In the past week, I just experienced 3 TIMES of "awaiting payment" abuses and my booking slots were forced to be unavailable in 72 hours (3 x 24 hours). As a new host, I can feel like there're more and more guests on Airbnb know the bug of this platform, and keep linking their payment method with a insufficient account, which gives them way more flexibilities.
Here's how UNFAIR the game is now:
1. At the moment of clicking "accept" button, the host wouldn't know if the fund is ready in the guest's account.
/solution: to pre-gather the fund before the guest submits the request
2. The guest, who's familiar with the game, is able to INTENTIONALLY linked the payment method with an account with insufficient fund. Then they can either have extra 24 hours to pick the best deal, or keep the post without any exposure in 24 hours.
/solution:
3. Like booking the ticket for Taylor Swift, Ticketmaster only allows only 10 minutes max to finalize the payment. But Airbnb allows TWENTY FOUR HOURS?!
/solution: the period of "awaiting payment" could be preset by the host. Not a Locked 24 hours.
4. Depositing a NFS Cheque will lead a severe penalty to the payer. But keeping the unit unavailable in 24 hours and end up not paying for it has 0 penalty on the guest at all.
/solution: to pre-gather an amount of fund, like 5% of total booking, as penalty, before the guest submits the request. If the guest end up fail to finalize the payment, the penalty will be compensated to the host for the loss.
