Guest ignored my cancellation and re-booked!

[Huma0]

Yesterday I cancelled a guest's reservation for the first time, but rather than accept this, the guest has just gone ahead and Instant Booked the room again!

There were numerous reasons why I cancelled, including that the guest only booked for two nights when he and his girlfriend wanted to stay for five. It took a lot of communication before I could get him to tell me how many nights they wanted to stay. By then, the room wasn't available for all five nights anymore, but I offered him another room. He asked for a discount. I said no. He took so long to book that by then, the other room wasn't availabe for all five nights either, so he had to make two reservations, splitting his stay between the two rooms, but then only booked the second room for one person.

On top of that, he is ignoring my check in times, even though I have repeatedly reminded him of them. The conversation went something like ME: "What is your estimated arrival time, bearing in mind my check in is from 3-9pm?" HIM: "6.30." ME: "Do you mean 6.30 in the morning, or in the evening?" HIM: no response. This went round and round until I finally got out of him that it was, as I suspected, 6.30 am. Reminded him again of the 3-9pm check in and he eventually replied, "We will check in at 2pm." Just one example of how difficult it has been to communicate with this guest.

He wanted to communicate via email, no doubt to try to avoid Airbnb fees. There were numerous other issues. Airbnb told me I had every reason to cancel, although it counts as two cancellations because he made two separate bookings.

I messaged the guest and explained very clearly why I had cancelled and why I was uncomfortable hosting him, but rather than asking if I would reconsider, he just went ahead and booked one of the rooms again!

I do not want to host these guests. I think they are going to be a nightmare. If I cancel again, that's the third cancellation (you get three 'no questions asked' cancellations a year and after that have to have the backing of Airbnb CS). Then, he could just keep booking again until someone else manages to get in there and book in the narrow window between me cancelling and him rebooking.

Has anyone else had this problem before? How do I make the guest understand without being rude?

[Huma0]

If I cancel his reservation again, could I then block him to prevent him rebooking? I've never done that before, so not sure how it works...

[Kelly149]

@Huma0 you should for sure get comfortable with the block feature. You have to do it from in the message thread as @Marit-Anne0 said. I use it anytime I have a guest who I wouldn't welcome back or who may not enjoy my review of them. And also, I had a guest once do the same thing!! I canceled them bc they couldn't tell me who was coming or indicate that they understood my listing and they then went and just immediately booked it again!! So, she is two of my free cancellations & then the third was a guy that then got his act together and successfully re-booked with no incident. CS should have a process of going back and retroactively marking a cancellation as acceptable. But since they don't, my advice to all hosts is endure the phone call to CS & get them to cancel for you. Save those 3 cancelations for that day when CS won't cancel for you.

[Huma0]

@Kelly149

That sounds like sound advice, which is why I did call CS to double check and they did indeed cancel both reservations for me. However, they told me that they would still both count towards my three 'no questions asked' cancellations a year. I wonder now if that is true or not. As @Marit-Anne0 says, the information on the site is not consistent. Even the CS rep had to go and double check before she could give me an answer on that.

[Kelly149]

@Huma0 You can find out where you stand if you go into any reservation and click the change/cancel button. Then click cancel. IF they’ve counted these against you then it will say: you have 1 cancellation remaining or contact CS you have no cancellations remaining. (Of course don’t complete the cancellation!! 😉 but that will let you know where the computer thinks you sit)

[Marit-Anne0]

@Huma0

You use the report feature in the profile, choose something else, and when you continue, there is an option to block.  

Must be mega clueless those guests - imagine the review when it becomes clear they have cat fobia ! 🙂

[Huma0]

@Marit-Anne0

Thank you! I am just waiting for CS to get back to me so I can ask if they won't count it as another cancellation out of my three 'freebies' seeing as it's the same guest and essentially the same booking. Then I will block him as you instructed as I don't want to have to keep doing this.

Clueless doesn't even begin to describe him. This is my worry, if it's so difficult to get the guest to understand that they need to book the correct number of nights for the correct number of people, how on earth am I going to get them to understand my house rules? Although he has already said they love cats!

