What does "Verified Email" actually mean to Airbnb?

[Alexandra316]

So I just had a situation with a guest. Their account is brand new and they asked to book for Saturday night, but said that they had set up their email address incorrectly and I should contact them at a certain phone number. Of course that info was redacted by the system. I sent them a message explaining that we can't communicate outside of the system, and asking them to change their account info so I can message them through Airbnb.

I also contacted Airbnb and asked them to take a look into the situation. I am tempted to decline the request, because right now it's blocking my calendar and I was hoping to get a booking: someone just cancelled.

This all leads me to question what "Verified Email" actually means though. To me, it would mean that an email is sent out to the email address associated with the account, then the guest clicks on a link to verify that they've actually signed up. Either the guest is lying to try and initiate contact outside of the system, or the email isn't verified at all. Has anyone else experienced this?

[Emiel1]

@Alexandra316,

It does not matter if guest has setup a wrong private email adress, as communication within the Airbnb message system is allways possible, so also no need to ask for phone contact by the guest..

Only the forwarding of the AIrbnb messages to the private emaill address will fail (And so the private emailaddress can not be used to sent messages to the temporary Airbnb emailaddress provided).

It is most likely the guest wants something to discuss which they do not want to be recorded in the message system. BTW Exchanging phonenumbers before a reservation is confirmed is also, without "tricks",  not possible (it will be blocked in the messages)

.

As what i remember i had to confirm my private emailaddress, when creating my account, in the way you describe, which are normal procedures.

Best regards,

Emiel

[Alexandra316]

@Emiel1 Yes, I understand regarding the phone number being blocked: as I said, it was redacted, as is normal. If their email is wrong, maybe they can't sign in: not likely, but possible. It might not be possible to reset the password if they've forgotten it without access to the email account they signed up with.

I think that overall, this is just most likely a scam and they're trying to circumvent the system for some reason. I'm just getting suspicious of Airbnb's "verifications" at this point.