So to set this up, yesterday I had a partial power outage (most lights and power sources were functional, the AC was not) on my property prior to a guest checking in for a 5 night stay. I filed a ticket with my utility company at 12:45 PM and they gave me an estimated arrival time of the power being restored at 4pm. It was not a widespread outage as it was isolated to me and 1-2 other properties (it turns out there was an issue with the transformer). I communicated all of this to my guest a few hours before check-in to give them a heads up.
They checked in at around 3:50 and 10-15 minutes later messaged me that the AC was not working. I explained to them the situation again and that somebody would be out shortly to take care of it and attached a screenshot of the ticket I was issued. I told them to just utilize the fans and open the windows in the meantime. 45 minutes later they messaged me that the temperature was unsuitable for their kids and that they have decided to cancel their reservation. I was driving at the time that I received this message but I just told them to bare with me for a bit longer and showed them a screenshot from my utility company that said a crew had been dispatched to my location. This was within 15 minutes of them vacating the property. They didn't respond. The technicians arrived a short while later and diagnosed the problem and referred the work out to another crew who arrived at 7pm and the power was back on not long afterwards. I had messaged the guest again when the work began letting them know that the power would be back on soon.
Unfortunately, they informed me that they had already booked another place and were requesting a full refund for their 5 night stay. I didn't see how that would make sense given that it's a power issue which I have no control over and it was handled relatively quickly. To add additional context, it was an extremely rainy and gloomy day in SWFL and temperatures were in the low 80s. If there was any day during a Florida summer where it wasn't a big deal to go a few hours without AC, it was this one. I live on the other side of the property in the mother-in-law suite and the temperature inside was around 76-77. I completely understand that temperatures are a very personal thing for people and I wouldn't deny that some people may finds those temperatures to be uncomfortable for them, but are these unsafe, dangerous temperatures? I don't think any reasonable person would say so, and anybody who genuinely feels that way probably wouldn't be booking their vacation in South Florida in the middle of August.
In any case, I felt that I did everything in my power to rectify the issue in a timely fashion and had the guest reached out to make things work I would have been happy to give them a partial refund for the night where they could spend that money to go out and get something to eat or see a movie (there are a lot of things to do in my area and they're here on vacation) but they never sought to work with me on any kind of accommodation. Despite these facts, Airbnb support stepped in to make the guest whole at my expense and issued them a full refund for 5 whole nights citing the "Rebooking and Refund Policy". A direct quote from Airbnb support regarding their decision is as follows: "We do appreciate that you were able to fix the issue on same day at 7pm however, it causes an inconvenience on the guest end and were unable to know if the temperature is bearable for guest." When I pressed my disagreement, they reiterated that "even though it may have been a cloudy day, they're unable to know the temperature of the unit." So is that AirBnB's policy now? To take the claims of a guest at face value over that of somebody who has been a Superhost on their platform for over 4 years in a row now with no attempt to verify if the guest's concerns are legitimate, let alone grounds for cancelling a week long booking?
Further, the same policy also states "Before submitting a claim, whenever feasible, the guest must notify the Host and try to resolve the Travel Issue directly with their Host. In connection with resolving the issue, guests can request refunds directly from Hosts using the resolution center. We may reduce the amount of any refund or adjust any rebooking assistance under this Policy to reflect any refund or other relief provided directly by a Host." The guest never made any attempt to seek reimbursement or cooperate with me in any way to make things right for them, so how can AirBnB support justify issuing them a full refund?
I apologize for the lengthy post, I just need a sanity check because this to me feels like an egregious decision to override my cancellation policy and give a guest a full refund. What do you guys think?
