For 3 weeks I have been at odds with Airbnb. I am new to hosting. I have just acquired a house and decided instead of renting that I would host it on Airbnb. I do the work of furnishing and beautifying the place. Spent quite a bit, maybe too much to guarantee a great hosting experience.
The first reservation is problematic. This person was injured at one airbnb and comes to my airbnb in bad shape. My instinct is to cancel his reservation for his and mine health concern. Airbnb tells me they will penalize me if I cancel the reservation. Its only $100 penalty which means nothing t me. My concern was to start with a bad footing with airbnb. So I defer to their suggestion and let teh host stay. Well, 3 weeks later, the host checks out and leaves me a house full of blood stains. Costs me over $400 to get it cleaned. Airbnb advise me that they will only reimburse me 30%, a little over $100. How fair is that? I wish I had taken the $100 penalty a the top rather then aggravation and losing well over that. I am still fighting airnbn on this so let us see.
Well today I receive a reservation to which I agree. Then looking at my payout I realize something is not adding up. I look at teh payment detail and see that for 5 days airbnb is paying me $27. For 5 days. Not per day!!!. Mind you, my minimum was set at $42 for one room. I contact Airbnb and at first they tell me its a system glitch that they will correct. Then upon furthr insistance they tell me it is not a glitch. There is a low volume and the system defaulted to a low value to encourage booking. And Airbnb threatens me again with penalty if I cancel the reservation. They say it is in fairness to the guest. Wait, how about me the host?
So I reach out to the guest and give him an option to pay an additional discounted fee or to cancel with full refund.
I reach back to airbnb and let them know, that if, in spite of the set minimum value, the system is going to do its own thing, they should notify the host at the time of reservation to let the host now the values were changed below their set threshold. There is much for us hosts to be concerned with, te platform should be predictive not counterintuitive. For me to pull up every reservation makes the process manual.
Please share your views. Thanks