Guest can book days that are blocked!

[Laura2592]

Just a warning to others. Last night I had a booking. I was chatting with the guest to thank them and pulled up the calendar. Turns out she booked check out the day someone else was checking in. Due to COVID enhanced clean, we have 24 hours between guests. Those days are normally blocked on the calendar. Yet somehow she was able to book. 

I let her know we would not have enough time to complete the protocol and got on line to wait for an Airbnb CSR through chat (this was late, probably 9:30 pm.) I get a response 2 hours later. Airbnb says "oh yeah. No idea how that happened. You can cancel without penalty." I say "Nope -- I want you to cancel. I don't trust that there won't be some glitch and you lose this conversation with your permission. There goes my SH badge for no reason." They say they will administratively cancel. Has not yet happened.

I am thinking about just contacting the guest and asking her to cancel. I offered a shorter stay and explained why. She said she was confused as to how she could even book the day that initially showed her as blocked but when she sent it through it happened. (So....why are guests trying to book blocked dates? Another mystery of human behavior.)

Just a warning. Keep an eye on your calendar.  Lots of glitches going around. 

[Emiel1]

@Laura2592

I looked at your listing, it seems impossible to book not available dates.

Some dates are greyed out, because the minimum stay prevents to start a reservation on them.

They become available as soon a proper check-in date is choosen.

Maybe the guest is confusing those dates as being "blocked".

If preparation days are set, the amount of days after and before each reservation will be blocked.

Which are all shown in the calender.

If the guest is happy to shorten her stay with 1 night, then the "change" option will do the job.

If it is a technical error, Airbnb should cancel and provide full refund to the guest.

If the guests cancels, she should be sure receiving a full refund (cancellation screen will predict this).

Thanks for the warning,

Emiel

[Laura2592]

@Emiel1 , right, it was a technical error. We are really nuts about keeping our calendar up to date. The guest said she saw that the dates were not available (there were 2 nights available but not the 3 that she wanted) but that when she put in the IB it went through. 

Airbnb is cancelling. They have admitted its a "calendar engineering error" AKA glitch. Just wanted other to be aware. 

[Cynthia1103]

We just had to cancel a guest because Airbnb booked them over an unavailable week when my son is staying at our cottage.  They charged us, listed that we cancelled the guest, and still have not responded appropriately.  It is even noted in the calendar (host notes - Thomas and Cindy staying).  It is upsetting.

[Helen3]

Hello @Cynthia1103 

When you contacted Airbnb about this, did you confirm to them they had accepted a booking on dates you had blocked out and ask them to cancel penalty free? Or did you just cancel the booking.

I've had about eight occasions where Airbnb has accepted a booking on dates I had blocked on my calendar (I have it set so the day between bookings is blocked out). In each case they agreed to investigate and then cancelled penalty free.

[Cynthia1103]

We did ask them to cancel the fee, etc.  So far they cannot "find" their error and have not remedied this yet.  I don't like the fact that they are not admitting the error (it is obvious from the post dated note on the blocked days).  Also, we've been doing this for a while, this is our second house that we are hosting.  We've never cancelled a guest, ever.  We are superhosts on both rentals.