How to cancel guest who is waiting for validation of the bank account?

[Pavel20]

Dear All,

Strange things happened to me today, I will try to describe it:

Guest A requested my flat from 5th to 7th May, which I had pre-approved.

Before the Guest A confirmed my "pre-approval", another guest, Guest B,  sent the request to my place for 3rd - 7th May

What happened after that:

1) Guest A pre-approval has been cancelled (not by me, it was caused by Guest B´s request, so is it system error?)

2) Guest B - there were no option for "preapproval" - only for accept/reject

3) Guest B request has caused blockation of  my calendar (I guess, it should not cause this, right?) so Guest A and no other potential guest cannot do reservation for my place 

Note: Both guests are new in airbnb without any review.

Because of this (to skip this technical issue) - I accepted Guest B (Guest A was impossible) - but I received the message, that Guest B does not have validated bank account and he has 24 hours for confirmation.

What I shall do, if I do not want to risk a loss of Guest A (which is certain) and Guest B is uncertain and if I cannot do anything as from the listbelow:

1. I cannot cancel the reservation of Guest B (I do not know why)

2. I cannot do anything in my calendar to cancel the blocking for period from 3rd to 7 th May

3. I cannot send special offer to Guest A neither

I think several system errors happened to me:

1. Guest B kicked Guest A´s pre-approval

2. Guest B has been blocking my calendar availability even before I finally tried to confirm him (now I have message "Waiting for the payment")

3. For Guest B did not show"pre-approval" option despite the fact, he has not airbnb history so no reviews - which should result in appearance of this "pre-approval" option (next to "accept/reject and "send message"). At least i think so.

thanks for the help

Pavel

[Steve143]

Hello @Pavel20,

You have given the best detailed description.

It looks like guest A sent you a reservation inquiry and guest B sent you a reservation request.

The difference is described in this article https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Tips-Tricks/Reservation-Inquiry-or-Request-What-s-the-Difference...

Inquiries allow pre-approval/decline while requests have accept/reject.

The pre-approval/decline option has nothing to do with whether the guest has or has not any reviews. It appears only for boooking inquiries and not for booking requests. A guest with no reviews can still send a booking request.

In summary, an inquiry is sent when the guest is asking some questions and hasn't comitted to booking. A request is sent when the guest has decided that they want to book. Requests take priority over inquiries as Airbnb works on a first come first served basis.

If payment for a request doesn't go through immediately due to, for example, some card problem the dates are blocked for 24 hours to allow the payment issue to be sorted between Airbnb and the guest. Unfortunately all you can do is wait for 24 hours to see if the payment goes through.

Steve.

[Ange2]

@Pavel20   It's somewhat confusing at first but it's not a glitch. 

On Airbnb there are:

1.  'reservation request'  it only has two buttons :  Accept or Decline

2.  'reservation inquiry' which has three buttons:  Pre-Approve,  Decline, Send Special Offer.

You could have declined guest B the 'reservation request' and clicked the box that says Do Not Block Dates and the dates would have opened up for guest A the reservation inquiry.

Note:  A reservation inquiry is not a reservation and there is no guarentee that someone who is pre-approved will end up booking.  Airbnb overrides pre-approvals when a definite reservation comes into play.

Hope that helps. Best,

[Pavel20]

Dear Ange, dear Steve

thanks a lot for your explanation! I did not know what option guests have... Neither was I aware, that "Reservation request" deletes previous "pre-approval" 

On top of it I could not delete "Guest B" because I accidentally pushed "confirm" button on my phone... and since he did not have validated bank account, I could not even cancel the reservation and I had to wait for the guest B to validate his bank account. Anyway he did it, so he has booked my place. So problem solved ,thanks.

Anyway,  felt really bad for guest A, which I wanted to host initially... and as I do not want to cancel the reservation for Guest B (Guest B will arrive tomorrow, and Guest A still has some time to find any other place), I offered to Guest A 25 % discount when/if he comes to my apartment as an apology.

Thanks

Pavel

[Andrea9]

@Pavel20

A Pre-Approval or Special Offer is nothing else except saying 'Hey I'm okay with you booking, so take your chance'.

It's not a reservation of the dates at all.

If the guest doesn't get their act together and decide, then the early bird that commits (in this case lucky guest B) gets the worm.

Some guests take their sweet time and sometimes that's a few minutes too late. First come, first served. Simple.

Life isn't always fair.