Possible Scam: Guests Attempt to Book but the CC fails...

[Danny9]

I have been hosting pretty intensively for over a year now. I now run two listings at a popular tourist location. 

I have just experienced two booking requests that I promptly approved. Yet, the booking did not go through since the guest's CC payment failed. Thereupon, Airbnb gave the guests 24 hrs to attempt to resolve their payment. During this time my property was blocked, i.e., not available for booking. 

I messaged the guests via Airbnb and asked them to attempt using a different CC. Never got any reply. Airbnb cancelled their bookings after the 24 hrs period expired with no penalty to me. 

I have also noticed that Airbnb allows you to reject their booking if their CC fails, and hence, keep the listing available for bookings without any interruption. I have also written to Airbnb's tech support asking them if such a rejection on the part of the host due to the guest's CC failure carries any penalty to the host. I have not received any reply yet. 

I am now going to be rejecting booking attempts with failed CC payments. The guests may be playing foul or not but my listing sits blocked for 24 hrs at the high booking season. 

Danny

[Ed-and-Hugh0]

I don't think there is any penalty for rejecting a guest that cannot pay.

[Gerry-And-Rashid0]

Its annoying - but it happens because AirBnB is validating their card details, etc...and they dont want to lose the fees. There is no penalty to you if their payment fails, but of course you lose out on other potential bookings.

It's just as annoying when you have said only verified guests can book, yet they allow unverified guests to book out your calendar, while they try verify them.

[Peyvand0]

This happened to me recently. It is frustrating! Wasn't a scam but Airbnb for some reason weren't able to acommodate a Norweigian CC on their system. They compensated myself and potential guest.