What to do when guests doesn't respond to extra guest fee?

[Vin2]

Hello, So two days ago my guest used instant booking to get my room booked, they gave me one line of information only saying that it was a road trip for an engagment from one city to the next for one guest.

They did not respond to any of my messages via airbnb, so I sent them a text message, I said when would you be arriving? And two to three hours go by without any response then I got a text message approximently 3 1/2 hours later apoligizing about the delay in messaging due to no cell service and saying " we will be arriving in 5 hours and 13 minutes". With that response I promomted to ask do you have one guest or two? I thought with the response "we..." that there are more than one guest as to the booking information had said. They messaged me back saying that their are two guests, I said that is fine but I will request additional funds for the second guest, because I cannot modifiy the reservation becasuse we are on the day of the reservation, please respond to the request at your earliest convience.

So they informed me that they did not know their is a price difference for the additonal guest and that they would pay for the addional guest fee. I sent the request within five minutes of letting them know, and no response. So come about 940pm they tell me they are 15 or so minutes away, I ensure that they find parking when they come and let them in and after they set down their luggage and stuff, I did mention again that the request is waiting for their response so I can charge for the second guest they said that they will do it, I wished them a goodnight and I go off to bed. So far this morning their is no response or anything yet.

Should I text them again or should I let airbnb get involved? I'm not sure what to do. 

[Kelly149]

@Vin2 My usual tack on this is to have the guest open the app in my presence to complete the transaction before I leave them in the space. 

Since that is passed, yes, I’d probably get CS involved to get it resolved. 

Good luck

[Vin2]

@Kelly149 that's a great tactic, thank you for the suggestion. 

[Helen3]

I agree I would never let guests into the accommodation without them accepting any extra charges.

Many guests try and avoid extra guest charges. Of course they knew it would cost more.

If they wanted to pay for two they would have booked for two.

How long are they staying with you?

[Vin2]

@Helen3 just one night

[Alice-and-Jeff0]

@Vin2 - Making an assumption here that you used the reservation change function to change the guest number from 1 to 2 and are waiting on the guest to accept this change. 

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/50/i-m-a-host--how-do-i-make-a-change-to-a-confirmed-reservation

If they check out and have not yet accpeted this alteration, you can use the Resolution Center to request the additional funds for the extra guest. If they still don't accept, then Airbnb will work on your behalf to retrieve the extra funds. 

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/767/what-is-the-resolution-center

To make matters worse, Airbnb seems to have made yet another change and it does not show anywhere on your listing that there is an extra person fee anymore.  Only when you enter the correct number of guests does it auto-populate into the price.  I can see where the guests may not have realized this since it used to be posted prominently before.  This may be why there was confusion.  However, it was their responsibility to enter the correct number of guests in the first place.  Based on your exchanges with them, they don't seem to be thinking things through all the way.  

You can probably sit tight for now and see if they accept the change.  

[Vin2]

@Alice-and-Jeff0 so on my attempt to use the reservation change function it would not let me submit a change because of the notification of the same day, the error message reads " reservation has already started. You cannot after this reservation's number of guests. ". I did use the resoultion center to request the additional funds to recover the funds. They have texted me just a few minutes ago so I'll see if they accept or not. 

[Rich2458]

I charge an extra $25 per person per night after 4 people. I have started messaging the guest after every booking and asking them how many guests they have.  I have so many people try to add people the day that they show up and always claim that the guests had last minute changes in work, etc. I’m currently trying to collect an extra guest fee through the resolution center. I will update later when I get an answer. 

[Vanessa1275]

I have recently had a guest book for 1 for the length of 1 week. He asked if he can have an additional guest, which I agreed to making him aware of the extra cost/night. I sent the request through the resolution center, and the guest played dumb saying they didn't see any request.

After waiting for the 72 hrs required I escalated the issue to Airbnb. I waited 18 days for a case manager to be assigned to my case. I missed the email by mistake, and when I finally saw it the case manager Jose was threatening to  to close by case in 48 hrs if I did not respond. I sent them the Ring Video Recordings I have, showing the extra guest coming in on 2 nights. He then emails to say that " extra guest fee was not stipulated in your listing". I asked him to send me a record of where he is seeing this, because  have it listed on my listing and if a guest books for 2 people they can see the increase in price per night. I asked him to call me immediately to get this resolved. He refused to provide me any evidence, hung up the phone on me and closed the case with no FAIR Resolution. 

What kind of support is this for hosts? If the guest booked for 1 guest, and you are sharing video recordings of 2 people coming into your home, why would you not agree to have the guest pay?

hope you have better luck @Vin2