Hi,
I booked a stay at an AirBnB for a work conference. It was canceled by the sponsor 45 minutes after the cutoff for a partial refund. I immediately contacted the host to acknowledge that this was my problem, not his, but ask if I could cancel so it could be documented if I was successful getting my work to pay for the stay anyway.
He said that he contacted AirBnB and they said no, that this was not possible. I'm not sure why AirBnB was involved, but I did not challenge him on this. I just said I would try to get vacation approved and come anyway. Unfortunately I was not successful and never checked in.
I understand losing all of the nightly rate, and AirBnB service charge. But it seems almost unethical that I have to pay for a cleaning fee that will have no reason to ever occur, nor be an expense to the host. In essence this just turns into an overage to the nightly rate and not reimbursing for a true cost.
I don't see a way to challenge this part, and that is something that should be part of the AirBnB service and policy, not that I have to deal with individually with hosts. But I didn't find anything posted on AirBnB on the specific policy (that I believe would have to be relatively common) or how to contact AirBnB - other than opening a formal complaint (which I don't think is warranted as this should be a specific AirBnB policy).
Am I missing something as far as specific documented policy or a way to discuss this casually with AirBnB support? This whole inability to have any form of customer support, along with generally what happened that was not the host's fault at all, certainly doesn't encourage me to use AirBnB again.
