How do you deal with questionable enquiries?‌‌

[Quincy]

Hello all,

Today, I would like to share one of the most reported cases on communication and fraud. There are sometimes guests who make enquiries to negotiate "off platform prices" or try to book a space for someone other than themselves. I’ve noticed that there’s an increase of said requests especially during the holiday and festive periods. 

Do you have experience with such enquiries? If so, do you have any advice for responding to such messages?

I look forward to hearing your answers. 

Quincy

[Lydia382]

@Diana-And-Charles0   It's my understanding if you're not using Instant Booking, you will not get demerits for declines.  Can someone confirm?

[Julieanna0]

@Lydia382and @Diana-And-Charles0   You can almost always cancel an Instant Booking with no penalty.  See the following:

"You’ll be able to cancel Instant Book reservations online penalty-free 3 times in one year for these reasons—after that, you’ll have to contact us to make the cancellation without penalty."

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2022/can-a-host-cancel-a-reservation-without-adverse-consequence...

[Therese14]

Strange that they don't even know that they are being Cheats. This guest wanted to stay for Easter and book one night and pay cash for the other two nights.  I sent her a very nice refusal message saying that I do not take one night bookings and that I would also not take cash.The booking was over the Easter Weekend, I explained that I am then not covered by Air bnb insurance,  and that I hope she does not consider my terms are unfair. Thankfully I had Quincy help me with this Guest,

Mel from Mildura in NSW Australia.This was the reply The Warning Bells rang loud and clear. She has only one review and that was negative, that it took them a long time to get their money.

Mel4:17 PM

MARIA, i was only asking if that is ok with (Website hidden by Airbnb) some of the airbnb host are doing, and even offer to me...jst from experience. Thats why I ask you.... And that is fine if you DONT do it. I did not say you are UNFAIR ! Giving a negative report is not very helpful, it just show the kind of person you are ! I am not ripping you off either...I will pay you..But anyways, thanks for widrawing the offer...wont be happy staying, the kind of host like you anyway..plenty of airbnb and accommodations around, youre not the only one in the world.  Good Luck Mel try as you might there are better scammers out there than you.

[Kevin1897]

This is great!  We are fairly new at hosting (<6mos), and we have had some great guests and some not so great ones too.  We do offer a weekly/monthly discount; but insist on transactions to be done via Airbnb.  We always ask for guests names (not necessarily ages; can we ask for ages?) since we personalize gifts for them. Due to Covid and being new, we have allowed new to Airbnb guests with no reviews to book and for the most part we didn't have an issue with them.  We try to use our gut feeling to accept or decline a booking.
We have had a mother inquire on a "get-a-way" for her college son and his friends...we were actually okay with it only because we live on site and we had good contact with the mom; it fell through due to the son not wanting to travel 3 hours away and she apologized. 
We had one guest that booked our cabin for work, but only had his worker stay...we changed our house rules after this due despite the guest being listed the primary never arrived and we didn't have contact with the guest and only the primary.
We had another guest booked for 4 people almost a month out and provided their names, then on the day of check-in one of the guests shows up with 3 other people and we proceed to show them the place to find out the primary guest wasn't planning on staying and they thought they could have up to 8 people...we informed them no only the people that the primary booked can stay and that the primary needs to stay per our house rules and tried to contact her via Airbnb and finally she replied but wasn't coming.  We knew she was young and local, but she informed us that it was going to be her, her boyfriend, her brother & his girlfriend; and being informed that Airbnb protects us, hosts, from underage bookings and the local booking rules; however she was not flagged by Airbnb for whatever reason.  The only guest that showed up informed us that he was her cousin not her boyfriend. 
One guest didn't know we charged a pet fee because they booked our Airbnb cabin via bringFido.com (our communication with him was via Airbnb website). 
We then started getting weird inquires:  
1) Someone working for an insurance company wanting to put a family up while their house is being repaired, we directed them to utilize the 3-party Airbnb page and declined.
2) Someone wanting to stay long term and pay via their Venmo account...we declined and reported.
3) Someone wanting to stay, but noticed that we didn't list having a hot tub in the amenities and they wanted a hot tub. We accepted their inquiry but let her know we don't have a hot tub. 
Most of our inquires seem to deal with pets. 

However, our question for the group is when there is a inquiry and a person's inquiry details (number of guests and dates) don't correspond with the text of the messages they sent, we are suppose to accept or decline the inquiry or their words?   When we have declined an inquiry we are not given the option that the details don't match the text send.  We have approved an inquiry with a message for the guest to adjust their booking, but if they don't it could become a problem.

