Anyone else having problems issuing refunds?

[Dietrich8]

I'm sure many hosts have been getting cancellations recently. I've told guests that I would relax my strict refund policy and give them a full refund (minus Airbnb fees) under the circumstances. However, all attempts to send them money have failed. Airbnb support (which is normally excellent, imo) is clearly overwhelmed and hasn't responded in any helpful way yet. Just wondering if anyone else is seeing this?

[Susan151]

@Dietrich8  I wouldn't try to refund money to a reservation. After all, you haven't been paid yet. Instead, have AirBNB take care of this. That is what we pay them to do.

[Kelly149]

@Dietrich8  I spoke to abb yesterday about this very situation. I was very clear that I was willing to have the guest’s future payout voided & abb refund the guest. But that I was not willing to pay the guest money I had not even yet received (which is what @Susan151 is reminding you of). 

well, sure, of course, you’re such an awesome SH, we appreciate you so much... I’ll take care of it just so.  NOPE. CS entered a deduction to my account dated 3/10 and left the April payout waiting. So now I’ve gone over and above what I had to do, abb kept their service fee, and now I’m giving them a loan for the next month on the money I “refunded”. 

I strongly suggest that all hosts refuse to participate in this scheme. Refuse to refund anything unless you’ve already been paid. Unless you like loaning abb money for free. 

[Jenny1174]

I have been operating with Air bnb for 5 yrs now and this year the payments have stopped coming and are pending in my transaction list.  I contacted 1 guest due to arrive and said I may not be able to host them if I didn't get paid.  They were very upset and rightly so but I need to draw the line somewhere.  I am actually hosting them at my expense.  These guests are staying for a week.  I have tried and tried with Airbnb, messaging, emailing, phoning and the responses are thank you for your patience and understanding your case is under review.  I don't know what they are reviewing after speaking with the guest arriving next week she told me she had paid 50% when she booked some months ago and has since paid the balance.  She has now paid the total amount plus a lot more in commission fees.  Air bnb have had their fair share from my hard work and are not performing as per their terms and conditions.  I don't know how long it will be before I get the payments or if I even will get paid.  This is an absolute joke and I would not recommend this platform to anyone considering the lack of support.  I note from the list of key executive team members they are probably too top heavy with high paid staff and couldn't give a rats arse about the hosts making them the dollar.  We are just a means to their pay packet.

[Dietrich8]

Thank you to those who responded to my query. I have not personally experienced any payment or refund issues with Airbnb in the past. In fact, my general experience with Airbnb has been quite good. (Except when they pulled the plug on co-host payment splitting on such short notice.) However, in the last week I've been unable to get refunds done for the 3 guests that canceled. I can't initiate a refund through the website or the phone app. I get the same error message I posted above in both cases. And it seems that Airbnb support can't either. After waiting about an hour to speak with support they said they would process the refunds, but it still hasn't happened 24 hours later. I don't think this is due to any unwillingness or reluctance on the part of Airbnb, I just think their systems are entirely overwhelmed. The question of blame for apparently fragile business-critical systems is a topic for another day.

That being said, my original question remains unanswered: is anyone else seeing this error message? 

[Chris773]

I haven’t done anything in the last couple of weeks virus-related, but I have had issues in the recent past (last few months) with refunding cancellations. It frequently fails with the error shown in the OP. I’ve called/messaged Airbnb for help each time and they usually fix it, although my finances then sometimes get screwed up. One Airbnb rep offhandedly mentioned that it was because I was trying to refund money that had not been charged yet, which makes sense, but if Airbnb is going to force us to use the resolution center to refund cancellations, then they should make it work! Frustrating.

[Christine615]

I don't refund this way because Airbnb keeps fees. I call Customer Service and ask them to override the policy so the guest gets the entire amount back, rather than do it as a manual refund. But good luck getting someone on the phone, even as a superhost. I had to tweet at them to get their attention.