Wrong details in the reservation

[Enchanted3]

I don’t know about other hosts, but I keep getting scammed by people who put the wrong information in their reservations. Most recently we had an instant booking from a guest who reserved for 1 person, and no pets. Turns out she writes about “our 2 dogs” and I call Airbnb and ask them to cancel the reservation and they refuse. And she starts asking for me to accept the difference off platform so she would not have to pay the extra $2. Airbnb still made it my responsibility to cancel and I had to pay 25% of the total reservation just to not host someone who put the wrong information on their reservation.

If someone puts the wrong information regarding payments, Airbnb will cancel without hesitation. But when it come to guests putting the wrong number of guests or pets, then the responsibility falls on the host. They actually charged me money to cancel an instabooking where the guest put the wrong number of guests and pets, which went against my house rules.

Another time it happened in a large 12 person Airbnb where we charged a small fee for each guest and we kept the price very low. We had several people scamming about having “infants” that were at least 12 years old (because infants stay for free), and one person booked it for 2, but then wanted to come in 4 so we asked Airbnb to get involved. We were told that it was all up to us. The option to cancel the booking was only ours to make “with consequences”. 
Those folks ended up stealing as much toilet paper, shampoos, paper towels, cleaning supplies, and anything else they felt would pay themselves back for the extra fee we asked for.

I can’t think of a good solution for hosts when guests reserve with the wrong number of guests and pets.

Any suggestions? 

[Patricia2526]

Hi @Enchanted3 

Oh, I’ve experienced the same issue with inquiries and request-to-book messages. Before responding, I always make it a habit to double-check the full booking details first. If I see that the reservation is set for only 1 guest, I politely ask them to confirm if that’s correct. I also remind them to update the booking if they have additional guests or pets, so the system can automatically calculate the correct fees. This helps avoid misunderstandings and keeps everything transparent for both sides.

[Enchanted3]

Unfortunately when I did that they asked me to accept money off platform. That’s when I thought for sure Airbnb would back me up and cancel. Instead, they called the guest to tell them I alerted them about paying off platform. That put me in a worse spot, because I was sure his guest would end up with either a bad review in retaliation (had that happen and Airbnb still sided with the guest) or risk the guest stealing (again they usually only steal $15-50 worth of stuff so not worth fighting for and risking a bad review) or both. 

[Enchanted3]

Also we made our house rules set to 1 dog maximum, because that is what we felt comfortable doing. They were forcing us to allow them to violate our house rules.