kathleen198, I am sorry this has happened!

This problem occurs a lot; you are far from the first host to do this by accident.

Your best bet is to contact AirBnB support and tell them you did not know what you were doing when you did the cancellation. Show them the messages from the guest and hopefully they will understand.

(There are no guarantees they will remove the penalties, though. Be very nice to the people helping you.)

And in the future, please, please don't do any host cancellations.

Always have the guest do the cancellation.

[Kathleen198]

Matthew,

Thank you so much.  I appreciate how quickly you responded to me!  Your answer is very helpful.

I will search how to contact AirBnB support.

Kathleen

[Wendy-And-Steve0]

Hi there,

Did you get in touch with someone to fix it? The same thing happened to me for this coming CHristmas and the renter cancelled and i hit the cancell button also and now they say they are leaving that time blocked on my clendar so I cannot rent it out so I basically learn a lesson. 

[Helen3]

Call Airbnb @Wendy-And-Steve0 they will be able to see the guest asked for the cancellation and may be lenient.

[Kathleen198]

Thank you for your reply.  I was able to get ahold of someone.  They were very understanding.  I was able to clear up the matter.

[Yvonne215]

How did you get hold of them I have searched and cannot find anyway to get hold of them...thanks

[Kathleen198]

Airbnb

24 hour phone:

1-415-800-5959

1-855-424-7262

[Bob-Or-Diane0]

thank you for those numbers.   They are impossible to get hold of and they really don't care about the hosts.   I want to know how to NOT pay for the magazine they intend to send me for $5.99 or such. 

[Sandee6]

"Annually, Airbnb brings in billions of dollars in revenue, is profitable on an EBITDA basis and has more than $5.5 billion on its balance sheet", while us little people bringing in the bucks for the big cheeses are having reservations easily cancelled and we end up with empty beds and hardship to pay our bills.

This is NOT right. So everyone here is just wasting their time They Don't Care About Us.

[Gordon0]

@Sandee6 - Not sure what your comment has to do with this thread?

[Gwen-And-Brian0]

Hi, I've just had the same thing happen. I'm none too pleased because I contacted Airbnb support and they were very unhelpful. I wanted to make the guest a special offer, with an extra charge that we had agreed on for additional guests. I suggested she cancel as I couldn't make the Special Offer with a confirmed booking. She didn't cancel, so I did. I now lose my Superhost status, and Airbnb has blocked those dates out.  And now the same guest can't book those dates - she's tried!  I have not once cancelled a booking, so I'm very angry. I'll stick with my Airbnb commitments through Christmas/New Year, and then I'll register my property with another provider - Airbnb's punitive rather than helpful approach is not my style. This was their inflexible response:

Hi Gwen, this is Danah one of the Customer Experience Specialists from Airbnb. Please be advised that host penalties will apply especially if you cancel a reservation that is not under Instant Book.Kindly note that this information is written on our website:

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/990/i-m-a-host--what-penalties-apply-if-i-need-to-cancel-a-reser...

Penalties can only be waived if the reason for cancellation is because of an extenuating circumstance:
https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/1320/what-if-i-need-to-cancel-because-of-an-emergency-or-unavoid...

Unless there are extenuating circumstances, there will be no exceptions to the cancellation policy. Hope this clarifies the matter.
Kindest regards.

[Jenny247]

Hi Matthew,  you suggest getting the guest to cancel but on the 2 occasions I´ve had to cancel, I got an email from Airbnb saying the guest wants me to cancel.  I can´t see a way of getting them to cancel. They got  a full refund under my cancellation policy (and they were months away) so is the penalty I have to pay just punitive?

[Letti0]

@Jenny247 ALWAYS DECLINE! The guest doesn't want to pay the service fees. You need to call AirBnB now to see if they can reverse this. 

[Matthew285]

@Jenny247 when the guest sends you that kind of message where the guest wants *you* to cancel, decline it. 

Then send a message to the guest telling them that the *guest* needs to cancel.

Tell them if they send the message where they are asking the host to cancel, you will decline it every time because the guest needs to cancel.

Repeat until they understand.

If they don't cancel, then they never get their refund. The guest will eventually cancel.

If they try to claim something different with Airbnb support, show Airbnb support the message thread where the guest is the one wishing to cancel.