Available dates different on computer and phone app

[Rich-and-Yan0]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all of your helpful input. We are new hosts and read these community posts often, and we have learned a lot by doing so. So now, we'd like to put one out there to you and see if any of you has had this experience--and if you have, what you did to resolve it.

For reasons I won't bore you with, we weren't able to list by the beginning of summer as we had hoped and couldn't legally make our villa available until early August. So, we figured that as we had missed most of peak season, we wouldn't get many bookings--and yet, we were pleasantly surprised to have some (so far) nice guests book almost all of August and September. 

Everything was pretty much booked solid except for this one week in late August-early September. We tried adjusting the price and such, but there was no interest, until last week when a friend from France sent me a non-Airbnb message asking me about availability in early September. I said, "Yes, we're available from August 29-September 5," but then she texted me later to say that some of those days were showing as unavailable on our calendar.

This struck me as very strange. I checked our listing again on our MacBook, which is our primary Airbnb computer, and the dates that she said were blocked were showing as available. Then, I checked the availability on our PC, which does not have our Airbnb history on it, so that I could see it from the point of view of a potential guest, and again, the dates were available.

Well, I texted my friend back to explain this, and then she sent me the screenshot you see her, which was taken from her phone and which clearly shows that September 3-5 are not available. (We have a guest coming in on September 6.)

I then asked a friend here in Hong Kong to double-check this, and she found the exact same thing.

So, I immediately contacted Airbnb, and I'm pleased that they responded quickly. However, I wasn't exactly satisfied with their answer. The agent, who was nice enough, explained to me that Airbnb's website "is optimized for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome," and that we should explain to our potential guests that they should "try using a desktop computer with one of these browsers because sometimes the App has some minor glitches."

As I explained back, this sounds like a solution but it really isn't at all. For one thing, many people these days use phones almost exclusively to do their bookings and other online business. The French friend I just mentioned is a good example; she almost never uses a computer and does almost everything Internet-related on her phone. So, if the app is wonky, then that is a major problem in our eyes. 

But here's the bigger problem: if a guest is looking for a rental home at a certain date and they punch in the dates on which they are seeking to travel, then our home won't come up on the list--because according to Airbnb, we are UNAVAILABLE then. Whenever we travel, whether we are searching for a hotel or an Airbnb listing, we also start by area we're travelling to and the specific dates we'll be there. I'm guessing that most other people do the same.

And as I explained to the agent, even if someone did find our listing through a wider search and did look at our home, they are still going to see it as booked or unavailable for those dates. The chances of a potential guest contacting us and saying, "We wanted to book for Sept. 3-5 but those dates are not available--can you tell us why?" and then us replying and saying, "Oh, that's a glitch with your phone app. You need to use a computer and try booking it on Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox"....well, I think you can all imagine that such a conversation would never happen. 

Anyway, as I said at the beginning of this post, we're wondering if any of you has ever had this experience, and if so, were you able to resolve it? I asked the Airbnb agent to forward this to someone in their technical services sector, and while one such person did contact me, they too are not yet able to ascertain what has happened here, and why. But it has already cost us one booking (our French friend needed to book a room for her mother and had to grab another place), and so we thought that we should bring it to your attention so that you can make sure that it is not happening to any of you, either.

Thanks for listening.  

[Sarah977]

@Rich-and-Yan0  I'm not sure that this is just happening on the app. I've read many posts in the past few weeks where hosts are saying that the calendar is open on the host end but appears blocked on the guest end. So there appears to be a glitch on some hosts' accounts. Perhaps those were all guests checking through the app, I don't know. I'd let CS know that this has been reported widely on the CC here and that they need to get this resolved ASAP.

That a huge international platform that millions of users only use the app for should have tons of app glitches constantly is so inexcusable.

Here's a tip- when I have an issue, rather than just blither back and forth with the CS rep, I write my message like this:

TECH TEAM ISSUE:

blah blah blah

or

TRUST AND SAFETY ISSUE

blah blah blah

(the blah blah blah is where I succinctly as possible, as if I'm writing for a 1st grader, outline the issue)

When I have done this, what I get back is a message from the CS rep, saying he is escalating it to the correct department and I have soon received an answer back from someone in that department who has more often than not been able to address the issue.

[Rich-and-Yan0]

@Sarah977 Thank you for the prompt and informative response. You're right, this is "so inexcusable," and the fact that it has been "reportedly widely" by other hosts, as you say, should mean that it definitely needs to be amended.

While Airbnb's profit figures have not been disclosed, it has announced that it does make profit--a "rare profitable unicorn," according to Forbes. And so, it should make sense for a company that is losing potential customer business to try to fix that problem--and thus, make more money!

We lost one possible booking that we know of, but we were only made aware of this because we actually knew the person who had wanted to book. How many other guests might have been looking for an Airbnb property that week and never even saw our listing, because we were officially "unavailable"? 

So yes, an inexcusable problem that hopefully will be mended. But I'll try your "writing for a 1st grader" approach if the current path yields no results (which so far, it hasn't).

Cheers. 

[Katherine606]

Is there any update to this issue 

[Rich-and-Yan0]

@Katherine606 We don't seem to have had a problem with it recently, although to be honest, as we've only had one confirmed booking from within the country in four months and many cancellations, we simply haven't been following up on it very closely. If and when things go back to normal again, then we will keep an eye on it and post an update. 

[Jacinta44]

Yes there is a problem.

I looked at a property I liked on my Airbnb app, there was plenty of dates to choose.

I then wanted to have a better look at the photos on my desktop.

I looked at the same property & there were less dates available on the desktop.

I contacted Airbnb support via web chat & was informed that the dates are the same no matter what device you use.

No they are not.

I really hope they sort this problem out as I normally just use my phone app to book with Airbnb.

[Sarah977]

@Jacinta44  When you see a discrepancy like that, send an inquiry message (Contact Host button on the listing) to the host- on an inquiry, you can input any available dates you see, even if they aren't the ones you actually want- an inquiry doesn't commit you to a booking.

Let the host know about this glitch in their calendar- they are likely not aware, it could be losing them bookings, and they will be grateful for you letting them know. And they can tell you which dates actually are available.

[Jacinta44]

Thank you Sarah for your reply.

When I next have a look I will do as you advised.

Many thanks Jacinta 

[Lacy37]

YES.  I am having this same issue today - one overnight showing available on app (and thus showing up in search results), and NOT showing in search results at all on desktop (and greyed out as unavailable when using Chrome on desktop).  And yes, this is something Airbnb needs to remedy asap.