Airbnb removed my cleaning fees

[Nick-and-Michelle1]

We have always charged cleaning fees for our units. However without our knowledge, our cleaning fees were reset to “not set” starting January 15th of this year. We only just noticed this last night (3/26). We have 25 bookings to date that we have reserved without any cleaning fees. We don’t understand how this happened and are hoping for some resolution ideas as this significantly affects our return on investment.  We have always charged what we pay our cleaner.  Has anyone else had this happen to them?

[Pat271]

I have had various fields reset in my listings, most notably my check-in time. Not cool when someone shows up at 8 in the morning, when I normally have a 3 PM checkin.

Software is supposed to be regression tested whenever changes are made, before it is released to us. No doubt some recent change unintentionally wiped out your cleaning fee amount in the database. It is a quality control issue that these types of untested, unintentional changes keep happening. It is unacceptable if “Don’t worry, our customers will let us know if we did it wrong” is the prevailing culture.

I’ve learned to check all of my listing’s fields periodically to try to catch these kinds of changes before disasters happen. To that end, I’m going to go right now and check my cleaning fee. 😞 Thanks for bringing it up.

[Nick-and-Michelle1]

Thank you I am going to be making regular checks going forward as well now that I know I have to. 

[Sarah977]

@Nick-and-Michelle1  There are many reports on this forum of hosts' settings mysteriously changing on their own, whether it's the check-in time suddenly showing as flexible, IB getting turned on or off, minimum or maximum nights, amenities becoming ticked or unticked, etc.

As this can really mess up a host's business, it's unfortunately necesary to check all your settings quite frequently.

As far as the 25 reservations you have on the books, that's really difficult. Guests are not bound to pay anything beyond what the price was when they booked, and asking them to pay more could anger them or give them the impression that you are trying to scam them, even if you explain that it was a site glitch.

If you explain what happened to the guests, and ask nicely if they would be willing to pay that extra fee (making it clear that you totally understand if they don't), some might be willing if your cleaning fee is only $25, but if it's more like $150, I think it would do you more harm than good to try to get guests to pay it. 

And you do bear some responsibilty for not noticing since January that the payout info you were receiving was incorrect. That's something a host always needs to pay attention to.

I guess you could always contact customer service to point out how much money you will be out of pocket for in order to pay your cleaners due to Airbnb's tech glitch, but I wouldn't hold out too much hope that they'll assume responsibilty and cover the loss.

[Nick-and-Michelle1]

Thank you for your reply. I agree it’s my fault for not catching it sooner based on my payouts. Lesson learned and I will be sure to make regular checks to my settings from now on. Just so frustrating that we will be out all of that income this year. I do like the idea of maybe asking guests for some portion of the fee to help us but that it is no obligation. Thanks again and I wish you all the best. 

[Linda493]

Happened to me sometime in November 2022  Guessing it was during the new CALENDAR UPDATE.  airbnb deny's but i guess hosts must check settings all the time as glitches to happen and not take responsibility.  Lost quite a bit revenue.  Hosts, double check airbnb's work!

[Jonathan2251]

We had the exact same thing happen which impacted at least 8 bookings. It seems that their new update rolled out for a “short term stay”, meaning 2 nights or less, bumped the default cleaning fee to 3 nights or more ONLY. Any short term bookings were not charged the fee.

This should have put the same fee into both categories and allowed the host to modify it as seen fit, not remove it entirely. I immediately called their support team and worked something out, but still at a loss. I’ll try to keep an eye out as well going forward, but it’s not easy to find what you don’t know you’re looking for!