We had a guest book through ab&b, a 2 months reservation @ $16,000 for an arrival Thursday Jan.13. At 5:30pm, day of the arrival, the guest texted me and said she needed to cancel and wanted us to process the refund. The guest said China would not allow her cousin on the plane. The guest that booked the reservation was for a family member, not herself. I had the option to deny the request, which I did. This was a non refundable reservation. Below is the response from ab&b and our pay out is $0
We understand what your policy states, however, in times of an extenuating circumstance, it over rules the cancellation policy of our hosts when the reservation gets cancelled.
Lots of anger from many hosts about similar refunds.. AIRBnb are you hearing us??. Its not acceptable and guests should buy their own insurance.
Did you know that the rental was booked for the 3rd party? I would suggest to NEVER allow 3rd party bookings (it is even against Airbnb policy if I am not mistaken) to begin with.
Airbnb has a history of essentially ignoring their agreements with all of us hosts during the pandemic and refunding money we thought was ours when the guests clearly had no contractual or legal right to those refunds. There was and presumably still is at least one class action lawsuit against Airbnb about this but I'd suspect that all the plaintiffs have had their listings removed as retaliation. During the time this was going on, nobody at airbnb would answer the phone and you had to try to navigate one of those brutal phone systems designed not to let you even speak to the "customer service rep" that doesn't speak good english or know what they're doing anyway.
VRBO used strong-arm tactics against owners pressuring us to make refunds guests had no contractual or legal right to, moving us down in search rankings etc. Meanwhile, of course neither Airbnb or VRBO ever paid a mortgage or HOA or property tax bill that total about $9K a month for one of my Maui properties that sat empty for 7 months.
It's maddening how helpless owners can be. Unfortunately, whenever a company or small group of companies has a virtual monopoly in an industry, consumers can basically expect to pay an awful lot of money for inferior products and services.
Lots of anger from many hosts about similar refunds.. AIRBnb are you hearing us??. Its not acceptable and guests should buy their own insurance.
They do not care. They have a constant inflow of starry-eyed newbies who cannot operate outside of the nanny-state confines of Airbnb. So they really don't care if some experiences owners quit their platform.
