Significant Price Increase after Booking - Listing Error

[John2208]

I've read other similar posts here about what to do as a guest when a host requests that I cancel due to incorrect pricing, and am already in communication with AirBnB to see if it can be resolved. I'd like to get others' experiences that have been in a similar situation and what to expect.

Short story - looking for places in Jerusalem/Bethlehem for the month of December 2019, prices filtered to show places below $2500. One listing was very nice but suspiciously low at $2000 for the month with lots of 5-star reviews and a host with multiple other listings. I sent an inquiry basically saying "your place looks great but it's showing $2000 for December 2019, is your calendar up to date?" Next day I got a response saying basically "yes indeed, prices are up to date to October 2019, looking forward to hosting you" along with an AirBnB "invitation to book". Mentioning October seemed weird, but since the host had presumably taken a look at the prices after my note and sent me an invitation to book, I just went ahead with the booking from the invitation.

So, a couple hours after getting the booking confirmation email I got a message from the host saying that the price was wrong and asked me to cancel so he could send me an offer with the accurate rates (I looked at other earlier dates for this place and they're $199/night). Since the long-term stay is not refundable I called AirBnB to see if they can deal with the cancellation. AirBnB said that there were a couple of options - they could cancel or I could accept an offer for a higher rate (no idea what that might be). For the cancellation option AirBnB said that this was a very good host, and that cancellation could be a long process. Anyhow, they said they'd get back to me tomorrow with more details.

This is a difficult situation - I don't want to be a problem for the host but I imagine that any updated pricing offer is going to be well above my budget, forcing the host to either cancel (at penalty) or honour the reservation (at 'opportunity cost' penalty). Note that I would harbour no ill will towards the host if they did cancel.

With that, here are a couple of questions for the community:

1. Have there been situations for you where AirBnB has been able to cancel a reservation penalty-free for all parties?
2. If you have been in situations where an incorrect reservation had to be honoured, did it make the host-guest dynamic hostile for the stay?

Thanks!

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Michael2476 when this happened to us we eventually found a special price had been put into the system that was way below our nightly rate and yet applied for the whole week.

Go into pricing and availability and edit the weekly/monthly offers section. in there you will probably find your issue. Do let me know if this works.