Listing Hidden by Airbnb - Nightmare Situation - No Idea What to do

[EliteStays0]

Hey All,

I posted my first new listing on Dec 14th and everything was going great. Fully booked for all of December and 1/3 of January. Received many 5 star reviews already. However my listing has been now hidden by Airbnb. Here's what happened.. 

About a week ago I activated Pricelabs through Hosthub in order to automate pricing and sync calendars with Vrbo. Since I did that, not a single booking. I then got a message 2 days ago from a guest who was unable to book. They were getting a 403 calendar error message.

I then contacted Airbnb support through chat and they noticed that about 5 other guests had tried to make reservations but couldn't. The representative then immediately hid my listing from search on the spot! They said it would be unhidden automatically by the system once the issue was resolved.

I then immediately went into my settings and disconnected all third party apps. After that, the guest that contacted me was able to book the reservation, however my listing is still not appearing in search 48 hours later.

I've been talking to Airbnb support but they dont seem to know why the listing isn't automatically unhidden yet. 

I'm concerned something got permanently messed up with the listing because of Hosthub, and the system may never recognize the issue is resolved.

I have no idea what to do. Is there a way I can contact tech support directly? Or some way I can manually jump start my listing again?

[Fay316]

Hi, I have the exact same issue without having any connected software. Airbnb hidden my listing since Dec. 21, 2022. I am losing hope too and wondering how many of us are affected.

[Fay316]

Usually we are fully booked. It is high season. Since our listing was hidden there is no single reservation. It is almost 3 weeks. We have serious loss of income. This is how they replied,

**
https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/50

https://www.airbnb.com/help/contact-us

or you can use our Help Center:
https://www.airbnb.com/help

 **[Private conversation removed in line with the Community Center Guidelines]

[EliteStays0]

Yeah it seems their service center is in the Philippines and they’re all totally incompetent. Apparently they can’t even connect with tech support themselves but I think that’s BS

[Helen3]

No the staff aren't all incompetent I have spoken to many who are helpful - it's that Airbnb doesn't properly train/support @EliteStays0 

[Fay316]

@Bhumika@EliteStays0
Do we need to wait for engineer to fix the system bug to open our listing?
Can Airbnb open our listing and working on its technical issue after?

I understand support agent point of view, but it must have a way to do it.

- We didn't do anything wrong
- I have duplicated our listing as new for 2 weeks and no booking at all
- Our return guests are not able to find the same listing
- Income loss

[EliteStays0]

Hi Fay,

 I feel your frustration. Not only on the de-listing but more so on Airbnb’s response to the problem. They simply don’t care. 

As a new host I did everything they asked and was on a great path. 

It was also completely avoidable. There was absolutely no reason for them to hide the listings. All they had to do was manually disconnect Hosthub and problem was fixed right away. Guests were able to book after I disconnected Hosthub. 

I don’t understand why they cant just manually unhide the listing. It makes no sense.

[Fay316]

@EliteStays0 @Bhumika 
Today I received the email from automated@airbnb.com,
"Since the issue has not been resolved in 30 days, we are deactivating your listings. You will not receive any further bookings from these listings until they are reactivated and their availability is up to date."
There is no software connected to my hidden listing for more than 3 weeks. We are waiting for Airbnb tec team to resolve the glitch. Now my listing is deactivated.
What can we do?

[EliteStays0]

Very sorry to hear that @Fay316 . This is absolutely wrong how airbnb is handling this. You should be at least be able to speak to someone directly In the tech department.

Do you mean that all your listings have been deactivated? Even the new duplicate version? I created a duplicate listing and it has been performing just as well as the original fortunately, but now I’m a bit worried they will deactivate that one too. 

[Fay316]

@EliteStays0 

Thank you for the reply.

Our original listing is back to search engine now. New listing is working fine.
It was actually a chance the system unlisted the hidden listing. Then we were able to listing is again on our side and it worked out.
Sorry to answering here to quick. I should have waited.

It will work out and good luck on yours!

[Erica-and-Tim0]

We’re having a similar issue now. Are their steps you took to fix the issue or did you simply wait on Airbnb to fix it? I was trying to avoid setting up a duplicate listing and just wanted to wait, but it’s been almost three weeks now with our listing hidden. Please help me if you can. Airbnb is totally not helping and it’s very concerning. They spent millions of dollars running a marketing campaign to get new hosts to sign up and so we do and then get treated like this????

[EliteStays0]

Unfortunately I had no choice but to duplicate the listing and snooze the original. However all 6 of the reviews I had gotten could only be seen by clicking on our profile, so I wrote that as the first part of the new listing description. Luckily we’re getting bookings and new reviews again. 

Whatever you do, do not connect any 3rd party software again. Maybe Airbnb is doing this intentionally because they can’t legally prevent other companies from connecting to their service. Who knows. No other reason makes any sense. 

[Fay316]

Our listing is in the search engine again!
Thank you everyone!

@Bhumika

[Bhumika]

So glad @Fay316, Thank you so much for coming back and updating us! 

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