In this paper room temperature pump-probe spectroscopy is employed to study ultrafast absorption dynamics in type-II GaSb/GaAs quantum dots (QDs). Our results identify a strong 3–5 ps timescale which is reproduced using a rate equation model and thereby associated with hole recapture by the QD following higher order absorption of part of the pump pulse into barrier layers. The strength of the component is attributed to cancelling effects in the gain and phase dynamics as a result of the carrier dependence of emission frequency that is characteristic of type-II structures.