[Sarah977]

@Kevin1897  If a guest sends an inquiry where their message says "we" indicating that there is more than one guest, and you see they have only booked for one guest, you send them back a message saying "Hi XX, I see that you have only booked for one guest, but you mention "we will be arriving at...", so it appears that there will be more than one guest staying. You need to enter the correct number of guests who will be staying on your booking- no unauthorized guests not accounted for in the booking will be admitted on the property. So let's get that squared away so we can proceed."

There is no need for you to pre-approve an inquiry if you aren't satisfied that all is understood properly between you and the guest. You don't need to pre-approve or decline an Inquiry at all, you only need to message back within 24 hours. If it takes longer than that to work things out with the guest, it's no big deal, you can continue to communicate and if all seems like a good fit, they can send a booking request.

[Kevin1897]

@Sarah977 I have heard what you are saying about responding restarts the Airbnb clock; however we were penalized by Airbnb for not responding (accepting/declining an inquiry) within the 24 hours, even though we were messaging them to get more information.  The time wasn't linked to our responding to their message, it was selecting accepting/declining the inquiry.  So when we need more information, we ask; but if they don't respond/correct their listing within the original 24 hours we are the one taking the hit from Airbnb.

  So, we either accept the inquiry and hope that they adjust it when they book or we have declined because the difference and no feedback from the guest, and if we decline it because of the difference between their message and their request, Airbnb doesn't give us that as a reason to decline their booking. 
For that matter, if a guest is looking to book (not inquiry) and their booking is not matching the words in their message and you decline, Airbnb will block off those dates; again there should be a box for the reason for declining is due to mismatched information provided by guest, it shouldn't penalize the host. 

[Sarah977]

@Kevin1897  Maybe something has changed- I haven't been open to bookings for a year due to Covid and having a home-share listing. I know I was never penalized for simply answering an inquiry, without either pre-approving or declining. 

You seem to know the difference between an inquiry and a request, but you talk about accepting an inquiry and accept isn't an option on inquiries- it's pre-approve. 

Maybe you just used the wrong term.

[Kevin1897]

@Sarah977  sorry yes wrong term, yes pre-approve/decline.  
I don't know if there has been a change with Airbnb, just know that our response time went down after just messaging an inquiry; so we had to decline the inquiry since the guest wasn't responding and just fishing for deals.  

Sorry you haven't been able to have guests, hope all is well in Mexico! ♥️

[Colleen253]

@Kevin1897 If your response rate went down, it's for another reason, or is a glitch. There were some posts on here recently about a response rates glitch. It was confirmed by Airbnb as such. You may want to look into that.

[Kevin1897]

@Colleen253 Thanks, I'll look into it.  I thought as long as we were communicating with guests we can wait to pre-approve/decline inquires until we were confident, but when we watched our rating go down we thought that we must have been misinformed. 

And I just read on another thread that as a host: declining a guest doesn't automatically block the dates. This is an option that Airbnb presents you when you decline and you can check a box that says not to block the dates. You don't have to make any excuses when declining a guest.

So, for a potential guests inquiry if they have conflicting information, I guess the best way is to ensure the adjust what they are requesting and then when it is correct it can be pre-approved.  Otherwise decline for conflict of information provided.

[Colleen253]

@Kevin1897 Honestly, most inquiries go nowhere, so I tend to just answer back quickly and let the guest sort themselves out, or not! I don't fiddle around further with pre approving or declining. Best of luck with getting the response rate thing sorted. Pretty sure it must be a glitch.

[Sarah977]

@Kevin1897  Thanks. Yes, I miss hosting- I had great guests, some of whom I keep in touch with. There's no restrictions on me hosting here, but Mexico has been terrible in their COVID response and has one of the highest infection and death rates in the world. 

I share my kitchen with guests, so I'm not taking any risks. Quite comfy, though- I live in the quiet countryside- lots of fresh air and room to roam without coming in contact with crowds.

[Colleen253]

@Kevin1897 What do you mean when you say you were penalized by not accepting or declining an inquiry? How were you penalized, because there is no penalty, as long as you respond to guest's message. And it doesn't 'reset the clock'. That's the end of it. Also the calendar is not blocked when you decline a request. Blocked dates only happen if you let the clock run out on a request. You can however manually unblock them.

[Kevin1897]

@Colleen253 We were penalized by having our response timing affected.  Because despite messaging the inquiry within 24 hours, we didn't select pre-approve/decline.  We ended up declining since it was a long weekend here and they were not responding to the messages.

[Emmanuel711]

I have a full time job besides hosting. I tried to communicate with my actual guests before they made any request. I asked them first. I received over 10 to 30 fake requests and at times I cannot respond within the next 8 hours. We should not be penalize for that. However, the guests services come first with Airbnb. I suggest the automated system. I have used some parts of it and it's free. I reviewed them afterv