My guests credit card will be expired by the time the balance is charged for her stay in August.

[Chris888]

My guest credit card will be expired by the time the balance is charged for her stay in August.  Is there a way she can update her card information once she gets her new card prior to her stay in August?

[Steve143]

Hello @Chris888,

As guests pay Airbnb and not the host, all payment issues should be addressed by the guest contacting Airbnb support.

All hosts can do is to suggest to the guest that they contact Airbnb support. There's a contact link in the reservation confirmation email that guests receive.

Steve.

[Amy38]

Airbnb charges a guest when they book. They pay you after the guest arrives. So no problem...your money is already in ABB's pocket. @Chris0

[Matthew285]

@Amy38 I think this is a situation where the guest used the new program

"Pay Less Up Front".

The guest only pays half the cost of the trip up front, then is charged the other half a few weeks before the trip. Here is AirBnB's press release on the new program:

https://press.atairbnb.com/airbnb-launches-pay-less-up-front-a-new-flexible-payment-option-for-trave...

[Amy38]

@Matthew285.  You may be right, but I think maybe it is just a host worrying too much.

By the way, which city stopped allowing Abnb to collect taxes.  I read it yesterday but was catching up on so many threads.....and my city councilman would like to know how it went.

[Matthew285]

@Amy38 I am not familiar with the story you are referring to!

Usually the story is that the city *wants* AirBnB to automatically collect relevant taxes, and AirBnB does not want to. At some point, AirBnB starts to collect the taxes and remits them to the city.

I am not familiar with any city *stopping* AirBnB from collecting and remitting taxes, but I would be very interested in reading about it.

(Here in San Francisco, AirBnB has automatically been collecting taxes for a while... and the local government recently just forced AirBnB to remove all the hosts who had not registered with the city. About 4,000 hosts were dropped.)

[Amy38]

@Matthew285  I found the relevant post...apparently La Quinta, CA stopped letting Abnb collect after 3 months.

I would really like to know how the city (SF) figured out out all who were all the scoff-laws. This is a real issue here and the city is disturbed that Abnb just pays a lump sum rather than itemizing the rentals by license#. Abnb is claiming that this is a privacy issue...nonesense of course. I am in converstions with my city coucil person about this issue and the city seems to be at sea.

[Matthew285]

@Amy38 that is interesting that the city stopped AirBnB from collecting the tax.

As to how San Francisco figured out who was not registered: if you are a host in the city, you have been required to enter your STR license into your listing. (There is a dedicated field for it.) A few weeks ago, any listing without the STR license number was deactivated. As you might imagine, the backlog of applications at the Office of Short Term Rentals rose to record levels

[Amy38]

@Matthew285 That is brilliant!  So easy.  We dont have that as a dedicated entry yet but should. We are required to have it in our listing, but it can be anywhere.

Thanks so much for the info.

[Matthew285]

@Chris888, yes hopefully AirBnB will send her a reminder to update her payment information before then.

This is one of the extra fun things to worry about that hosts have gained with the new Pay Less Up Front plan. I know Pay Less Up Front is probably a good thing overall (what with the increased business), but it does add one more worry to the pile.

[Robyn136]

Airbnb won't let cutomers update their credit card information if it's expired, lost or stolen. Even if they add a new credit card and set it as DEFAULT. This just happened to me. I book back in June 2017 and paid half on my Citi credit card. The original charge for half went through no problem. Several months later that CC was lost and replaced.  I updated my payment profile with my new card on Airbnb and set it as the default. When my upcoming hosts went to charge me the remaining balance the transaction was immediately canceled and my reservation cancled and a refund issued! I did not want to cancel that reservation and wanted the hosts to charge the correct card on file.  Fortunately, my hosts had had a similar problem before with other guestgs and their workaround was to cancel the entire original reservation and book a new one THEN airbnb would allow the new card charges to go through. I called Airbnb and they said they knew this was an exisiting problem and that once a reservation is booked, that same credit card has to be used, there are no ways to adjust the payment method for an existing reservation. They are working on a soloution but this is a huge problem for folks who's credit cards expire (or are lost/stolen) before the final payment is made. You'd think Airbnb could fix this immediately, but according to the online forums I've been on it's been ongoing for at least 8 months. 

[Clare0]

@Robyn136  Actually, this same scenario happened to me.  I made a reservation in early March and chose the Pay Less Upfront option, meaning I paid half when reserving with the remainder to be paid at a later date (today).  After the first payment I was notified by my bank that there had been fraudulent activity on the card I used to make the first payment to Airbnb.  (The fraudulent activity had nothing to do with Airbnb.) 

My bank cancelled the original credit card account and issued a new card.  I took screen shots to show you how Airbnb handled the situation when they tried to charge the original, now cancelled, credit card: 

 [Reservation number hidden]

When the charge for the second payment did not go through, I got this message: 

So I clicked on the "submit payment now" link and added the new credit card number: 

The process was so easy a 7th grader could follow the steps.  

One thing that may be confusing is that by adding a new credit card to one's Payment Methods won't automatically be charged in this type of situation.  One must actually enter a new card number in this manner in order for payment to be made. 

I hope this is informative!

[Robyn136]

 I’m so glad you think it’s easy enough for seventh grader. I just spent the last three days on the telephone with Airbnb and they admitted there’s a problem on their platform. You cannot add a different credit card to the second payment their software doesn’t allow it. You can only do it on the mobile app not the website desktop. It’s a known bug and they are working on fixing it.

[Clare0]

@Robyn136 Yes, it will not work if one just adds a new payment method to their profile.  I did this and Airbnb did not charge the new credit card account. One has to specify the new payment method to be used when a payment method is no longer valid.  Airbnb allows users to enter multiple payment methods in their profile, but I imagine that Airbnb will not automatically charge an alternate payment method unless the user specifies which one to use. 

I instructed Airbnb which credit card I wanted to be charged  for the second payment installment on my Mac laptop using Safari.  No problems so I don't understand why Airbnb would tell you there is a system issue. 

Be that as it may, one just needs to follow the prompts Airbnb sends in their notifications.

[Clare0]

@Chris888 Airbnb will attempt to charge the original card and when the payment doesn't go through, the guest will be alerted and prompted to provide a new credit card number.  Hopefully your guest will have their replacement card before the next payment is due. 

I'm sure that this happens 1000's of times.  I wouldn't worry about it.