When is an enquiry not an enquiry

[Robin4]

I have noticed recently a considerable increase in enquiries from persons/companies wanting to sell me something. I have had two in just the past week!

They of course have to get my attention by inserting an enquiry with dates. But once they have my attention they start into their sales pitch, be it window/gutter cleaning, guest lunch/dinner boxes. guided tours!

I am starting to get a bit concerned about the increasing frequency of these messages. As long as I respond I have satisfied the stats bot, but I am worried that the amount of enquiry declines is going to catch up with me sooner or later. 

I can of course pre-approve these messages but, my pre-approvals that don't follow through are sooner or later going to bring me to someones attention! This platform is a minefield of automated trigger points.

I don't want to be as brutal as saying in my listing description that I will not respond to enquiries from product sellers, but I wish Airbnb would consider giving us a bit of latitude in dealing with sales enquiries. I would like to see added to the option box list when I hit decline, a box titled......'sales enquiry' and clicking that box would automatically remove me from any cumulative stats.

Any other ideas?

Cheers........Rob

[Anonymous]

@Robin4   You know full well that you don't have to hit the Decline or Pre-approve button on inquiries. No need to bother doing anything except write "No."

Of course, if you have a moment to spare, flagging the profile as a spammer would be helpful. But Airbnb seems to have become ambivalent to this proliferation of fake "guest" profiles.

[Lawrene0]

I have flagged some sellers of things, @Robin4 . One fellow was booted right off, but that may have been because he was trying to get me to sign up with his new hosting platform. He had mentioned "ethical" in his (rather slimy) pitch, while using a competitor's website to poach business by sending fake enquires...

I don't flag them all. Just the slick. 

If we are asking for boxes to tick, I would want "Guest is trying to sell me something", "Guest wants other unavailable dates" and "Guest is asking to break a house rule".  

[Michelle53]

@Robin4   I went through a phase of receiving those - fortunately, not for some time. But I have been receiving other miscellaneous phishing inquiries. 

I respond with a short message and flag the user.  That is all. 

Introducing the idea of declining or pre-approving in conjunction with spam or marketing inquiries is going to re-confuse all the folks we have spent endless hours trying to un-confuse about inquiries vs trip requests.