Airbnb forcing refund. Cannot contact support

[Gina158]

I have a guest who checked in October 15, and it is now October 29

The building management announced that there was an emergency leak and they need to shut the kitchen water off to all units in order to replace the pipes, for 2 weeks. During this time water in the kitchen will not work.

Of course, having a guest until November 23, it is inconvenient. I tried to contact Airbnb support for days with no advice except to talk to the guest. Okay, I offered the guest a massive discount for those dates if she wanted to stay, or the option to shorten her stay to before the work started, which she chose.

She asked me about Airbnb fees and I could not get an answer for her and suggested she contact them. About 2 hours later (after my own trying to reach them for 4 days as a host with no response), I got messages telling me to refund her entire stay.

She has been there for 15 nights with no incident. The work being done was short notice and no one has any control over it as it’s an emergency.

Airbnb responds about once every 6-8 hours with a new rep asking me to explain the issue. I keep explaining and they don’t understand me. Now within a couple hours of the guest contacting them, I am forced to refund the entire trip, with no explanation.

Does anyone have any experience in getting a live person to talk to from support, as a host? Or understand why I would need to pay for the entire trip (also plus the cleaning fee, which is one fourth of what I pay the cleaners)?

Any experience with them would be helpful. In the past I felt they were helpful, but this is pretty awful.

Thanks.

[Joan2709]

@Gina158 

I believe if you or the guest sent an alteration request for the stay (shorten it), the Airbnb fee is automatically adjusted for the shortened stay. I haven't done one in awhile, so can't remember for sure?

Did you try to send a reservation alteration to the guest and see what the numbers were?

[Gina158]

Thanks @Joan2709, I think I wasn’t clear… we already did an alteration and it was all set. I’m just unclear on why Airbnb is forcing a refund for the first half of the trip, before this came up.

[Helen3]

I am a little confused - - if the guest sent you an alteration request which you accepted  @Gina158 it would have automatically taken off the Airbnb fee, as well as your fee, so why was there a query on this .

from your post it appears that the booking alteration was made by the guest  and accepted by you. 

What do the messages say about why you need to refund the guest for the days she has stayed ?

[John5097]

@Gina158 

@Joan2709  was right the host or guest can send a trip altercation request. 

Here is an Airbnb help topic with instructions. 

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/50

 I get these a lot from guest or if they just message me that they want to change their dates I send them the trip altercation request and explain that Airnb automatically recalculates the rate, fees and taxes so its the exact same as if they had booked those dates originally. No one has had any issue with it and were quite pleased with the ease. Just remind them they need to click on accept after reviewing the changes. 

* You can also enter a custom total price. For example if you wanted to shorten a trip more than 30 days to one less that 27 days, and still keep the monthly discount you could calculate that, if Airbnb automatically got rid of the monthly discount when you shorten the dates. 

[Gina158]

Thanks, we had already done the alteration request and it was approved. The work starts November 3 and her check out is now November 2.

However Airbnb has told me to reimburse the entire trip… from October 15-November 2. She does not want to leave until the 2nd, but Airbnb has told me to reimburse the entire trip and I can’t get them to answer me to find out why.

I’m not sure why they are refunding the entire trip prior to this or why I have not been able to get support to respond to me as a host, or if there is some other way to contact them. The guest said she had messaged them to ask if the Airbnb fees would be adjusted with the earlier checkout, but they immediately sent me a message that she would be reimbursed for the entire trip, and also didn’t seem to grasp the situation. So right now she is staying there from October 15-November 2 for free, with nothing wrong in the home.

[Shelley159]

@Gina158 this is a problem. I hope you manage to get it resolved!

The guest will be asked to review you, and you can’t count on it that the review will be removed if a full discount is given. Not a good situation, but best to keep it in mind throughout the ordeal.

[Gina158]

Hi @Shelley159,thanks, I’ve been very cordial and accommodating with the guest. And as she got a free stay (and is still there now on her stay), I don’t see why she would give bad feedback. 

Regardless, I have unlisted my property after 11 years as I no longer have trust in this platform when it comes to hosting. I have been unable to get support in over a week now, and I can’t afford to be paying people to stay in my place.

[John5097]

@Gina158 

I'm a little confused as well. 

To be of more help can you kindly list the reservation details: the total amount of the original reservation, fees and taxes, if there was a monthly discount. 

How exactly you or the guest used the reservation alteration feature. Did you or the guest use these exact steps? What date was it sent and approved by host and guest? 

Also the total amount of the reservation alteration, including the fees, taxes, and if a monthly disount was included if the stay was shortened less than 27 nights.

Just trying to understand whatever the fee discrepancy was and how to best resolve. 

This would be helpful as it's unclear why the host would suggest contacting customer support about the fees when they are automatically calculated with the updated reservation.

Did you use some other approach, such as sending guest money using the send money feature or some other approach to refund guest the difference, and why the fees weren't calculated properly? 



  

[Gina158]

Hi @John5097 

I cannot see any breakdown of Airbnb fees that a guest is paying per day, nor can I refund Airbnb fees.

The problem I am having is that Airbnb refunded the guest, who does not want to leave until Sunday, for the entire stay from October 15-Nov 2, her new checkout date.

What is odd is that in a week, I get a response from them every 6-8 hours that they are having someone review the case. I haven’t been able to get any response why this was done. I received two callbacks over the course of the week- one was at 3am and one was at 1am. I was asleep.both times (I work).

Today someone did get back to me and said they make decisions according to their policy, which they can’t point me to, and can’t inform me why this was done because only the person currently looking at it can see the details.

So it was pretty much just ended with them saying that  they are sorry that they made a mistake and although they don’t know the reasons for the mistake, they will try not to make the same mistake (refunding a trip) in the future.