Calendar sync bug ?

[John1985]

There seems to be a bug in the import sync process from Home Away.

This evening a prospective guest booked 3-30 Jan 2020. This, despite the fact that i have had a firm HomeAway booking from 21/12/2019 to 8/1/2020. It's been there for sveral weeks if not 2+months.

Fortunately, he was trying (but mis-keyed) to pay by installment not one lump sum, and cancelled his booking. Though this still left me with a very annoyed customer and i ultimately had to go through the 'conflict' process (or whatever its called, -impossible to find it on the Airbnb site) to refund his payment.

Checking and testing (and repeatedly hitting the 'sync' icon) in the following order : -

HA booking for 21/12/2019 still does not appear in Airbnb.

Test HA booking for 14/12/2019 does not appear in Airbnb.

Test HA booking for 1/9/2019 appears in Airbnb OK !

Test HA booking for 1/11/2019 does not appear in Airbnb.

Test HA booking for 5/10/2019 appears in Airbnb OK !

It seems Airbnb is accepting bookings from HA up to 12 months hence, but not after.

Surely this cant be operation intent. - To deliberately cause double booking !?

Can someone investigate and fix please. Urgently, obviously, as i have all these fictitious bookings blocking my HA Calendar.

thanks

john

[Letti0]

@John1985  AirBnB only sync's out 1 year. This is a known issue. That is why you should not have your booking window out for more than 1 year. You could also manually block them, but AirBnB has a bad habit of unblocking dates that they won't admit to. 

[David-and-Jorge0]

Yeah - I first started with Airbnb's calendar being my "system of record", but once I discovered the 12 month thing (import AND export, btw - the calendars you export to like VRBO, et al, will only have 12 months of data, too... so you get the privilege of double-booking in BOTH systems!) and then the mysterious and changing status of blocked/available, I gave up on that.  Now I do all imports, have a Google calendar for owner-bookings, and limit my listings to 12 months of availability... but wow, I wished they'd fix this design bug!

[John1985]

Thanks Letti,

What a potential disaster.

I'm certainly NOT going to refuse booking requests more than a year out.  I'm now getting enquiries through HomeAway for spring 2020.

Now i am aware of this MONSTER size Airbnb deficiency i will be sure to manually block such dates in my Airbnb calendar.

Whilst Airbnb is a good platform for getting bookings, I am progressively having to question their

professionalism and whether the stress they create is worth it!?

[David-and-Jorge0]

Double-entry calendar management is bull**bleep**.  Using the 12-month booking window won't really prevent bookings, but it will keep you from getting double-booked.   Guests will still make the inquiries, and you can prominently put in your listing intro that you only make 12 months available due to an Airbnb bug, so guests should still contact you for 12+ month bookings.  I still get inquiries like that... just got one today.  And I don't have to waste time with double-entry.

With double-entry, eventually, you will make mistakes...  😞

[Sue174]

@John1985, @Letti0 I just found this out the HARD way. Air allowed a booking for next December 27 (12 months AND A DAY) but it is already booked and blocked on my HomeAway calendar but looks open on Air. The guest is SO MAD! So John, you're right. I went and manually blocked the dates on AIr so this doesn't happen again. Letti, I just changed my booking settings as well to only 12 months out. Wish I had known this before!!

[David-and-Jorge0]

YES!  I have been complaining about this for YEARS!  And I again just submitted a "support" incident that was summarily ignored... also blasted the CS survey request.  Probably won't do any good...

I got some double-bookings, too, before I limited all of my Airbnb listings to 12 months.  But guests in my market ROUTINELY want to book well in advance (got another just today... selected dates in May/2019 because 2020 is not available... sigh).

I wish SOMEONE would listen to this issue.  The last time I complained, they said "works as designed", but you can use the feedback form to submit a "suggestion".  Ahhh, no, this is a design DEFECT!  I worked in software quality in corporate IT departments for over 20 years, and I might just know a thing or two about this...  😉

Because of course it is 100% do-able... VRBO uses a 24 month import/export window.  Gah!  I really don't see how Airbnb can be so dense about this.

[Janice286]

@David-and-Jorge0, has any progress been made in the VRBO/ABB syncing department in the past 6 months.  Been using VRBO, just published same listing in ABB this week.  The process to sync is easy enough (I'm tech savy), but the programming ... uh ... stinks to say the least.

At least I can find the ABB sync link on VRBO on regular basis to delete or add.  In ABB, seeing the VRBO link to update or delete is intermittent at best.  I've been using Firefox and decided to open Safari for a fresh try and was finally able to see VRBO in the Sync section and delete.  But what a pain.  And it's both a sending and receiving problem with ABB (as far as I can tell).  If I block dates in ABB, they don't show up in VRBO (so far) and visa versa (blocking dates in VRBO don't show in ABB.  Unless I delete the VRBO link and re-copy & sync.  If I have to do that every time, what's the point of sync...might as well do it manually.

Also, for some  reason (even though my AirBB calendar is blank, except the VRBO bookings) It forces my VRBO to show conflict as if the VRBO date in AirBB is an AirBB booking.  Can't even fix by making the VRBO dates available in AirBB. 

Hurts my brain.  Easier to be **bleep** and block the other calendar each time a reservation is made.  THANKS for trying ABB...NOT!

-JJ

[Robert188]

I am having problems with calendar sync and release with covid cancellations.  I have days showing open on the airbnb calendar,  but blocked by AIRBNB on my VRBO calendar.  Anyone else?  July 2020