We had a guest instant book for 1 night a couple of weeks before her reservation date. She had forgotten to add her +1 guest to the reservation at the time, so requested to alter her reservation which we accepted. The alteration went through and we hosted her. We had a couple of issues with her including the fact that she didn't know what time checkout was (left 1.5 hours late even with reminders). We didn't notice until a couple of days later that we were never paid for her stay. On the Recent Transactions page of our hosting dashboard, her reservation payment had just completely disappeared (not in past or future payouts). Contacted Airbnb support and they said that the payment didn't go through and they're trying to reach her. It's still less than a week since her stay, but we've gone back and forth with Airbnb several times about this issue.
How was the guest able to book our place without paying? What can we do now except wait to see if the guest pays? Now we are out $100 and she got a free night in an Airbnb. What can we do now? We have been superhosts and I'm pretty upset about this, how can we guarantee that this doesn't happen again?
