Misleading Pricing

[Lily75]

There are so many portions about the price, e.g. service fee, cleaning fee. The price showing when I choose a room has no much to do with the final price. Why cannot Air B&B showing final price instead of misleading price to people when we choose a room, which is the only price we care.

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Lily75  I totally agree with you. I started out as a guest user a couple years ago, and now I'm 6 months into hosting 🙂 

Service fee - I can understand. But cleaning fee and for additional people, it was a bother to calculate and compare final prices. 

Based on my experience, when I set up my listing, I made sure not to have additional fees except for the service fee which is added on by Airbnb. 

[Gareth33]

What I also find frustrating is that there is a separate guest service fee on top of the host service fee.

Furthermore, this guest service fee is obscured so that it comes as a surprise only after the room has been booked.

[Alice-and-Jeff0]

@Lily75 - This subject was brought up once before and discussed at length.  You might be interested in reading this thread and discussion to see both sides: 

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/Couple-of-Thoughts-on-Airbnb/td-p/392011

It is a common complaint of using US companies - we only show the base price because that's what the seller can control.  Many travel related industries do this exact thing because the advertised price cannot take into account all nuances to the final booking like fees, taxes, incentives, upgrades and discounts.  The price shown is the price, per night, that the host has agreed to rent their space (it will include cleaning fees if you put in exact dates).  Everything else is added on by someone/something else.  

https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=415841

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mgsyh/eli5_why_isnt_sales_tax_included_in_the/

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qsybd/eli5_why_isnt_tax_included_in_the_price_p...

@Gareth33 - Before you finalize the reservation, Airbnb shows you the total cost, including all taxes and fees.  The service fee from Airbnb to you, as a guest, is a range.  This range is listed right in the terms of service you agreed to when you signed up to use the Airbnb platform.  It is also listed in the Help Center.  It's not hidden.  

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/1857/what-are-airbnb-service-fees

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/1345/is-the-airbnb-service-fee-refundable

[Val127]

It is not right to state a night's stay is around $100.00 or so and add fees costing close to $300.00. Hotels and motels do not delete cleaning fees from their stated costs. A price sounds right and then you are charged a cleaning fee and other large fees. I noted one stay at a reasonable price, and then noted by research, the host added around 125.00 cleaning fee and another 120.00 or something fee and no explanation for the 120.00 something fee. This is outrageous! I assume these owners do not believe hotels should do the same to them when they reserve?  Airbnb just wants the deceived to quickly hit the button because it is extremely reasonable and so do the rental owners.

[Gareth33]

@Alice-and-Jeff0 When you make a booking it shows a "service" fee per the picture. So when you go through the booking process and it talks about service fees the guest is under the impression that this pertains to the service fee shown on the booking page.

Only after booking did I realise that AirBnB charges two service fees. One for the Host and one for the Guest (both of which get passed-on to the guest). My point is that this needs to be more intuitive and transparent from the earliest stages of booking.

i.e. there must be a line clearly saying: "Host Service Charges" and a separate line saying "Guest Service Charges", and both of these must be shown rather than have one line saying "Service Charge" and then springing a surprise separate charge on the guest later-on??

I find the booking charges completely confusing and even after booking I can't seem to find the invoices unless I go via messages. This level of confusion plus separate fees all over the place makes me inclined to rather go with sites like booking.com whenever possible because from the get-go they show one fee and you know exactly what you are signing up for. As a guest I don't really care how much is tax, cleaning, service, nightly rates. I just want to know one number rather than being confused throughout the whole process. 

[Alice-and-Jeff0]

That is not true @Gareth33 - the service fee to the host is deducted from their payout.  As a guest, you never see this fee and it is never charged to you.  The service fee you see above is for the guest only and that gets paid directly to Airbnb.  

I'm sorry that you find the experience confusing. 

[Gareth33]

@Alice-and-Jeff0 I think what may be contributing to the confusion is the exchange rates.

