Guest says price is higher from inquiry to pre approved booking invitation

[Alison326]

I have a guest who put through an inquiry for dates and after a bit of back and forth (she was a new user and had not yet attached her Government ID etc) I pre-approved the booking. She then messaged asking why was there a $275 difference in price from $678 which her inquiry email said to $953 which the booking inviation said. 

I don't have smart pricing on so it's definitely not an auto AirBnB repricing. I definitely didn't send a special offer or change the price. So what has happened?!

The $953 is correct to me:

My price of $125/night for 7 days with a 15% weekly discount + $90 cleaning fee = $834 then add the airbnb fee 13% + 10% GST = $953

I can't work out how on earth she got emailed $678. My guess is perhaps:

$125/night for 7 days with a 15% weekly discount and as a new account gets a $65 discount (I made that number up, from what I can see the discount is $40-55 at the moment). But why would AirBnB not calculate this properly with the cleaning fee and service charge?!

I can't find anything similar on google or this forum. Has anyone had this before? 

[Grace339]

I just found out that if you have Smart Pricing turned on at ALL (even tho it shows on your end that the specific dates have it turned off), it will automatically adjust the prices on the booking.

For instance in July I had my price set to $205 & a booking came thro at $165/night (my base price). Also, in August I had my prices set at $195/night with the Smart Pricing turned OFF on those dates & I had a booking request come in at $180/night. Since I could've sworn I had those nights set, I called AirBnb... 

They informed me that out of 365 nights and I think I have my own prices set, if I have Smart Pricing set for 1 night out of the 365, that will affect ALL of the nights. REgardless if I think I have the other nights set to my own pricing.

Aggravating in my book.

[Alison326]

Interesting, I’ll have to do a thorough check. I hope this is only 365 days in the future and has nothing to do with the past! I’m pretty sure I’ve never had smart pricing on though... 

[Paul154]

@Alison326 

"The $953 is correct to me"

Respect that. 

Guests often are confused when they make a booking. They'll change the days, they add guests without remembering, they make up a price...

Guests are not the authority on pricing. You are.

BTW, prices can change between an inquiry and an actual booking. I often discover I incorrectly priced a future inquiry and will then change the price. 

[Alison326]

She had an email that stated the lower figure for the correct guests and dates. It was only copy pasted, not screen shotted so maybe she faked it, who knows. I didn’t get the booking in the end but if I had and she’d mentioned something about the price “change” in her review I would have been very upset. Thanks for being on my side, all I saw on google was plenty of guests abusing hosts for trying prices.