Comment by bradly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bradly | Hacker News Reader

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I can't read the article, so I can't comment much, but the problem is Airbnb will frequently give guests refunds even after the refund deadline. Our rentals are our small business and getting a cancellation with-in 30 days a $5-10k trip can be a real hit. The cancellation policies are to give time to rebook to someone else.

We have multiple full-time, short term rentals and will not list them on Airbnb because they do not let hosts set their own cancellation policies and even worse they will override the few options they do give you.

A real world example of this is happening right now for us with our units in Hawaii. We have a 60 day no refund policy. 100% refund before this. We highly encourage trip insurance and you must check a box to opt of getting it. In our refund policy we state do not refund for weather or natural disasters. In these situations Airbnb will give the guest a full refund regardless of your policy, where Vrbo will let the host decide if they want to break their policy because of the unique situation. FWIW we gave full refunds.

Are you saying that you won't offer a refund even if you cannot provide the promised service (e.g. the unit has been damaged by fire) or that you won't offer a refund in the case where your guest can't reach the unit because of travel restrictions?

If I had booked and found that you could no longer provide the service you promised but refused a refund I would feel as though I were scammed.

In general I was speaking to Vrbo allowing hosts to define their own refund policy and to break it if the host would like to. Airbnb can break the refund rule for the guest if they choose to.

Personally, of course if the unit is inaccessible or damaged we provide refund. If travel restrictions change we always reach out to future guests and allow them cancel at that point. We've refunded guests that don't check-in for two months even though the city in Maui we are in had no fire damage and the roads.

People really want short-term rental owners to always be trying to scam, but many of us are just small business owners and try to do the right thing.

I'll be honest, a 60 day no refund policy sounds insane. If you're able to get people to book with you, great for you, but I can't see a world where I ever would sign up for that...

> If you're able to get people to book with you, great for you, but I can't see a world where I ever would sign up for that

Sounds like the marker is working as designed. Buyer and seller have to find agreeable terms, otherwise no deal and move on

Not trying to be antagonistic but, so what? No one is asking you to.

It isn’t for everyone, but even many larger hotels offer a more expensive, non-refundable option. People pay less for non-refundable rental cars and airfare as well. The terms are clear so we don’t need Airbnb canceling a 7 night stay the week of check-in because of a complication with the guest's dog sitter.

Also, if they do cancel in the 60 day window we relist the dates and if they get rebooked then we give that money to the person who canceled.

For what it's worth, I always book my flights and hotel stays non-refundable if that's a cheaper option. Except during the pandemic travel restrictions, I've never had to cancel a single flight or hotel reservation so I've figured it's an unnecessary cost.

https://archive.li/Ot026

Ehh... archive.li / archive.ph seems to really hate Firefox users. Get stuck in an eternal CAPTCHA loop regardless of whether I have any extensions enabled. Ugh.

For me, it won't even connect - complains about certificates. I end up breaking out my no-javascript Chrome profile for it.

Using firefox as well (on windows 10). Never had a problem, and as far as I can remember never ever had a captcha on that site.

I've used archive.ph a lot in the past without issue. No idea why it's giving me a hassle now! (Also Win 10.)

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