Short term cleaning fee set to $0 by AirBnB

[Mary5092]

I had a strange situation come up. I received a last minute booking for this weekend for 2 nights but no cleaning fee was charged. We have a fairly high cleaning fee of $225 because we are set up for 14 guests and we have outsourced cleaning and laundry. We had some pretty steep discounts already because of the upcoming unbooked weekend. As you can imagine, it was a pretty big disappointment to realize we lost out on 40% of our take home income.

After looking into it, I realized there's a new "short-term" cleaning fee. AirBnB set this to $0 without our knowledge! We spoke to AirBnB support but were told "we make changes all the time and it's your responsibility to watch for them."

We quickly updated our cleaning fee, but now we're out of pocket $235.

I actually like the ability to vary the fee to make short stays more appealing but I'm shocked by how we were treated. Did anyone else have this happen to them? Was I the only one not aware?

[Dawn241]

I know there’s been much debate in recent years about cleaning fees. Guests are complaining that they are charged cleaning fees and still asked to clean before they leave. They confuse check out instructions with cleaning. And Airbnb now shows pricing including cleaning fee so it’s more transparent to guests up front. 

I’ve always done my own cleaning and if I couldn’t my mom it, but she won’t let me pay her. I used to charge a cleaning fee when I lived 2 hours away, but now I live 35-40 minutes away so I did away with the cleaning fees. I also did away with my mom cleaning as she was not up to my standards, lol. 

here are some options-

I understand if you have to pay cleaners then you need to charge a fee. You can charge the same for both short stay and long stay cleaning fees if it costs you the same amount each time- this option would make sense. 

raise nightly price and do away with short term cleaning fee. The opposite of this is give discount for 3 or more nights and charge a cleaning fee. 

have a 2 night minimum. It’s not worth it to me to clean after 1 night whether I'm charging a fee or not. 

charge same price whether it’s 1  guest or 14. It’s my experience if you have a base of say 2 guests and then a fee for every guest after 2, guests say they are bringing 2, then they bring 14, it’s a big fight with the guest and a lot of back and forth with Airbnb. 

[Tyson61]

I'm in the middle of an ongoing dispute about this issue with AirB&B as well. I looked through my transaction history and realized not a single booking has had a cleaning fee, even though I clearly have one in place. Guests have even contacted me about wanting to negotiate the cleaning fee (which I have been happy to do, even though it takes me 6 hours to clean the house in between bookings).

The short term cleaning fee option is CLEARLY optional. The language under the cleaning fee preferences CLEARLY states that the "amount per stay is $###". That means the baseline cleaning fee applied to bookings is set regardless of whether the booking is short or long term.

Separately, below the baseline cleaning fee it states that you can "Attract guests booking 1 or 2 nights by setting a lower cleaning fee" and it has to option to "ADD" a short term cleaning fee. I have played around with this setting multiple times and there is ABSOLUTELY zero basis for them to claim the short term cleaning fee is mandatory or that the default short term cleaning fee automatically sets to $0 when you don't have one added. 

This is a mistake on their end and they need to take responsibility for it. Don't let them tell you otherwise. They need to fix the problem and they need to compensate hosts for the cleaning fees that were erroneously not applied. They guests think they're paying them when they book your listing. It's part of their decision on whether or not to book. And the hosts do the cleaning based on that belief as well. AirB&B is at fault for this issue not the guests or hosts

[Bhumika · Accepted solution]

Hi @Tyson61 , thank you for sharing your concerns with us. Airbnb discovered a bug in the system that mistakenly removed cleaning fees for some listings’ reservations. We’ve since fixed this issue, and will be paying back impacted Hosts for the lost cleaning fees.

If your listings have been impacted, official communications from Airbnb will be shared on this matter very soon.

We sincerely apologize to our Host Community for any inconvenience this may have caused.

[Tyson61]

Thank you for this update. As of 1:56pm today AirB&B support is still fighting hosts on the issue and is trying to tell them that the issue is the fault of the host. I have spent days trying to get this resolved and every time I try to follow up with AirB&B support, they start the conversation by trying to blame me for the issue (even after one representative acknowledged that it was a platform bug a few days ago). I am CERTAIN that I did everything correctly and it is very frustrating being given the run around constantly from AirB&B support staff. 

[Judy983]

same exact thing here. I have had to open numerous cases because after I’m treated like **bleep** each one is closed by some random support person. Amazing the lengths they try to go to to cover up their error and not pay. 

[Judy983]

Have you received any payment yet? I got an email saying they were going to reimburse me for one of my listings zero cleaning fee mistake with an amount less than what I charge for cleaning. But-I never received the payment. Is this some sort of airbnb joke? What is wrong with them.

**[Content edited in line with the Community Center Guidelines]

[Tyson61]

@Bhumika I spoke with AirBnB again today. I had to call support after getting zero response on this matter in my open cases. I have a booking check in this afternoon and realized the cleaning fee is STILL NOT BEING APPLIED and I wanted to address the issue before the guest checked in.  Today they acknowledged that the issue is on their end right off the bat thankfully. They also confirmed that hosts have the option to opt in to the additional short-stay cleaning fee and that it was not mandatory. Yesterday AirBnB support was telling me it was mandatory. That said, at the end of the call they told me I had to create a short stay cleaning fee separate from the baseline cleaning fee. 

They also told me that I would need to be filing a resolution against each of the 7 bookings that I had last month to request the missing cleaning fee from each guide one at a time. AirB&B told me that I would have to come up with an amount to request from them, which feels a bit absurd. I started hosting in September and adjusted my cleaning fee at least 20 times trying to find a balance between what people were willing to pay and what the actual cleaning burden was (I now realize it's about a 6 hour process to clean my entire house from top to bottom in preparation for each booking). 

They also told me the guest might refuse to repay. From my perspective as a host, I find this approach pretty ridiculous by AirBnB. I worked very hard to build relationships with all of my guests. I've received a 5 star review from every single one of them and many have plans to book again in the future, but now I'm supposed to be coming after them a month after their trip and demand money from them? 

I do not feel that AirBnB is taking responsibility for glitch on its own platform. It is forcing the hosts to do a lot of extra work and negatively impact the guest relationships the hosts work hard to cultivate. 

It feels like AirBnB is pitting guests against hosts even though the party responsible for the issue is AirBnB itself. 

The response I received today does NOT feel consistent with the information in your response. 

Is there some other process I should be taking to get my issue resolved? Am I calling the wrong support number or saying the wrong thing?

[Judy983]

What about reimbursement for all the time, energy and distress airbnb has caused its hosts in arguing with your customer support people for the last month? 

[Mel-And-Merce0]

We have a similar situation where we have new listing and it was published without a cleaning fee. Someone made an instant booking for one night without a cleaning fee. Our cleaners charge a steep price because our place can sleep 11 guest. We will lose out pretty big for this one night booking having the guest book our place at a discount. 

[Marc-And-Amanda1]

Ridiculous !

[Judy983]

The same exact thing happen to me but with just one of my listings (out of 7). They told me I was wrong and closed the case. I was not able to respond. I called back and opened another case up. My other 6 listings had at least ten two day stays booked in September all with cleaning fees. But my newest listing doesn’t work that way, despite all the settings being the same. So annoying. There two settings-one in calendars and one in the booking settings in the listing. Apparently the two settings aren’t connecting properly. 

[Erin31]

Did you happen to turn smart pricing on or off during this period? I think that's what triggered mine. Never have had or wanted a short term cleaning fee.

[Judy983]

I’ve never used smart pricing or even turned it on or off. 

[Genevieve319]

I had the same also happening to me: the case was closed without a resolution and I could not reply.