Help! Superhost but i think i need to cancel?!

[Louise231]

So my hot water has gone, i woke up this morning and nothing.

Luckily the people leaving this morning were great about it, they showered yesterday and it was all fine so they knew i wasn't making it up or anything!

It's a sunday and i called a super expensive 24/7 repair company out, who came and shook heads, said they need parts and will come back thursday.

But in the mean time i have bookings...

Unsure about how long it would take today i contacted tonights guest (who is a regular) and offered her a place down the road similar (i contacted the host- could you take my booking i'm in a pickle) but she turned it down and rather sweetly said 'a kettle full of water is enough', she'd rather stay at mine hot water or no. (Bless)

But I have two more bookings before thursday and i somehow doubt they are going to have the same reaction. I tried calling Airbnb but as soon as i got through they accidentally hung up on me (which btw isnt the first time thats happened).

I'm trying to get in tough with airbnb again  but it seems to be taking forever, (like last time after they hung up it was like all systems went down and no calls are going through?)

Anyone know if even when i get though to airbnb they are going to cancel the bookings and i'm going to loose superhost? or will they do it penalty free as it's obviously not intentional?

Should i just be booking the other people places elsewhere myself to avoid cancellation at all costs, even though this is bypassing airbnb and not really the best for the guest? Doing that would also cost me a bomb and i'm already down the lovely fee for trying to get it fixed on a weekend.

Anyone had experiance with this? Ideas?

[David126]

Mention Extenuating Circumstances, well mention it in every sentence, make sure that the person you speak to knows what it is, some of the CS people seem to have a very limitted knowledge.

[Rebecca181]

@Louise231 I would contact Airbnb via Twitter and tell them you are having trouble reaching a live human on the phone (but keep trying to reach them on the phone) and ask if this qualifies as 'extenuating circumstances'. Whatever you do, do NOT cancel anyone, it will mess your stats up forever with this new 'lifetime' rating system they are rolling out! Which brings me to another point: If you get the sense an upcoming guest is willing to come, but seems unhappy about the hot water situation, they may write you a four star or less review, which would be almost as bad as a cancellation. So if it were me, I'd try like heck to get Airbnb to agree to 'extenuating circumstances' and have them cancel and get the guest different housing. 

[Max-And-Janice0]

MOST of the time I have no problem with the Air BnB Help Desk but...... Be wary of losing your Super Host status.  In Jan 1917 I received a booking for over Christmas that year.  I had forgotten to block that period out.  I cancelled a booking and subsequently lost my Super Host status.  Fair enough.  It is now April 2018 (15 months later) and I have JUST been put back as Super Host even though we have a 5 Star property.  Every time I rang the Help Desk I was given a different story.  I understood it to be that Super Host was considered every 3 months.  Not so.   Good luck.

[Alexandra316]

@Max-And-Janice0If you cancel a booking you lose Superhost status for a year. I'm really surprised no one at Airbnb could tell you that. You can read about it here: https://www.airbnb.ca/help/article/990/i-m-a-host--what-penalties-apply-if-i-need-to-cancel-a-reserv...

[Louise231]

So a bit of an update,

To be fair to the super expensive 24/7 place they called me back after 6pm (sunday night) and said, "we can send a different engineer with parts and he can be there in 90mins, are you at home for that?"

So now now the water is back on, (yay!), except having contacted all my guests to tell them there was no hot water I now look like a right plonker.

Because it's now fixed the guests who opted to stay with a discount and no hot water (tomorrow night, tonight's guest in all honesty i didn't offer a discount) will be getting hot water, but i'm hesitant to just continue to charge them full price, as @Rebecca181 says, the slightest hint of an upset guest and it's going to hit me in the review. Maybe offer a discount for 'Sunday evening stress and disturbance about your airbnb booking that was almost without hot water'?

The guest who said they would rather stay elsewhere (wednesday) now doesn't have the option of booking elsewhere unless they cancel themselves, which i doubt they will do as they would incur fees. While there was a problem with the water, airbnb support (who i finally got in touch with two hours later!) were happy to move the guest. but now it's fixed they obv won't do so. they might be happy now it's fixed but now that they know there was a problem, they're likly to be spooked and any other even mino issue is going to be much more of a problem.

Part of me is kicking myself, if i'd waited a few more hours they would never have known there was an issue, but i didn't want to be a crappy person and let them know last minute when i thought they wouldn't get it fixed today.

Ps sorry about the typo's. It's been a reeeeaaallly long day!

[Rachel0]

@Louise231 - Funnily enough I had exactly the same problem yesterday morning!  The pilot light in the boiler refused to light so no hot water.  Fortunately I have a service contract with British Gas called HomeCare 200 for which I pay a small amount each month.  They were able to come out and fix it within 3 hours of calling and fitted a new pump and circuit board - and it did not cost me anything as it is included in the contract.  It's well worth giving them a call and getting a quote for your system.  I do hope it doesn't happen again!

[Louise231]

@Rachel0 yeah I looked into that but I have a few members of the family who are plumber & heating engineer's so I've always had the option of getting them on the phone before, 

Unfortunatly it meant when they were away I was left with the big call out fee option instead. Maybe time to ditch my bro and stepdad, they'd probably prefer it!

[Sarah977]

@Louise231  It sounds like you handled this situation super responsibly- you immediately tried to get it repaired, you contacted upcoming guests to let them know, you called airbnb, you offered discounts. I don't see anything you could possibly have done differently, including not waiting to contact the guests-  you were originally told the plumbers couldn't get to it before Thursday, it's just a lucky fluke that they called back and said they could deal with it sooner.

 The guests you offered a discount to, I guess you could always explain to them that the discount, as they are aware, was only because of the hot water issue, which is now remedied and see if they are amenable to foregoing the discount, after all, they didn't originally book based on a discount. If they balk, I wouldn't push the issue, just one of those "s**t happens" scenarios.

 I don't necessarily think you need to worry that the guests will be leery of other things being wrong and be nit-picky. It was one specific issue that you needed to get dealt with, and you did. It wasn't as if it was something that had been disfunctional for awhile and you just hadn't bothered to deal with it. Water heaters, furnaces, appliances, electrical devices, toilet flushing mechanisms, etc. sometimes go on the blink, in everyone's lives, everywhere.