Fake bookings that block your reservations

[Tyler370]

Today I had a booking request come through for 3 nights. I accepted the request. But the guest never finished the payment information, and p the booking says awaiting payment.  No the rental suite has been blocked off for the entire weekend preventing others from booking.

As the site awaits payment I can not cancel or drop or open  up the booking. for 24 hours,  I've messaged the "guest" several times and no answer. 10 hours has gone by and I feel this was not a real booking instead a scam to fill up my weekend bookings preventing other guests from booking my place who are searching at the moment.

Has anyone has a similar experience ? This has happened tome before but now Im starting to figure something must be up. Any advice suggestions or comments?

[Anonymous]

@Tyler370 This is really frustrating - I wish there were a setting that allowed hosts to block bookings without completed payment from being confirmed and blocking the calendar.  But I'm not so sure that this was genuinely a malicious effort to thwart your weekend business; most of the time it's just a lackadaisical or technologically incompetent guest that's the problem.

[Tyler370]

Yes I wish they would allow us to cancel the booking and be done with this sort of phantom of the bookings. Thanks for input.

[Sarah977]

@Tyler370  24 hours is indeed far too long for Airbnb to allow the calendar to be blocked awaiting payment, especially if a guest is ignoring your messages. 

I've found that with requests from guests who show they have had Airbnb stays before, use Airbnb a lot, their booking gets confirmed right away, because all their info is already in the system. It's the brand new to Airbnb guests, who, instead of opening an account and uploading all their info a couple days before booking something,  just send a request a minute after they've signed up where this tends to happen.

Airbnb should require guests to send Inquiries, rather than requests, if they have just signed up, but if wishes were fishes.....

While it could be the case here, it's not necessarily anything nefarious. Many guests encounter tech glitches, or like I said, Airbnb is verifying their payment method they have only uploaded 5 minutes earlier. Nor is a guest not replying to messages always a sign of bad intent. I've had guests who profusely apologized, saying they were on a camping trip with no reception, at work where they weren't allowed to conduct personal business, or they didn't have their notifications turned on and weren't aware I had been trying to make contact.

[Tyler370]

Thanks for your input I think I will pursue this with AIRBNB as this happens a lot and its taking up potential bookings and costing me money. This guest just completely stopped communicating but has cost me a potential booking.

[Ashley678]

yes, i have **bleep** neighbors with yurts and cabins and they do this all the time to me... lame...

[Tyler370 · Accepted solution]

That's so dishonest and f....ing annoying. I thought I was alone with this. It also doesn't tell you when so confirm booking that they have not yet paid. I will be writing to the Site to inform and request a change on the booking settings.

I will ask more questions next time for sure. Thanks for your input.

[Tyler370]

There has to be a way to fix this through notifying the site as 24 hours is far too long of a time to have an phantom booking 

[Debra300]

@Tyler370,

You have far more patience than me.  When this has happened to me, I called Airbnb immediately, and requested that the booking be canceled.  I've told reps that bookings shouldn't be confirmed unless the payment has gone through.  I then messaged the guests, and told them that they must submit a new booking request and use a different form of payment.  So far, I've gotten quick response from guests.  However, on other platforms such as Booking and Expedia, they will hold a reservation for 24 hours after the host has reported (automated button) that the payment was not valid.  Again, I don't have time for this type of monkeyshine, and it is the primary reason why I do not use a channel manager to link all of my calendars across platforms.  I send the flaky guests messages stating that due to their invalid payment the room is still available on other platforms, and can be booked while I awaiting a new form of payment.  Positive response is pretty low on Booking at about 25%.  So, I have a pretty high cancellation rate on that platform.

[Tyler370]

I feel there needs to be a change regarding this as that booking was held for 24 hours and I couldn't cancel it. Thus any potential guest couldn't book that weekend. It's infuriating. 

[Debra300]

@Tyler370,

I doubt that Airbnb will change this policy, because it is somewhat consistent with how other platforms operate (which may be mandated by law, I don't know) to allow a guest up 24 hours to provide a valid form of payment before cancelling the booking.  During that waiting period, hosts do not have the ability to cancel the reservation on that platform.  This is why I always advocate for listing on multiple platforms to have more than one avenue to get bookings.

[Elisabeth40]

Hi @Tyler370 , 

I just had the same situation last week, mine was a little bit more complicated: the guest place a booking for the same day, I accepted and the guest never completed the payment. Next day the guest did it again. Both times I called airbnb and unblocked myself, also got same day another bookings from other guests. Yes this 24h policy is not working out for the same day bookings.I usually wait for 1-2h and then I call airbnb. If a person really needs a place same day, they would process their payment.

[Vaa0]

as a guest you can request to stay with a payment method that cannot be verified by AIRBNB. THe host accepts the reservation but gets a message that guest has 24 hours to pay (even if 24 hours is past check in time or reservation date). Yes it is then possible to contact airbnb and cancel this but that is very time consuming. In the end the guest has been accepted as a guest! (so if he decided to pay or not does not change the fact that the reservation has been accepted). No after you as a host accept your guest and you have gotton your mail, the guest also gets a mail or message in dashboard and is given two option 1. withdraw request (but it was no longer a request as the host had accepted it) 2. update payment information.... so basicaly you are give 24 hours to cancel free of charge last minute unless your host has the knowledge or time to contact airbnb. and many coworkers at airbnb will not solve this in a swift way...  PLEASE explain me what is going on...

[Maragret0]

@Tyler370  there must be some tech.  "glitch" when I get a request for booking (on my mobile app) there is the option to "pre-approve  or decline" once i click for "yes  pre-approve" there is an option for "block these dates from being booked by other guests" I have the choice of yes or no  Of course it's always  "no"  not to block the dates  So is there something else I'm missing? don't want the same thing to happen to me.  

[Michelle53]

I just had one of these this week. A guest (also a host) booking from Austria, with good reviews.

He requested to book, and his introduction to me was to ask if  I offer free parking. Which did seem to be a strange thing to open with as both a host and a guest coming in from Europe, since I mention this in my listing. I responded, and we chatted about wifi.  He seemed ok with everything,  and I accepted the request . It went into a status of "awaiting payment".  

Since it was an international reservation (I thought, from his listed location), I gave him the benefit of the doubt until the next day, as I have seen that happen with international credit cards.

Next morning, I reached out to let him know the status was still "awaiting payment", and almost immediately the status changed to "request withdrawn".  I then received an email from Airbnb saying they cancelled the request due to payment not going through. 

It all seems a bit weird to me. The guest could have withdrawn the request or cancelled without penalty at any time, if he was unhappy with any of the items we discussed, since I have a moderate policy.   I did wonder if a guest can deliberately withhold payment if they don't want to cancel, knowing that Airbnb will process the cancellation due to nonpayment.