Hi @Lizzie
Hope you are still having a great time on your whirlwind tour.
I know you asked @Samuel what glitches HE was experiencing, but, as I seem to have had more than my fair share of techical glitches over the last 6 months, I thought I'd jump in and point out a few to you, as you seem to be genuinely concerned about at least knowing.
In no particular order, here are some issues I have experienced
* I was invited to send guests a special offer for specific dates that I had blocked out on my listing. I had family staying those dates, so I clicked "no thanks".
Within minutes of doing this, I recieved an IB for those dates - clicking no thanks had actually opened up the dates. CS sorted it, but it was a lot of time and heartache, particulalry as I had only been hosting for a few weeks at the time.
* I had an IB guest who was being troublesome in the lead up to her stay, I rang CS who advised cancelling might be the best option. AFter much discussion, CS cancelled the booking. I was assured this would not negatively affect me in anyway. However I lost the IB feature on my listing for nearly 4 weeks over the busiest time of the year. As a consequence my bookings were very few. I only realised IB wasn't active when I had a series of guests request to book. CS were unable to explain why or how it occurred, and in fact initially assured me it hadn't gone, Despite being promised someone would be in contact with me, I never heard from anyone in CS ever again. When I emailed to follow up, the case was closed with no interaction from CS at all. I found this very disconcerting and demoralising ( not to mention extremely rude)
* As @Ann noted, changes you make frequently do not save. Fro example I went in and changed the minimum stay over a long weekend in January from 2 nights ( my usual minimum) to 3 nights. I clicked save etc. When I checked my listing via my husband's account, the change had not saved. I had to go in and repeat 4 times before it did acutally save. Then overnight it disappeared again, and someone IB'd for 2 nights.
*I've had consdiderable problems with the automated message sent to my guests re checkin time as well as the pre booking message. All of a sudden guests were getting a message from airbnb after they'd IB'd tellign them check in was "anytime" ( instead of anytime after 2) AND NONE of the prebooking questions. As a result I had several guests announce they were arriving at 9 am and said very little else. The problem was compounded by the fact that from MY end, the automated message i got from airbnb hadn't changed, so I had no idea there was a problem from the guests end. I'm sure you can see the potential for miscommunciaton and a potentially negative inital interaction with guests
* by far the worst thing IMO though, is that when you ring CS about any of these "techincial glitches" they say they will refer it on to IT and someone will be in touch. In my experience, 100% of the time you never hear from anyone again. The last time I said this to CS I was assured by a paricular representative that he would absolutley, definitely contact me again before the end of his shift, even if he had no real news. He guaranteed it.....Nothing. The problem was eventually fixed, but I only found out by asking my guests, - very unprofessional. I also note that by not following through and not actually closing the case, no "please let us know how we did" link is generated. To me this seems like a way of ensuring customer satisifaction rates look high - the customer is given no opportunity to complain when things aren't working well.
When I have had to ring CS about things they CAN help with ( ie not technical glitches) they are really wonderful. They are reassuring and helpful. Personally I would find the technical glitches a lot easier to cope with if I felt CS were actually beign supportive. Being cut off and ignored is so counterproductive, depressing, frustrating and isolating. I think a lot of angst could be avoided, with a bit more support and follow through. Of course even better if the technical glitches never happened!
I know from scanning the boards, that my experience is not an isolated one, a!lthough I think I have been particulalry unlucky experiencing so many glitches in such a short space of time - and they're just the ones I've found out about.
Not sure if your input to the product team will alter anything, but I guess it can't hurt!
Hope you have the best fun on the few remaining days of your trip. I've been reading your posts with interest.
Regards
