Smart priciing costly errors

[Sarah113]

I would like to start a class action suit against airbnb . Smart pricing errors will cost me about 7,500 this summer in Seattle. First I had to relist existing listings with Beyond Pricing because of a glitch in airbnb Algorithm. They weren’t booking an Nov, Dec and January. The Ambassadors ( misnamed and poorly trained) were useless. One suggested that I relist. I then had to change my email service because airbnb kept cancelling my access insisting that it was controlled by a third party software. Then I added a listing making a total of 4 new listings. I used smart pricing on all 9 of my listings while setting up the new email. Identical listings in the same building were on smart pricing for June July and August. Over 150 nights in the new listings booked for about 50.00 less than the identical units for the same time period. The low price never varied in these units for Seattle’s  high season.. I am now committed to work all summer for little or no profit

Airbnb claims there is no problem with their smart pricing app. Case closed

has anyone else run into smart pricing issues and if so would like to join me in my suit

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Sarah113 Did it not occur to you to set your own pricing when smart pricing gave low rates?

[Sarah113 · Accepted solution]

I trusted the app to price correctly. Things booked like hot cakes over the course of a month. I should have suspected a problem but I trusted this service. I used smart pricing for a while on all 9 of my units. 5 of them had appropriate pricing 4 did not. Identical units in the same building booked for 50.00 per month less.

[Kia272]

@Sarah113  I'm sorry about your situation, and I understand that you must be frustrated, but you have complete control over how low and how high smart pricing will go. If you didn't set those parameters, it's not AirBnB's fault. 

My opinion is that Smart Pricing is only "smart" for AirBnB. They just want the bookings because they make money, and they don't care what your bottom line is. In general, it's not smart at all, and hosts are better off controlling pricing on their own, or setting strict parameters when using smart pricing. There's also software that helps, which I know a lot of hosts use. There are all kinds of rule sets that you can create that can optimize your bookings with prices that are acceptable to you.  

You have control of your calendar and control of your pricing. If you don't utilize that, it's kind of hard to place the blame on AirBnB. 

Good luck moving forward. Kia