Airbnb Will Give $250M to Hosts Who Lost Income to Virus | Hacker News Reader

Airbnb Will Give $250M to Hosts Who Lost Income to Virus

bloomberg.com

25 pointsrayuela11 comments

Let's see how well this translates into refunds to customers. My girlfriend and her friends have a $1400 stay that thus far the host isn't interested in discussing any form of refund or cancellation (in a state with a state-wide stay-at-home order).

Doesn't qualify for the blanket refund? https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2701/extenuating-circums...

They've updated the date - good to know, previously it was a fairly small window.

CC dispute? As a benefit, airbnb will probably ban you, meaning you won't be contributing to their parasitic behavior in the future.

Also -- And this speaks more to Airbnb's shoddy enforcement more than anything else (and maybe they've changed it, it's been almost two years), but a relative, after being banned by Airbnb for winning a CC dispute due to this exact same problem, was simply able to sign up immediately after with a new account (and credit card number); the ID verification didn't even present any problems.

Make a new account, I've done it twice.

You have to cancel yourself and submit an extenuating circumstances refund request to Airbnb. I got my money back within 10 days.

The host can’t submit the cancellation under this policy, hence why nothing has happened.

Was a host for awhile. Huge penalties for canceling on guests.

You do everything possible to not cancel.

Loss of super host status for a year is very harsh.

The company said it would pay 25% of what the host would “normally receive through your cancellation policy.”

Good for Airbnb to do this. Any idea how much cash reserves they have?

This and their monthly burn rate will deplete their reserves since not much revenue is coming in.

I think this is a great decision on Airbnb’s part. It will make hosts trust that Airbnb is a stable source of income even in disastrous times. And Airbnb can keep the most of their hosts (at least for the time being).

Added benefit is it will actually help some people out.

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