Airbnb supposedly gives you the opportunity of choosing a cancellation policy when you list your property. I have chosen a strict cancellation policy. A woman booked my apartment in Cap Cana three months ago for Christmas and New Years, a 14-day stay. I gave her a discount price for the two-week stay.
Six days before checking in, I received a message from Airbnb stating that they cancelled her reservation and fully refunded the client due to extenuating circumstances. Apparently the client lives in Venezuela and one of the guests needed a visa to visit Dominican Republic.
First of all, I did not know that the guest was coming from Venezuela since in her verified information she said that she lives in Miami. Secondly I never receive any call nor was contacted by Airbnb staff before they decided unilaterally to cancel and full refund her.
They said that she provided evidence to them. Airbnb had her rental money for three months and then cancelled and left me without any rental in the high season. They did not try to help at all. They even lied when confronted, saying that they contacted me, which was not true. If we were the ones cancelling in order to forfeit the penalty under extenuating circumstances we would have to have a lot of paperwork in order for them to consider it.
I asked them to reconsider. They rejected my plead. I asked them to at least give us a partial refund, but they did not. Airbnb does not consider hosts; they do not care about us at all. It seems they do not realize that without our properties they are just a mere application. Their customer service is the worst. They charge a fee for nothing.
I’ll be blunt.
Relying on Airbnb as a primary source of income, or expecting it to cover 100% of the costs of a rental property is very short-sighted. You are obviously doing this because otherwise, you wouldn’t plead with Airbnb about one lost reservation.
Not reading the terms of service and understanding the Extenuating Circumstances override for cancellation policy is naive at best. At worse, it’s the sign of a bad host (i.e. what other things are you doing wrong because you didn’t read all of the terms?).
Whoa. Steady on James. Pretty rude – extrapolating from one instance and calling them a “bad host”. Nasty!
Airbnb is a joke. I was a host for almost a year with many happy customers and a five star rating until I received the tenant from hell. The first thing that was troubling is I learned the guest was 17. He called me to tell me someone had gone into the house. I asked him to call the police. He kept calling me and then threatened me. I contacted Airbnb to tell them this guy probably is too young to be renting. He then called me again saying someone was in the house, so I informed him I was sending the police. At that moment, he left. I found a meth pipe and many drugs in the house due to his quick departure. Isabella, an employee removed me from the site, and cancelled by three other reservations without listening to my story. The guest had a rap sheet a mile long in Galveston, TX. This site does not even verify who these people are. It’s almost scary
Welcome to the club. They are just like the court system they take the money and use it interest-free for as long as they want. So they actually make a profit on refunding money. Trust me you will get kicked off soon just for contacting them. I had so many problems doing Airbnb this past summer that their computer just identifies anyone that isn’t a perfect 5 in the reviews and off you go.