Pricing changed without my doing, Smart Pricing was off

[Nada8]

We set our nightly prices and then overnight the prices were dropped over the entire calendar. Smart pricing was off in the settings. One person ended up sending a reservation request for dates with significantly lower rates than we had put in. I have two questions. 1. How do I prevent this from happening again? 2. It says the dates will be blocked if I decline this person's request. What are my options? Thanks!

[David126]

I had a look at your listing and it seems that every day has a different price, so you did this, seems unusual.

My first thought is that perhaps when you were altering the prices a few of those dates were particularly low.

You can decline a booking without having your dates blocked so not sure what you mean by that.

[Bob43]

While smart pricing is turned off, you can still select a range of dates in your calendar and the system will suggest a pricing for you (also if you have set all of your pricing options). It will say "Tip: $x" (where x is the suggested price). Maybe in the past you have clicked "save changes". This will override your manually set prices and keep the suggested ones.

[Sheila95]

This just happened to me. My smart pricing was on but my rates are & have been 75$-100$ and a request came in for 48$ for 2 nights plus a -2$ service fee. I have never had the settings this way. I have instant booking so had to decline. Sad for everyone. I asked the guest to cancel and rebook after telling them what happened. I didnt hear from them and now have a decline on my record.

[Sheila95]

Addendum to above: i had the client back out and rebook and the same (48$) for 2 night price came up even with smart pricing turned off

[David126]

@Sheila95

I do not like smart pricing as it seems anything but smart, I looked at your listing and something is going on. I could not see a night less than $75 but some nghts are a dollar or two more, do I take it that you should have a standard $75 price?

[Sheila95]

Thanks for looking into this, i did turn smart pricing off but my minimum was 75 max 100. I found the problem somehow the weekend price was reset for 25$ I had to cancel the reservation and have my guest rebook. Learned my lesson to always review my setting perameters. Thanks for the response. Sheila

[Chad170]

Something very similar happened to me, where last night I received a booking request for weekend dates for extremely low. Just last week, I went and set prices until 2019 EOY and it undid all of it. I contacted support and they're telling me that smart pricing overrides manual pricing in some cases, but they couldn't explain what triggers that to occur - doesn't make any sense. They're sending documentation that I'll share.

[David-Erik0]

@Chad170 https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Smart-pricing-activated-by-itself/m-p/1034060#M255487

[Chad170]

@David-Erik0 Thanks so much! Airbnb support explained it as a problem I had caused, so I’ve been working on trying to reconcile from my end pointlessly.

They provided this article:http://airbnb.com/help/article/512/how-do-i-set-custom-prices-for-weekends-or-holidays

They claimed they were auditing back-end pricing changes, which they either didn’t do or failed at. They also could have easily checked my settings to see I didn’t have weekend pricing enabled. 

I’ll report back with the outcome of the interaction.

[Chad170]

[David-Erik0]

@Chad170 
Yeah the article makes sense when the problem is on our side, but at least in my case, was an AirBnB problem,which is not a big deal at least for me, as basically I've lost nothing. 
My smart pricing was active in the general settings however was blocked on every day.

I manually open days/weeks/months and every single time I manually write the price day and block the smart pricing and I am 2 billions per cent sure that it was inactive in every single day.

One of the reasons for which I'm so sure, is that I had one Monday price €26 which is a no sense 'cause the rest of the week was €29 and normally I price €30 and never at €26 unless in winter or for emergency, and the other reason is given by the fact that suddenly I had that black arrows on each calendar day and when I saw them I didn't have any clue what the were 'cause was the first time in I think two years that I was seeing them, it's also thanks to this detail that I have found out the smart pricing was not anymore blocked.

[Chad170]

They eventually fixed it, but then the guest who stayed that weekend was a doctor whose pets damaged my property. Guess what - airbnb says any pet damage ISNT COVERED AT ALL. Well, why would you allow pets?

Thats another issues but at least they fixed the bug they caused, which they should do in the first place as part of ethical business practice.

[Andrew883]

I've just had this happen to me and Airbnb's response was to say it was down to my discounting. 

There's a discount applied to stays of 7 nights or more, additional for one month. 

I screenshotted 2 identical stays of 7 nights, with a €150 difference.

Some more excuses from Airbnb before finally acknowledging that there is a "problem" and asking for patience.

They recommended I set prices for every single night, which I tried doing last night, only for their system to override it overnight.

I charge 65 euros a night. 

Some of these prices are going down to 43 euros a night, before length of stay discounts.

I am losing money here!