We have two guests arriving on June 24th for one night, staying in one of our rental rooms. They contacted us today, to tell us that they were seeing a price of $82 per night, although Airbnb had charged them $110 per night. We ourselves tried to see what was going on here by making a 'mock' booking from our own computers, of our other room, which has exactly the same pricing. Sure enough, on one computer, the price was $82, on the other, $110!
As this seemed incomprehensible, we contacted customer service. The agent was very helpful, looked up the booking and explained that the discrepancy was due to the fact that $110 was Canadian dollars, while $82 was American dollars! That seemed reasonable, and I thanked her for her help, but on checking the URL used on both our computers, we saw that we were both looking at the Airbnb Canada site, NOT the Airbnb US site. That left us with the question as to how a Canadian site can show both an American and a Canadian price, when we were both looking at exactly the same URL from two different computers in the same room, in the same house!
I then messaged an agent, who advised me to scroll to the very bottom of my listings page and change the currency to Candian dollars. I did this, but it left me wondering why on earth is something so important hidden away at the very bottom of the listing page, not highlighted at the beginning?
Anyway, problem solved - I hope. I see from 'googling' the same issue that it's a HUGE problem with other hosts and guests. There are quite a few discussions of the matter which show up with a google search.
We have offered to refund the difference to our guests when they arrive, thus taking a hit of $28, but we're doing so in good faith, and hoping it won't happen again. This is not a trivial matter and I hope Airbnb will take it seriously. If every customer were to see an American dollar price instead of a Canadian dollar price for a Canadian booking, we'd end up being short-changed all summer if we had to refund the difference.
