Hi everyone,
Some of you may have met us already, but for those who haven't, we are relatively new hosts (less than one month) living in Hong Kong who have a villa in southern Portugal listed on Airbnb.
When we began hosting, we were really excited, especially because we had started so late in peak season but our listing garnered a lot of interest anyway. Then, about two weeks ago, we experienced the first of a series of SERIOUS technical headaches with the Airbnb site, and their support team has done very, very little to resolve these other than apologised and promised to "investigate."
Before I list our problems, let me clarify a few things straight off. We don't use Smart Pricing and have never once turned it on, even out of curiosity. We don't use any external software tools like Beyond Pricing or PriceLabs. And we do almost all of our listing arrangements on a fairly new MacBook using Safari--which may or may not matter, but I'll explain later why I mention this.
So, here's what happened, in chronological order:
1) About two weeks ago, a friend from France texted me on WhatsApp to ask me if some dates in early September were available. I said, "Yes, that whole period is mostly booked, but the three days you mentioned are available." She said, "That's what I thought you had told me, but I just checked on my phone and they are blocked."
I immediately checked our listing, and lo and behold, they were showing as available! So, I asked her to send me a screenshot, and then I emailed Airbnb support, showing them the screenshot as evidence as well as a screenshot from our side showing that the dates were listed as available. I also explained that we were possibly going to lose this booking, and maybe some others, because of this.
The Airbnb rep who replied told me that this might be due to a glitch with their app, in which some people who use iPhones can't always see available listings. I then pointed out to her that many people these days ONLY uses phones for such things as room bookings, and I asked them if they could please repair this for us, as we would be losing potential earnings.
Airbnb promised to "investigate" the matter...and that was the last we ever heard from them on it. (And yes, our friend did book another place--because ours was officially unavailable...)
2) About a week ago, our housing manager in Portugal, who is also an Airbnb host, texted me to ask why all of next year was showing as not available, but most of the month of August was open--and that the prices were all over the place, ranging from as low as €95 per night to as high as €593 per night!
I told her that that was impossible, since we only have our availability set to six months ahead. But when I went on to look at our calendar, sure enough, everything after the six month mark was showing as blocked EXCEPT for next August--and there it was, staring me right in the face, with all of these crazy prices showing.
Again, we took a screenshot and contacted Airbnb, and they promised to "investigate." And once again, absolutely nothing happened.
We tried re-setting the prices to a normal level, but then the next day, they would go right back to crazy prices again. And we kept sending screenshots and would get the occasional reply with a promise to look into the matter, but nothing was ever done. I mean, nothing.
Finally, we figured out that if we just manually blocked the month, then people wouldn't be able see it. And we did that, and also re-set the prices--but each day, the prices would go back to their crazy levels (even if we were the only ones who could see them).
3) Our last Airbnb technical problem is the most serious of all. Right around the time that the mystery August openings started appearing, our prices for the coming months started being automatically reset--and almost always at prices MUCH lower than what he had set them at.
We caught this simply because we had now become aware that some strange things were happening with our listing, and so my wife and our house manager began checking it periodically on their phones, as if they were customers. And every single day, at least once, our prices would get changed after I had set them back to normal, and the range of prices would be all over the place.
What makes this especially strange is that we keep our prices pretty stable for most months. For instance, except for an increase over Christmas and New Year, we had no variance in pricing at all listed between November 1 and February 28. But each and every day, the prices would be re-set by Airbnb, and the range between the highs and the lows would always be incredible!
Needless to say, I was contacting Airbnb support on a daily basis, with screenshots being sent each time as evidence. For a few days, I had a nice young lady representative who seemed to be trying to help. She did acknowledge that we hadn't used Smart Pricing or any external software to adjust our prices, and she said that they couldn't find any bugs. So, she turned it over to their technical support and I was told they were "investigating"...
Well everyone, if you've been following this story up to this point, you can guess the rest...
Nothing was done. Again.
And realise that in the meantime, I was trying every home remedy you could think of to fix this. I tried using a different browser (Chrome instead of Safari, as one of the reps had recommended). I tried emptying the cache and clearing the browsing history. I tried setting the prices on my phone instead of my computer. I tried setting the prices one day at a time instead of for multiple days at a time.
Absolutely nothing has worked.
And then yesterday, our worst fear came true. While we were sleeping in here in Hong Kong, the prices were yet again reset by Airbnb to levels as low as 45% less on some days than we had been asking--and some guests in France saw this incredibly low price in October and booked our room for a week.
My wife and I both awoke to see this, and of course, we weren't happy. But we had to go to work, and so I immediately wrote to Airbnb explaining the situation and telling them that we needed help right away. And guess what? The whole day went by, and no reply. Hours were expiring on the guest's 24-hour booking request, and Airbnb support completely ignored us.
So last night, I finally called them. I was on the phone with an agent for well over an hour, and while she seemed like she was trying to help, she pretty well made it clear that Airbnb was not going to take any responsibility for this. Worse, she told me that I could not provide any evidence to prove that their site had been resetting the prices, because the screenshots that I claimed that I had sent WERE NOT SHOWING IN THE SUPPORT INBOX!
I told her that she must be mistaken, that I was looking right at the inbox and could see several days of screenshots that had been sent to them--but she insisted that she couldn't see them on her end.
So, I told her that I had kept copies of the screenshots and could send them again, and she said, "No, you don't want to do that. The last thing that technical support wants to see is a bunch of confusing pictures."
You can all guess how this turned out. Airbnb was simply not going to accept any responsibility or do anything to help us. And so, we were given a simple choice: decline this booking as new hosts, which we knew would negatively affect our placement as well as our chances of advancing to Superhost; or accept this booking at a dramatically reduced price, and eat the financial loss.
And so, we chose the latter. But we weren't happy about it. Then, to add even more salt to the wound, we awoke this morning to find that our prices had again been re-set lower. We had followed all of the advice from the Airbnb agent I had spoken to on the phone about how we might be able to stop this from happening, and yet, it happened again--and we are helpless to do anything to stop it.
Okay everyone, so that's our nightmare. Sorry for the long story, but it has been a very miserable and stressful couple of weeks. We cannot seem to find any resolution for this, but what is worse is that we cannot get over how Airbnb support has completely abandoned us.
If anyone has ANY suggestions on what we can do here, we would surely welcome them. Truly and sincerely. And thank you in advance, both for your advice and for suffering through this long tale (though if you really do think that that was suffering, then you should try living it on a daily basis...)
Bless your hearts, fellow hosts. Even if you don't reply, thanks a lot for reading.
