My Airbnb was cancelled within six hours. In December 2018 I booked an apartment in Corfu City for August 2019. Half of the fee had already been paid in advance (so far, standard procedure).
On July 27th at 7:00 PM an email arrived in my account. Airbnb sent a message telling me I had 72 hours to update my payment modalities since the transaction of the remaining fee hadn’t gone through. Further down in the email Airbnb let me know I had until the next day – the 28th – otherwise my booking would be cancelled. What was it? 24 hours or 72 hours to update the account? A discrepancy in itself.
The second email I found arrived only six hours later at 2:00 in the morning telling me my booking had been cancelled and a refund had been made to my account. Airbnb kept a cancellation fee of 48.77 Euro. I found those emails the evening of 28th (I am on vacation after all, and not checking my email every five hours).
We were already on Corfu island, a very uncomfortable situation to suddenly find ourselves without accommodation the upcoming weekend. I had to get in touch with the host immediately. Our host was extremely nice and helped us activate the booking again. Now I wonder – whatever happened to my 48 Euro? I have already written to Airbnb, but no one has gotten in touch with me so far.
I wonder if this happens often? A long standing booking cancelled by Airbnb within six hours? Not even being given a chance to update the payment modalities before cancellation? The cancellation fee mysteriously vanishing? No further information by Airbnb provided? Everything left for the guest and the host to be figured out (which was a tedious procedure and I am still ending up paying more)? I am very disappointed in Airbnb. Next time I will find accommodation through other platforms.
Oh I’m just completely positive the comment made by John which favors Airbnb and dings the customer just couldn’t possibly be an Airbnb employee.
Seriously! Traveler uses a bad card for payment and then complains they are canceled? The traveler uses an online booking service, and then claims it is “too hard to monitor” email or the app used for that service? Give me a break and find some real problems. I would give Airbnb credit here for getting rid of a bad, nonpaying customer that has already caused a host a 50% loss at minimum for those dates of booking. Some travelers just need to buy a vacation package with a guide to hold their hand constantly.