Ok, I'll try to be brief. But there's a lot of stuff here.
Guest books a week in middle of high season, 6 months prior to arrival. Made it through the gauntlet, seems perfectly legit. Appears to be a nice family. Booked. Done.
A few days ago, as we were looking at the booking, to prep for their arrival, and noticed that all previous messages from the guest on the message system had been hidden, with the notice "message hidden because guest no longer has access to the account". Tried to access the guest's profile, and it had been deleted.
So, we contact Airbnb to explain what this means. After a couple of days, we're told that the guest has been banned from the platform, and the booking will be cancelled. Surprise!
So, minutes later, the booking is cancelled. A few minutes later, I receive a text from the guest asking why we cancelled. I tell her we are as surprised as she is. Airbnb cancelled and closed your account. She then calls Airbnb, and texts me again saying that Airbnb told her that it's an issue with our account, and asks me to fix it.
Meanwhile, within 5 minutes of the cancellation, we receive a booking request for exactly the same dates, from someone who just signed up - of the same nationality (written in same language). It looks extremely suspicious now, but after a few questions, it does not seem to be the same guest at all.
So, we call Airbnb, and as usual, get drenched in compliments before we can explain, and the "ambassador" tells us the guest had violated some rule, and had been banned, and that's why it's been cancelled. I accepted the other booking (after they successfully survived the usual gauntlet).
Then a few hours later, the cancelled guest sends me a message on the Airbnb message, system, using the same account that had been previously deleted, asking to rebook it. Surprise! account miraculously reinstated. Erm, what?
So we call Airbnb, and they tell us the guest has been banned and can't possibly access their account, and may have created a new account (but it isn't new, it's the very same account with the old profile, message and booking history intact!).
But by this time, these dates have already been booked again. So I can't accept a new booking from the cancelled guest anyway. And I wrote back to her to explain that we haven't a clue why Airbnb did this, and sorry, but the dates have been booked again.
Then she writes back, angrily accusing us of cancelling her booking to get a more expensive booking...
So this is all too weird now. I no longer trust the supposedly banned guest, I've given up on talking to Airbnb about it any further, but I did write airbnb to tell them that whatever happened here looks extremely suspicious, inexplicable, discredible, and begs the question of what was the point of the exercise?
Airbnb wrote back and reiterated that the guest had been banned, and cannot access their account. Have a nice day.
So, I wrote back to the banned, cancelled guest again.. On the Airbnb message system, to the original account that's no longer supposed to exist... And told her that I'm as dumbfounded as she is. Have no clue what just happened, and feel badly that it did. Very sorry, but you need to discuss it with Airbnb.
Weird, huh?