The dilemma is that as someone who has just booked, the process I went through is roughly along these lines:

1) I wonder where the invoice is? I look around for the invoice and can't find it except for an AirBnB service fee invoice.

2) Eventually after looking around I find out that when I click a message from the host under the messages tab it shows the full invoice amounts in a side-pane. But then I notice that the service fee amount does not match the service fee amount (without tax etc.) shown in the direct-from-airbnb invoice.

3) So I google airbnb service fees and find this page which talks separately about "Host service fees" and "Guest service fees" so I'm left thinking that I'm being charged two separate amounts for airbnb service fees, and that the amount shown when booking is the "Host service fee" being passed-on to me as a guest.

Per your comment if this is indeed one-and-the-same fee for the guest, then it is probably varying exchange rates that gives rise to the discrepancies. But all-in-all a very confusing process for prospective guests and I hope airbnb can streamline this process.

[Alice-and-Jeff0]

@Gareth33 - that, of course, makes complete sense!  Airbnb has not always done a great job at making sure their information is consistent across all platforms.  It seems like this is one of the places that they've fallen down.  This stuff happens from time to time and you can let Airbnb know about it by logging a bug:  https://www.airbnb.ca/help/feedback

You can also make suggestions for site improvement on "host voice":

 https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Host-Voice/idb-p/host-voice

[Leszek5]

this! it is horrible, most misleading listing with prices
this is american comapny, that's why they do it like that, they think taxes are responsibility of the buyer

entire USA operates in this insane way, what puts burden on customers instead of business onwers

they can't expect I will sit with calculator on that listing and add everything up myself, or click through every single offering, so stupid

[Brian1613]

This screen illustrates the problem that customers are having with Airbnb.  A guest wants to book this time period, at my place. Here is what she sees:

It shows a discount from $232 to $197, next to the “RESERVE.”  She tries to reserve. It is significantly  higher. Why?

The price should have, below it: * Nonrefundable Price. Taxes & Fees, not included.

OR

It should just give the guest the discounted price WITH TAXES & FEES. 

What they are doing, above, is deceptive.  So when my prospective guest balks at the price, and asks if we’re doing a bait and switch on her, I feel like Airbnb has let me down again. I had to spend an hour on this. Time is money. 

It is fair to identify what the number you’re showing is, really.  I would expect that if I saw $197/night, it meant that, bottom line price. Unless there is a disclaimer that there are additional costs. I don’t see one, anywhere on the page. 

The practice is, IMHO, deceptive. It should be changed. It represents us, as well as Airbnb. Hosts take the brunt of the anger about it, even though we have no control over how they display the number.

[Jay1549]

There needs to be a cleaning and service fee standardized limit, perhaps based on square footage. Its not right that hosts advertise a room for $63 but upon reserving the final total is $135 - $150 because service and cleaning fees. Hosts say the service fee is the charge airbnb charges but why is that cost all over the place? 

[Sarah977]

@Jay1549  I'm not sure what you mean by the service fee being "all over the place", but the Airbnb service is anywhere from 14-20%, and has nothing to do with hosts. What algorithm Airbnb uses to determine the % of fee they charge isn't something they make known.

As far as the cleaning fee, it can't be standardized, because the hourly rate for cleaning services varies significantly throughout the world and even in different areas throughout a country. It might cost an American host in Chicago $150 to get a 3 bedroom house cleaned, and the same size place in Mexico might cost $25 because wages are so much lower. 

The reason the cleaning fee can't just be added into the nightly fee so you see it as one charge is because it's a one-time fee for each booking. If you stay for 2 weeks, you pay the same cleaning fee as if you stayed for 2 nights, because the place just gets cleaned once per booking, not like a hotel with daily maid service.

And what many guests don't realize is that the same cleaning has to be done whether someone stays for 1 night or 10- the accommodation has to be presented to each guest at the same standard of cleanliness. And some guests manage to make a huge mess in 24 hours, while others leave it in good shape after 2 weeks. So hosts have to average that out.

And some listings have no cleaning fee at all, mine doesn't.