Smart Pricing Dropping Below Minimum

[Maxine33]

This community forum is usually full of helpful advice, and I am hoping someone might be able to help me here.  We have instant book and smart pricing enabled at  https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/23434815 with a minimum of $300 per night.  Over the weekend, we received a booking less than our minimum and, upon checking out the public side, saw the price was showing as $286 per night.  

Initially I thought I made an error but, on my end, it is showing $300 as the minimum.  

Has anyone else experienced this?  I am grateful it was only a $14 difference, what if it had been a $100 discrepancy?! 

Hopefully @Airbnb will see this thread too.

Thanks, Maxine

[Maxine33]

It looks like i might be unique.  I just cut off smart pricing and was very surprised at how many hoops @Airbnb makes you jump through to cut it off!

Oddly, it is still showing as $286 per night.  Does anyone know how long it takes the backend to update? I thought it was automatic. 

[Maxine33]

So, this is crazy.  I went to Chrome to see if perhaps I was viewing a cached copy of the page.  On Chrome instead of $300 or even $286, it is showing as $279.

I am befuddled.

[Emilia42]

@Maxine33 Dates have to be entered for exact pricing. If no dates are entered I believe Airbnb will take an average price of the previous or upcoming week. You have a 28-night minimum so is there a price discrepancy when guests book 28+ nights?

[Maxine33]

@Emilia42 @Yes! Exactly. By roughly $40 per night.

[Mike2469]

Hi @Maxine33,

Sorry to hear you have been having trouble with Smart Pricing. I actually had Smart Pricing "break" on me around mid-Feb as well. I had gone in to update our minimum price by $10 and then the next day I looked at the calendar and our high-season summer "Smart" prices had all been dropped to the minimum. Right away I changed some prices to fixed in order to bump up the rates and I contacted Airbnb to get tech support. They fixed a few months but most of it is still broken, and they said they are still working on it with no ETA. 

Of course, your nightly rate should never go below your minimum unless you are providing a discount. One reason the rate you see online might be lower than your minimum is if you previously had lower rates and/or discount bookings, then what you see will be an average of your booked rates. But if you select specific dates to book, you should see the accurate rate for those nights.

From reading another post, here's what someone suggested doing if someone books at a mistakenly low rate: Tell them you are very sorry but the system made an error in the rate. You would love to have them stay but the best we can offer is $X/night. You can then request additional funds and/or amend the reservation (with Airbnb support, as needed--or get them to cancel the reservation without dinging you).

Hope some of this makes sense!

Cheers,

Mike

[Emiel1]

@Maxine33 

You must enter dates to see the exact price, otherwise it shows you the average lowest price, also considering the past.

In Europe listings do not show a nightly price at all when no dates are selected !

Your listings shows me price is $300,- per night, but also minimum stay is 29 nights, with a 50% monthly discount.

[Maxine33]

@Emiel1 Thanks for looking at it... I went in and manually changed the price and cut off smart pricing.  It is now happening on another listing at https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/559324230421316874 that has a smart pricing minimum of $375 per night.  Something is way off.

@Mike2469 I am going to have to do that.  I just hate doing that to someone once they request to book.  If feels sleazy, but if Airbnb is broken, I have little choice.

I think i am going to break down and reach out to customer service.  

[Mike2469]

@Maxine33 With multiple listings I don't think you should feel shy about reaching out to customer support for what you need. Hope you (and I) get things fixed! 

[Maxine33]

@Mike2469 I did reach out to CS and it was not a satisfying experience. Even being a superhost with 3  properties,  CS is about pasting pre-typed messages.

The rep told me the price would drop below the minimum based on the season and demand. That makes no sense... why have a minimum if it will be ignored?

[Maxine33]

Just to keep all of my thoughts in the same place, and since I now have two reservations with an incorrect price... I have reached out to CS and they keep getting lost in the fact i have a 50% monthly discount and completely ignore the fact that I am not disputing the 50% monthly discount. I am disputing the fact my nightly rate is $300 before discount and they are computing it at $286 before discount.

Does anyone know how to get in touch with a management level support person? 

Thanks, Maxine

[Maxine33]

And for whatever reason, the CS representative simply will NOT tell me the way they computed the price on which they applied the monthly discount.

i guess it is not "cool" to talk about @Airbnb problems in these forums but I have read in the Facebook forum that many others are having this same issue and are getting treated the exact same way.

I feel like I am just talking to people that are not knowledgeable and, if I could speak with a management level person it would be easily sorted out, but I am stuck in level 1 CS and they are only good at copy/paste. 

[Peter3575]

Hi, we just had the same issue as well and CS said that we set a custom rate for that weekend. It’s a random weekend eight months from now and the price is half of the dates around it. 

Anyone able to find a solution before we re-open those dates? @Maxine33 @Mike2469 @Emilia42 @Emiel1 

[Emiel1]

@Peter3575 

If you look at the listing calender, it is easy to see if a custom price have been set (the Smart Pricing symbol will not appear on that date).