Time to address cancellation issues.

[Robin4]

In life, people are basically good and decent (hosts included:-))  and do not think anyone is going to penalise them for doing the right thing and trying to help someone else and make their life a bit easier. That's just human nature isn't it?

Most newer hosts don't for a second think that hitting that cancel button on a reservation  is going to have such serious consequences.

The cancellation programming forces guests and hosts to fight off against each other in order not to be penalised. That breeds a lot of goodwill within Airbnb.......NOT!!

From my time being involved with various elements of Airbnb, from my hosting, here on Community Centre, to support, not a day goes by when at least 20% of inquiring traffic involves cancellation issues!

There needs to be an alteration to the programming that involves this messy side of Airbnb.

When either host or guest hits the Change or cancel field for a reservation and proceeds to cancel, I think  the programming should involve the following options…..

Isn't it about time Airbnb made things a bit simpler when either host or guest needs to cancel a reservation.

And if they adopted this protocol they could immediately save at least 30% of the drain on their CS resources as this issue is one of the major ones that CS has to deal with!

How do others feel about this.

Cheers.....Rob

[Sandy-And-Bill0]

Yes I agree.  I am just going through this right now, and was dismayed to see that I am charged a penalty fee to cancel a reservation within my home, yet a possible guest isn;t charged a cancellation fee, at least not until they meet the criteria for the timeline etc.  It doesn;t seem right.  If my husband gets sent out of town for work and we are not going to be here, we must cancel, due to our homeowners insurance.  I get one free cancellation and the rest I have to pay a fee?  I seriously think that this is slanted more for guest than the homeowner, which makes me feel not in control and question the whole thing.  I am just new to this and already having second thoughts.  They encourage us to do the instant booking for greater exposure, but then if someone instantly books, and I want to cancel, I get penalized.  Not right.  May forget the whole thing before I even really got started.

[Liz343]

I am so confused and frustrated with the current cancellation policies.  This last weekend was not easy in that I had to cancel two different reservations -

We woke up Friday to no water.  The plumber came as quickly as possible as he knew we had guests arriving later that day.  He could not resolve the issue quickly and I was worried about our guests arriving to no water - and I wanted to give them time to find another listing  so I called superhost help after two hours of no water.  The helpline asked me to get an invoice - plumber said he would send me one when he was done - and he worked and worked all day and finally came up with a temporary fix late Friday afternoon, long after our guests were due to arrive.  He had to come back Monday to complete repairs.  I did send pictures of the plumber working, a video of no water coming from the faucet and later Friday, a photo of the invoice.  Superhost help said, ok that's perfect documentation of the issue.  

Then, Sunday, we had another guest check in - who said if the water issue isn't resolved, it isn't going to bother him because he was just checking in and going to a wedding and may not even spend the night.  When he checked in, it was clear he had lied to us, and wasn't going to a wedding.  He arrived with a videographer and a "model" who was clearly dressed (or undressed) inappropriately.  He stated that he lied because he didn't think that we would allow him to shoot a video!  He had no proof of a legitimate business and the videographer did not have any documentation either.  We ended up escorting them off, they cooperated by leaving and understood that we couldn't allow "videos" to be shot in our home.  Airbnb superhost help understood, allowed our cancellation and said they would be sending this guest help to find another place to stay!  I couldn't believe it - why would they allow this guest to trick another host???  

Now - I am looking at my profile and it looks as if the plumbing issue was not serious enough to cancel a reservation and my superhost status is in jeopardy.  

Has anyone else had this issue?  Was I supposed to allow my guests to check in and cancel themselves when there was no water?  What else could I have done?  How is it fair to take away superhost status for either of these issues?  

Anyone?