Guest wants refund for cancellation

[Sara374]

I became a host with Airbnb late last year.

A guest who booked our apartment for July this year last December has cancelled his booking.  When he booked I had a strict refund policy.  However, I changed the policy yesterday to a moderate, allowing him (I thought) a full refund up until 5 days before checkin.  However, under his booking it obviously still had the strict basis applied.

I want to give him a full refund, but I will not "earn" (i.e. get paid by Airbnb) the 50% until 17th July.  I have seen the way to offer him a full refund now, but will this come from my own funds, i.e. from Paypal, or will Airbnb release the funds from their account.  I don't want to pay him out of my own pocket for money that I don't actually have in my paypal account.

Will Airbnb release that money from their account, does anyone know?

Sara

[Helen3]

I think you are making this more complicated then it needs to be.

Tell you guest to cancel. Airbnb will send you a notification and ask you if you want to refund more than allowed by your cancellation policy. You say yes. Airbnb refunds the guest.

End of 🙂

[Barbara591]

I beg to differ. AirBB will not issue the refund from the funds that they received for the  reservation that cancelled,

but I will have to refund from my next AirBB reservation. This makes no sense to me. 

A guest cancelled her reservation 5 weeks before her scheduled trip. She did not realize that my room was not in the

location that she wanted (she had to drive an extra 30 miles and could not do that). My strict policy says that she would

receive a 50%refund. But she wants her entire amount refunded. I agree that this would be OK as I will rent the room again

with no problem. I want to refund from the proceeds that AirBB received from this guest, but the policy states that the additional

refund would come from my next reservation. Why? Why not refund from the cancelled reservation. What am I missing here?

[Avril11]

So what do I do. Guest arrived realise she is in an area too far from where she would like to be. This after we have discussed this before confirming the booking. Now she expects a full refund for the days she would not use. She booked for three months, I am not concerned about the months following only this month. What is the normal procedure?

[Mary770]

I have the same problem. I had a guest book for her daughter last week for June and then after a day she cancelled because her daughter had booked elsewhere. They refunded part of her money but not the whole and wrote to me and asked me if I wanted to give her the rest. I said yes but it appeared that I had to pay it out of my bank account. I have not received any money for this booking. What am I missing here? Have I forgot to tick a box somewhere? How do I contact airbnb? Any help gratefully received.