Airbnb Double Booked Our unit

[Adam2138]

We seemed to uncover an honest to goodness software bug in the Airbnb app. Airbnb is refusing to acknowledge it, and is putting both us and the guest on the hook for it!

1. Guest A is enjoying their stay and needs to extend for another night. They put in a reservation change request at 7:00 AM for the following night. We enjoy said guest and grant them an extension by 7:10 AM. 
2. Oops! There was a payment processing problem. No worries - the guest locks their cards when they travel and the app says they have until noon the following day to resolve the payment issue without losing their booking. 
3. But wait a second, just a few hours later someone else Instant Books the place for that night. What's going on?
4. 6 hours of heck with Airbnb support ensue. They blame us for everything. That we never actually accepted the change - that the dates were wrong, that Guest B actually booked first. Unfortunately, we have a pretty rock solid paper trail.
5. One support person admits that the emails are wrong but they don't have any power to do anything about it - even to escalate the ticket.
6. In the meantime, Airbnb is still asking Guest A to pay for the night - the night that Guest B is now booked for!

The only options Airbnb support is giving us is to forcibly kick out Guest A on short notice and stick them with a payment penalty, or we cancel on Guest B and we pay the full cancellation penalty. 

We're at our whit's end because Airbnb support is refusing to even acknowledge their own policies on this matter. 

[John5097]

@Adam2138 

There  may be new policy where if there is any issue at all host are always wrong.  

In your case because yours is so popular and well managed you get a lot of guest who want to book. I'm in the same situation. 

So Airbnb is weeding out the best host and listings. 

I hope you get it worked out! Could try contacting them again and make it as clear and concise as possible. That the bug was Airbnb allowing first guest to 12 hours to sort out CC payment then booked to IB guest for same date. 

[Helen3]

I think what happened is as your guest had problems with the payment their request to extend didn't go through and therefore another guest was able to book as you use Instant Book @Adam2138 

[Adam2138]

Again, the email the first received when the payment failed clearly said they until noon today to make a payment. 

And again, the app is still asking them to make a payment for tonight! 

Something clearly is broken. 

[Zheng49]

I don't think they'll be able to double book though in this case though. 

[Adam2138]

Correct, when Guest A tries to make the payment, the app locks up and freezes.

Which is pretty strong evidence that there is some sort of software bug at play!

[Zheng49]

I'd say you got lucky this time. Guest A's card probably has insufficient funds left to pay for the extension. Better to replace with Guest B. 

Not denying that it shouldn't be asking Guest A to still pay even though that night has been booked though. So that's definately something that can be addressed. 

[Adam2138]

In this case though, Guest A has been awesome. They successfully paid for extensions several times already - they just have some sort of fraud prevention on their card that required extra steps.