Reservation booking issues

[Shane172]

Hello,

I attempted to book 4 days for months away on the website and when I reached the submit button to process everything it took a few minutes to work. I waited and it gave me an “error the dates are now unavailable”. I am a first time user and scrambled to book the following weekend thinking this listing was booking up quickly. I successfully booked the following weekend and couldn’t be more excited. After checking my email, I was charged for both weekends. I called Airbnb and stated this issue and requested a refund for the second weekend I booked. I am being told they can’t do anything for me until the host replies to them. I paid the reservation in full so I am out of a significant amount of money until this happens. What if the host doesn’t reply? Isn’t my issue with Airbnb and the error I received? I simply want a refund for the reservation I had to scramble to make due to a false error message. 

[Emiel1]

@Shane172 

Check if there is a "cancel for free within 48 hours after booking "on the listing.

Otherwise: if the error is documented Airbnb should take it a more serious approach.

After all it is THEIR system failing here, a system you have to pay high service costs for to use it.

So you may expect some level of technical quality and not be sent away if it fails.

Best regards, Emiel

[Shane172]

The reservation had a strict cancellation policy which included losing half of my payment. But like I said the reservation told me it didn’t go through so I scrambled thinking people were booking it quickly and booked the next weekend. The customer service doesn’t seem to understand the issue and even told me it’s not an “urgent” issue since the reservation is not until August. It’s urgent to me since I paid in full twice and out a significant amount of money because of it. Just waiting for calls back from them now. 

[Sarah977]

@Shane172  I suggest you contact them through Twitter, which is said to get the best and quickest results. Airbnb is known for not ever calling back, even though they tell you they will. And I usually get decent results by contacting them through messaging as well- you have to be extremely clear with them what the issue is, or, like you found, they don't seem to understand.

Like this:

"I was trying to book xx for xx dates.

 I got an error message that the place was unavailable for those dates.

 So I booked the place for the following weekend INSTEAD.

 Now I see that I was charged for the first reservation dates, which I was told were   unavailable, as well as being charged for the second reservation.

 I only wanted one booking. 

 I need to you to cancel and be refunded for the first booking I tried to make, as I was told   the dates were not available.

 Thank you for your assistance."

Short concise sentences, in chronological order, are the only thing they seem to understand.

[Shane172]

Thank you for the reply. I will sign up for a Twitter right now. And they just called me while I was typing this message. It was fully refunded.