AirBnB hosts can DOUBLE your price on a confirmed and pre-paid booking! We learned about this the hard way, and the best you can hope for is a full refund from AirBnB if you know how to “play the game”. The way it works is that the host will “REQUEST” that you accept a new price change. If you accept it and pay it, then everything continues as expected. However if you DECLINE the offer, they may create a 2nd lower offer, which again you can decline. By the time you get to the end of this game the Host will probably ask YOU to cancel the booking. DO NOT DO THAT. If you cancel it, you can’t post a bad review, and you probably won’t get a full refund. If THEY cancel it, you will get 100% refund. Plus they will have to pay a fine to AirBnB for 10% to 50% of the booking value, plus they get an automatic negative posting for cancellation after their next quarterly review, plus their calendar will be frozen for bookings during your time slot for a while. Needless to say, they will try various tactics to get YOU to cancel, but don’t do that. If the disagreement continues you can get AirBnB to force the host to cancel, by simply saying “you are very uncomfortable with the new relationship” with the host.
There is another chicken or egg first challenge. After we had the host cancel the booking, we were told by AirBnB ambassadors that we could have gotten a credit voucher as partial compensation for the changes in price that occurred, IF WE LET THEM find a new unit for us BEFORE the host cancels. We have found the quality of AirBnB ambassadors to be hit and miss, so sometimes you need to help them find the solution you are looking for…
When you are ready to request that the host cancel, these AirBnB instructions will help you. Search for “If your Host needs to cancel” If your Host needs to cancel – Airbnb Help Centre
The take away from all of this is to always use “Super Hosts” since if they try to pull this stunt, they will loose their valuable status 🙂
Date of experience: September 29, 2022
