Why has Smart pricing activated by itself?

[David-Erik0]

Hello, 

This morning I've logged my account and I've found absurd prices on all my calendar days (around 43) turned out that smart pricing was active for every single day. The only problem is that I do not use smart pricing since I've started to host... In the main settings of my account, is active but when I open the days of my calendar, I manually change it for every single day. 

Anyone else experienced this?

[Airbnb]

Hello everyone,
A few hosts here in the Community Center reported that they have seen prices on their calendar change and received some bookings that did not reflect the prices they expected given their current settings.
Our engineering team has identified the issue and is presently working on fixing it. We realize that this is frustrating and are handling it with urgency. 
Thank you for your patience.

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Airbnb 

This isn't just about patience.

Airbnb needs to either pay the difference to hosts so that hosts are not at a loss or cancel all such bookings at no penalty whatsoever to hosts and apologize to the guests explaining it's not the host's fault. Hosts should have no obligation to accept these bookings- this is a total scam. 

Airbnb needs to take responsiblity. Hosts should not have to shoulder the loss because of an Airbnb bug. This is totally outrageous!!!!!!

Cc: @David-Erik0 @Michelle1362 @Jude56 @Petar16 

[Sarah977]

@Jessica-and-Henry0  I know, I can't believe this Airbnb response that they are posting in reply to every new thread that has been started on this. It's a bug, we're working on it  and have patience- not one word about what hosts are supposed to do, if the bookings will be cancelled, if the host is just expected to take the loss, if Airbnb will pay the hosts the difference. 

Totally outrageous, seconded.

This is eerily reminiscent of last year when Aussie hosts didn't get paid for weeks- all were being told something different, finally the payments started to come in dribs and drabs, no explanation was given, no apology, no compensation. 

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Sarah977 

Exactly...... I can't believe all the sh*t Airbnb is trying to get away with while taking no responsibility AT ALL for their own shortcomings, mistakes and bugs!!!!!!!!! It's reached a point where I think it's plain criminal and like you pointed out.......it's not the first time~ 

[Susan17]

@Sarah977 @Jessica-and-Henry0 

...and hiding behind these blank, faceless Airbnb Admin accounts to palm everyone off with pathetic excuses for their "negligence", is adding insult, to injury. But a typical reflection of Airbnb's abject refusal for anyone at that company to take responsibility or accountability for anything at all. 

[Jude56]

Well it is reassuring that the error has been picked up.  Can you reassure us that we will be compensated for the lost revenue or the booking cancelled with an apology to the guest from Airbnb?  I am a new host and have potentially lost somewhere in the region of  £1400.  

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Jude56 

Imo you should not have to loose money like that. As soon as I saw these posts I checked my own listing and thankfully my pricing seemed okay for now. But the fact that this situation can happen at any time to random hosts is scary. 

I really hope Airbnb does the right thing and takes full responsibility, in terms of blame and also financially.

[Jude56]

As someone who has lost a significant amount of money, over £1000, some sort of guidance on what to do and what to say to guests would be really helpful.  Also having admitted liability please make it clear what will be done to compensate hosts.  So far I have spent two hours talking to completely clueless people at the call centre.  HELP

[John2650]

It happened to us as well, smart pricing turned on everywhere. Fortunately we didn’t have instant book activated and so didn’t accept the crazy offers it put out, problem is that I now have to go and manually update all of the prices again. Really poor from Airbnb not to notify us when it knew of the bug

[David-Erik0]

@Jessica & Henry1 

I would be surprised if they wrote in the community forum that a refund is due, because it would leave a written precedent for this kind of problem.


For the records other links were the problem was reported:

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Smart-Pricing-enabled-without-consent/m-p/801637 <--- (this one is dated 2018)
https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/Smart-pricing-switched-itself-on-Festival-dates-snapped-up-...
https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/Pricing-changed-without-my-doing-Smart-Pricing-was-off/m-p/...
https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/Lazy-responding-to-a-serious-error-from-the-Airbnb-support/...
https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/Problem/m-p/1032798

[Vice4]

Really annoying...! 

It's happened to me yesterday, and in 10min I received 3 instant book reservations by 3x less prices 

[Lisa1889]

That's exactly how I found out, Vice163 - I noticed a sudden surge in booking requests at half the usual price.   Grrrr

[Lisa1889]

I just discovered exactly this and now have to decline several reservation requests. I'm LIVID. I agree, this should be on Airbnb to resolve fully by making up the difference in $ to hosts, or sending out notifications to guests on why they are being declined.  

[David-Erik0]

@Lisa1889  talking about declines, please ask Airbnb to do not count them.

AirBnB documentation completely reassure you that if you feel uncomfortable with a guest, you can decline without problems, however, everytime you decline because you feel uncomfortable (ie is clear the guest didn't read the rules) they will count your "decline" and put it in the funnel of the kpi necessary to reach the basic requirements.

[Lisa1889]

Thank you for the suggestion!  I will definitely make sure to insist that this is not the case. Since Airbnb has acknowledged this as a known-issue, I'm hoping there won't be any push back.

Curious that this was to be treated as an urgent issue and there aren't any updates since they said they would resolve it yesterday. Mine changed overnight, so it seems the broke it even more than it was already 😉