AirBnb programmers have gotten more and more incompetent over time and are now at rock bottom imo

[Dominique319]

I've been a host for several years and in the beginning when I had an issue I only had to contact them and they solved things, but as time progressed things have been taking longer and longer and now they got to the point where even major issues no longer get solved, at all!

I had an issue with the calculations of special offers that were wrong and after talking to support for weeks in end I eventually gave up and the problem persisted, until they did a massive overhaul of their software and the bug disappeared.

A month ago I had an issue with the countdown to reply timer that kept counting down after reporting and blocking a scammer.  The support agent suggested declining the inquiry but that is impossible, as part of the process is replying to the scammer but I couldn't after reporting and blocking them. The agent said that they would fix the issue and guaranteed that it wouldn't affect my response rate.  Now a month later my response rate has dropped to close to the requirement for superhost (as I've had a lot of scammers in the last couple of months) so I contacted support again but the replies I'm getting are far from promising.  I'm afraid I will lose superhost soon because of a bug in their software.

The other problem I have I discovered 3 weeks ago where my rates are being calculated wrongly quoting guests more than I configured. I reported the problem 2 weeks ago and after lots and lots of hours of messages and different agents, every time I'm getting the same questions to explain the issue over and over again and lots of apologies but not a single solution so far.

Because of the last issue I've been losing potential bookings and the problem with my response rate will probably cost me my superhost status while I replied to every single inquiry within maximum 10 minutes.

I've had a few other issues but won't go into detail as this message would get too long

It seems like their software is very buggy and the support is done by a first line support team that has no real connection to the other levels, while even big issues never make it to the development team and never get solved.  The support team seems to be busy apologising and making promises that are never met.

AirBnb has gotten too big and too political to actually care about their customers.  If feels like sometimes they're so busy virtue signalling that there's not time left to make sure that their tools work as they should.

[Wayne61]

I myself made a post (and a few others), about the declining response rate. I've been powerlessly watching it go down in percentage day by day and now I've finally went below 90%.

Been talking to quite a lot of customer support and been tirelessly explaining to them the situation and the most I got was a filed report to the technical team which they added that I may or may not hear from them regarding the fix.

 

[Colleen253]

@Dominique319 Re the current state of 'support', look at this interesting thread on the subject.

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/An-article-on-Airbnb-s-outsourcing-of-CS/td-p/1356988

[Jen151]

@Colleen253   Thank you for sharing this! I had no idea this was the case. It sounds like a cult and I can't believe it's not in the press so people know not to work for the parent company.

[Sarah977]

Agreed that Airbnb tech is abysmal. Not a week goes by that there isn't some glitch.

As far as scam inquiries go, what you should do if you get them is to just message back to the scammer- you can just say "No" or "Go away scammer", whatever, but replying is all that's required on a Inquiry so as not to affect your response rate- there is no need to decline, and since declines affect your acceptance rate, don't ever waste them on a Inquiry. After you message back to the scammer, then report and block them.

That said, the latest glitch, according to a bunch of posts here in the last few days, is hosts' response rate going down daily even though they are responding to all inquiries and requests within 24 hours.

@Dominique319

[Az3]

They just suspended my listing yesterday. Damm I was super host for 3 years. How on earth this could be happen? I have joined Airbnb in 2010. Became super host in 2016, 2017 and 2018. They took my super host badge in 2019 and now they suspended my listing in 2020. What a shame..

[Fred13]

A few months ago I suggested that maybe Airbnb's course of action is to create a rapid-response e-mail system and replace the 'live call' option altogether, because maybe, just maybe it has become either too expensive to run and/or too easily abused.

Many companies do not have this call-in option, probably for very good reasons, so the above suggestion is not that out of the norm.

Personally, I never, ever talk to my guests on the phone nor encourage them to do so. I answer all messages instantly on the other hand.

[Benny28]

When looking to my response rate, i always had 100%... and suddenly yesterday I discovered it had drop down...  And till I read your message, i could not figur out what the reason could be! 

And yes it must be a spam message ...  Airbnb warned me about it, and then deleted it out the inbox...  But my conversation rate must have dropped down because of that!  

I hope this conversation will help solve this matter by Airbnb, and that our conversation rating will be brought back to the correct percentage.    

And more important I hope that spammers will be minimalised and real guests can be welcomed again!  

See you soon in Bruges Belgium

Benny @Bariseele  

[Gerda64]

I recognise this frustration so well. I had all my bookings through airbnb as I was in first and second position there for our region, after years' of hard work, but ever since the lockdown, I went further and further down the list. I asked airbnb helpdesk how this was possible because all hosts in my region were in the same position, no travel allowed.

I spent months in conversation with the 'help' desk, losing a hell of a lot of time while things only got worse. My superhost banner disappeared, etc... while I had had a mail confirming my superhost status for another 3 months. That is only one example. I always first got some one who knew nothing, clearly had not even read my questions, was then sent on to another team and at that point all 'help' went dead. Always the same story, or messages saying this ticket was not new, had been solved, etc...They told me in the end to try cheaper rates. I finally tried at 20% of the usual rate, just to see whether that was really a problem, practically giving the nights away.

Nothing. I am not really visible in the listing and have had no bookings since February. So, after 8 months, I turned to booking.com....... with pain in my heart.

[Jen151]

I have had an issue off and on  for years where I truly believe the Airbnb software opens up my calendar and changes settings to encourage more bookings for them.  We own two homes that we rent occasionally - one is our primary residence and another is a lake house about 30 min away.  We own the houses but thought we could make a bit of extra money since we can only use one at a time.  It's been great, but there are times we don't want to rent so we block the calendar. We also have a 3 night minimum most of the year and a 7 night min during peak summer season.  At random times I will get booking requests when I know the calendar is blocked, but when I check the calendar lists it as available.  I have emailed Airbnb and been told oh, that's a software glitch that we are working on.  This week I got an inquiry for New Year's Eve for 2 nights, which i thought was odd so I checked the settings and it said 3 night minimum. The next day the guy requested to book 2 nights and I checked the settings and it said 2 night min so now I know I am not crazy.   I spent an hour answering all his questions just to not get the booking.  It's very shady.  Now that I read the above posted article about all the customer service reps being contractors and knowing nothing about Airbnb, I don't put this passed them.

[Sarah977]

It's always been my suspicion as well that these random "glitches", aren't glitches at all- that they are built into the system to facilitate more bookings. Of course there are some true glitches, but most of these non-host-changed things are always to the guest's advantage, never the host's. Instant Book being activated when the host has it turned off, minimum nights not being honored, check-in time changing from a specific time frame to "flexible", and so on.

@Jen151