[Fred13]

^^^ "How do I make the guest understand without being rude?" Being necessarily blunt is not being rude. After his first crazy move, I wouldn't have care what he thought.

Save your good will @Huma0 , which you have an plenty of, for those deserving and in dire need of it in this  world.

[Huma0]

@Fred13

Thank you. I am going to try to not feel guilty about cancelling him again. At first, I suspected that this guest was trying to get a discount any way he could, i.e. booking for less nights, for less people, asking for a discount, asking for my email address. Then I thought, I'm being paranoid, maybe he is just clueless.

However, the guy has stayed at at least six Airbnbs before, so should really know how it works! How complicated is it to book a room for two people for five nights?

[Marit-Anne0]

@Huma0

I was under the impression that you can cancel as many times as you like if you are uncomfortable with the guest.

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2022/how-do-penalty-free-cancellations-work-for-instant-book-hos...

[Kelly149]

@Marit-Anne0 that policy should say that you can cancel as many reservations as CS AGREES are uncomfortable. You only get to decide on your own 3 times that you're uncomfortable, after that CS has to agree with you and process the cancellation for you (or not!).

[Huma0]

@Marit-Anne0

Yes, I believe you are right, but the first three times, you don't have to justify it, as long as you select that you're uncomfortable with the guest. After that, you need to run it by CS and hope that they agree with your reasons. That's what they told me on the phone yesterday anyway.

Hopefully I won't have to cancel another guest in the next year. In 1.5 years of hosting, I've never cancelled anyone. I only asked one guest to cancel herself and that was an extreme situation involving a break up and a suicide attempt!!

I would trust that a CS rep would understand that the three cancellations were all for the same guest and the same stay and be sympathetic should I have problems with another booking in future, but you never know. From what I gather on the forums, it really depends on the individual CS rep you get as to whether they side with the host or with the guest.

[Marit-Anne0]

@Kelly149  @Huma0

There seems to be conflicting info, this one is posted on the forum by Lizzie

Hosts who use Instant Book have unlimited penalty-free cancellations if a guest breaks a house rule, if they intend to break a house rule, or if the host is uncomfortable with a reservation. These types of cancellations are 100% penalty-free, which means no fees, no automated review, no permanently blocked dates, and no impact on Superhost eligibility.

However, you can’t cancel penalty-free if your reason violates Airbnb’s Non-Discrimination policy. If a guest claims there’s been discrimination, the cancellation will need to be reviewed by Airbnb and may not be penalty-free.

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Answers-to-your-top-Instant-Book-questions/m-p/455171#M1...

There has also been established in previous threads that the help section shows different rules in different locations.  

[Kelly149]

@Marit-Anne0 Yes, that is what it says but in actual practice, a host is allowed to self-process 3 cancellations. After that the host must get CS to generate any cancellations for them. 

As an example: I had a guest IB & her only review said that she violated House Rules and left rubbish all throughout the space. (Strangely this host still left a Thumbs Up). More concerning to me than the actual review though was the guest ‘s response, which was, essentially, “well, no one said I should not leave trash everywhere so this is actually the host’s fault”. The first CS I spoke with did not agree that there was any reason for me to be “uncomfortable” with such a guest and also contended that this review was positive (a condition of IB for this listing) so they would not agree to a penalty free cancellation. So the unlimited penalty free cancellation for host discomfort is more marketing speak than reality. 

[Huma0]

@Kelly149

Yes, this is exactly what I'm worried about.

When I said I was concerned because this guest would now take up two out of my three penalty free cancellations a year (that was before I realised I would have to cancel him again, making three), the CS rep reassured me that I could cancel as many IB reservations as I liked penalty free if I was uncomfortable with the guest.

However, when I asked her to clarify if I would need to get approval from CS to cancel after a third time, she also confirmed that was the case. So, this rep was sympathetic to me, but that doesn't mean the next one would be. My problem guest has six good reviews and no bad ones. His star ratings are good (although I can see at least one host must have marked him down for cleanliness). What's to say tht in the same situation, another rep might not aruge that a guest with positive reviews should be given the benefit of the doubt?