Smart pricing gone horribly wrong

[Mike-And-Jane0]

We had set smart pricing to have a minimum price of £65 per night so were horrified when an Instant Book reservation came for 9 nights at £310 total.

I spoke to Customer Support and was told

1) I had given a 50% discount for a non-refundable booking (I Hadn't)

2) The guest has only paid half and the amount will go up later (They hadn't and it won't)

3) They would look into it further and would message me with a case reference (they didn't)

I then chatted with a support ambassador who typed that he would pass it to a case manager and promptly closed the chat - no idea what, if anything, will happen next.

I guess I am forced to cancel the reservation myself as Customer Support is totally lacking. It is a shame as the guest wants to book with us and I fear if I cancel then they won't be able to. Perhaps I will call Customer support tomorrow and hope I get someone in Ireland as they appear to be more capable than most.

I have also switched off Smart Pricing as it seems to throw up major glitches!!!!

@Nick I remember you asked about people using smart pricing recently - Issues such as this may or may not be associated with smart pricing but as I have never had such a problem before I have to assume that Smart Pricing is at fault.

[Brian2036]

@Mike-And-Jane0 

What is “smart” in regards to price differs according to point of view. 

What is smart for Airbnb might be foolish for the host.

 I couldn’t see that it made much difference on my listing, and when people asked me what I was charging I didn’t know, so it made me look rather stupid.

 I turned it off.

[Colleen253]

@Brian2036 The more Airbnb features you use, the more favorably the algorithm will place you in search results. You can turn smart pricing on, but set your minimum price to whatever you want. Mine is so much higher than what airbnb wants me at, that the price hardly ever changes, unless I do it manually.

@Mike-And-Jane0 There seem to be more and more reports of platform glitches like you've just experienced. Worrisome. And those responses by CS are just more proof that none of them know a thing. What is the point of CS even existing?

[Brian2036]

@Colleen253 

Thanks for that information. I as going to raise my minimum price anyway for the comfort zone season here, assuming that it arrives as usual towards the end of September.

Maybe I’ll give smart pricing another chance at that point.

What I would like it to do is charge a premium for weekends and holidays but it didn’t seem to be doing that.

Possibly it was trying to accumulate baseline data but I didn’t really want to wait that long.

[Jenny349 · Accepted solution]

@Mike-And-Jane0 What a bind! I’m sure you’ve considered this already, but could you message your guest, explain the issue and then send a ‘special offer’ (ha!) with the correct price, to be accepted or not, on the understanding that the reservation would have to be cancelled otherwise? I think I’d even ask the guest if he’d mind cancelling   - worth a shot, no?

Aren’t you allowed to refuse IBs or are there caveats to that?

[Sandra5504]

be careful not to cancel his booking yourself. Ask the guest to cancel ! You will be penalised it you cancel it Airbnb will deduct a penalty payment from your next booking!! This happened to me. 👍

[Mike-And-Jane0]

Hi @Jenny349 . Thanks for the idea. I had already messaged the guest explaining the issue but hadn't thought to send a change request. I have sent one now and will see what happens.

As we are on Instant Book I can cancel the reservation saying I am not comfortable with it - A bit of a stretch but  true as the price is wrong. The issue then is that the guest is presumably blocked from booking with us which may be a problem as they say they need somewhere to stay.

As reported by others many times Customer Support are entirely useless but I will give them one more go today to see if they can redeem themselves!

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Jenny349 I think it is all sorted now. The guest didn't want to pay the correct price for the 9 days over Christmas so kindly agreed to cancel as he was within the 48 hour window to do so without penalty.

I get the impression it was the price increase rather than the absolute price level that was too much to stomach so it looks like Airbnb have lost a guest through their software error. This also further demonstrates that Airbnb Customer Support is non-supportive but thankfully between the guest and ourselves we managed to sort it out!

[Mike-And-Jane0]

So to close this out Customer support came back and said I had overridden the pricing for 5 nights to reduce it to £10 per night. They were not able to send me the screenshot to prove this (and it can't be true as the nights didn't revert to £10 per night when the guest thankfully cancelled) so I can't take it any further.

@Nick I just hope that Airbnb recognise their software is faulty even if they are not willing to admit it to me!

[Colleen253]

Isn’t it so very interesting that these glitches always favor the guest? I was just musing about this as  I was doing my daily settings check and noticed some of my instant book requirements had been turned off. 

It’s ridiculously exhausting trying to keep up with the dysfunctional (and subversive) nature of this platform. 

[Nick]

Hi @Mike-And-Jane0 indeed an unfortunate situation. I am passing the details now to the team to maybe have another look into this.

[Brad716]

@Mike-And-Jane0 I literally had this happen to me today. I’ve had to cancel 4 reservations today and block out my entire calendar because the pricing is so grossly off! On top of this, CS is completely unhelpful and you can’t escalate to anybody. This is so unfortunate and some of the worst customer service I have ever encountered. Maybe we should try VRBO? 

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Brad716 Did you have a weird weekly price set?

[Brian2036]

@Colleen253 

I have also found spontaneous changes in my settings from time to time.

Having to constantly monitor my settings is particularly annoying due to the inconvenient organization (or disorganization) of the website.

[Colleen253]

@Brian2036 I began doing daily settings checks a long time ago, after experiencing mysterious changes. The worst one was when check in time kept reverting to ‘flexible’. It was subsequently discovered to be tied to making changes in ‘booking settings’. I think that that type of bug is quite common and behind many of these instances, so ironically, I think because I check and make minor tweaks daily, this may put me more at risk for these spontaneous changes.