Guest Payment Pending is Blocking Dates for 24 HOURS ON THE DAY OF!!! And No Ability to Cancel???

[Mỹ-Ái0]

Have a few properties on Airbnb over the years and this is the first time I've had this happen.

Today I have a guest who did a same day booking request for 3 days this weekend. I accepted thinking it was a standard booking as it didn't look any different. Instead after I accepted it says "Awaiting payment" and blocked off the dates. So any potential PAYING guests looking for a last minute stay this weekend will not even be able to see that my listing exists or at least be able to inquire. I see no cancellation button, and it says it will block the dates for 24 hour to give guest a chance to pay. In 12 hours my potential for a Friday booking will be completely dead, and the likelihood of a Saturday-Sunday booking will be significantly reduced.

So a single guest can hold dates hostage for 24 hours without payment or repercussions, and I cannot even cancel! It has been 4 hours and so I could have already missed a legitimate paying booking. This guarantees the loss of a few hundred dollars, and potentially thousands in the event there could have been a long stay.

Why is this a thing at all? I don't even see settings to disable this... this makes zero sense. At least have a cancelation button, or a setting to reduce the time to 1-2 hours, or just remove this all together. It is bad enough when a guest does a extension request the morning of, but to have a complete stranger with zero investment or repercussions have the power to lock up your property for 24 hours for any number of dates is financially damning.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Mỹ-Ái0 when this has happened to us the guest did finally book. Perhaps message the guest and ask them to cancel the request if they are not planning to go through with it.

[Mỹ-Ái0]

They are gone with the wind. Sabotaged my chance at a weekend booking. Airbnb wont cancel these "awaiting payments" either.  I simply have to wait the 24 hour timer out even though at this point their original reservation is certainty dead. 

What's that? A host left you a bad review because you left their place trashed? Just use your friend's Airbnb account and pull the payment method off the account. Request a nice long stay with that same host starting same day, and send them a nice long message about how you can't wait to stay at their amazing place, then once they accept your request just sit there and watch them beg you to cancel. Once the 24 hour expires, do it again with another friends account. Job well done! Thanks Airbnb

[Joan2709]

Hi @Mỹ-Ái0 

@Mike-And-Jane0 have a good suggestion. I would definitely message the guest and put some urgency in the message...."unfortunately, there seems to be a problem with your payment on your reservation. Something like: "Please resolve this as soon as you can, as we cannot guarantee your reservation until payment is completed." 

Other Hosts have contacted Airbnb and told them to cancel the reseravation awaiting payment and not wait 24hrs. The last situation I saw the Host actually read through the entireTerms of Service and it didn't say anything about blocking a Host calendar for 24 hours if the guest hasn't made a payment. That could have changed though, just go an email about the Terms of Service changing and have been too "scared" to read through it yet. 

[Mỹ-Ái0]

Yeah we messaged numerous times. This scenario simply should not exist. I see hundreds of complaints about this very same thing dating back to 2015. 9 years of complaints.

In terms of contacting Airbnb to cancel, we did and they sent us this updated article: https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2411

• "Hosts no longer has the option to decline awaiting payment requests."

If guests do not have payment method ready to go at time of request, then they should be moved aside immediately, similarly to a pre-approval on an inquiry. If we get an instant booking, so sad, too bad... first to pay, first to lock in the booking.

[Joan2709]

Well....rats! 😠 @Mỹ-Ái0 

I truly agree with you! What if this was a last minute booking over a holiday weekend, or a booking for 2 weeks let's say. So your calendar is blocked for 24 hours and no one else can book for that 2week period? 

[Mỹ-Ái0]

Negative... Any chance of getting an actual booking for today is blocked up... Goodbye Friday, the most likely day to get booked.

So here is one of the most ludicrous things about this situation. Alright so the guest has their days reserved while "awaiting payment" for Friday to Sunday right? So after tomorrow morning, there is a 0% chance of a guest confirming a payment for a reservation that includes a night that they didn't stay. So Saturday morning I will still have my weekend blocked up with no payment for that full 24 hour period for a reservation that will 100% not go through at this point.

Why put a 24 hour period for something that literally overlaps the possibility of that same thing even happening and then literally TOSing the Hosts only ejection button out of existence?

Like printing coupons with a 24 hour expiration on expired milk. There are a lot of things that I would like to change about Airbnb, but this situation is completely unacceptable.

[Inna22]

@Mỹ-Ái0 it sounds like last minute reservations have worked for you in the past. They never have for me and I now have a full day buffer. Last minute has always been nothing but trouble. Drunk people looking to keep drinking; payment bouncing (better caught ahead like in your case than finding out after they moved in!); people changing their mind and begging to be let out or just a lot of back and fourth at the last minute that normally is spread out over the weeks of advanced reservations.

I stopped taking anything last minute about 4 years ago and never looked back

[Mỹ-Ái0]

The solution to the drunks, lower tier guests, etc. isn't rejecting day of bookings; it is  rejecting 1-2 day bookings. Disable anything less than 3 days and those people are gone. Occasionally if I have a 2 day gap I'll make an exception for a 2 day booking, but NEVER 1 day bookings ever again.

Ultimately this situation has very little to do with the guest, and everything to do with Airbnb giving a guest this ability to begin with. 

[Inna22]

@Mỹ-Ái0 I do not allow one day reservations. It does not matter your length of stay, it is the budget. If a person has $400 to spend, they can book one night for $400 or 4 nights at $400. Most importantly, Airbnb will not change their policy for you or even for all of us, as has been proven over and over again.  You can either adapt your business to their way of doing theirs as much as you can or leave the platform. Another option is to consider this cost of doing business and have it built into your profit loss calculations. There will be other situations- people damaging your house, asking and getting a refund for silly things etc. Of course, I hope you will encounter as little of that as possible. 

By the way, if you want someone specific to see your reply, tag them with @ and user name, otherwise most likely than not they will not know you replied.