Cancelled booking due to non collection of payment by Airbnb

[Gillian186]

I'm a first time host. I had a booking confirmed in October for December. By confirmed I mean according to Airbnb's terms of having received full payment as indicated on their confirmation as the payout amount due to me. I have been communicating with my guest and all has been in order until last week when she informed me that the balance had not gone through. I was totally surprised as I was under the impression she had paid in full. Upon contacting support I was informed that the payment department had set up a 50% pay now and 50% pay later as an experiment. Nowhere and at any time had Airbnb informed me as the host that this was the case. My guest has been struggling to pay the balance as per the Airbnb's terms and conditions she could not pay me the balance directly. She is due to arrive December 26th! 11 people. My last correspondence with her was that she was sorting out the balance and would see me soon! I have been to great lengths and expense to prepare my home for them to hear that Airbnb have cancelled the reservation  this morning. This is totally outrageous! Had I known about this 50% payment experiment I wouldn't have agreed to it. The onus was on Airbnb to collect FULL payment as per their terms before confirming! I have come across similar complaints on line where people haven't been able to pay the second payment so it's clearly an issue that hasn't been remedied. I'm now out of pocket and have lost a booking due to Airbnb's failed experiment. As a first time host this is not the experience I had expected. This is BAD business! 

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Gillian186

yes split payment is obviously a bed idea and create problems to hosts and guests. There is another post published immediately after yours where the guest have the same problem - Airbnb cancelled his trip because he didn't timely pay the second rate and now his group has no place to stay.  For a moment I thought he was your guest 🙂

[Cor3]

Hi @Gillian186, @Branka-and-Silvia0,

Well, I don't think it can be called an experiment anymore (it has already been around, since early 2018).

We hosts are not aware of these situations, as our dashboard will show us an accepted state of the booking.

And all sort of issues can happen. Even a simple change of credit card, between the first write off and the second write off, can cause issues.

It looks like, there may be a little trick though. To recognize such situations. But I have to do some further analysis. To ensure my assumption is correct.