I always receive text alerts for prospective renters, this time, I did not! What happened?

[Jenni-and-Tim0]

I received a text today saying that a renters request had expired, yet I never received the request via text in the first place!  I always have received a text to alert me that there is a request, this time I did not.  I immediatly logged on and responded but I havn't heard anything back so I assume that have found something else.  This is extremely frustrating as it was the opportunity to make over $1000!  I checked my profile to assure that text comminications was on and it was.  Any suggestions as to why this happened and how to stop it from happening in the future??

[Sarah977]

@Jenni-and-Tim0  If you do a search on this site, you will find that this has been happening to a lot of hosts. It happened to me back in November and it took the support team a month and a half to start sending me text notifications again. I missed one booking request, and only saw it on my laptop 25 hours after it had been sent. And even though I responded immediately and that guest ended up booking those dates, and it was airbnb's responsibility because they suddenly ceased my notifications, airbnb still marked me down for response time, so my response rate went from 100% to 95%.

It is either a glitch in the system, or they are trying to phase out the SMS notifications for hosts who do not complain. Lodge your issue with Support and tell them that these notifications are crucial to you. Hopefully they will come back for you. In the meantime, you'll need to check for inquiries and booking requests daily on your account.

[Matthew285]

@Jenni-and-Tim0 I set up AirBnB to notify me as many ways as possible. So when a guest makes an inquiry or an Instant Booking, I get a text alert, an email from AirBnB, a notification from the AirBnB app, and a second email from AirGMS.

Because you never know then the SMS bug will strike...

[Sarah977]

@Matthew285  That's great advice probably for most hosts. However, it doesn't solve the problem for all of us. It depends on the technology available to a host. In my case, I live where there are no phone lines, therefore my internet access is through using a phone  to "tether" through the cell signal.  It is quite expensive, therefore my internet is not just "on" all the time, only when I fire it up. So that affects accessing emails and airbnb messaging, and I don't use the phone app- I only use the smart phone for tethering- it's not something I want to carry around with me and take the chance of losing or damaging, since my internet connection relies on it. 

It works perfectly for me to get the text notifications on the old school dumb phone I carry with me and use for texting and calling- as soon as I receive a notification text, I know to fire up my laptop and respond.

But I do now check my account daily to make sure I haven't missed something due to an SMS bug.

[Fred13]

@Jenni-and-Tim0Best way to get around this also - have notifications to be send to different places/people. I seen this happen quite a few times, mostly delays between people getting the notifications.

[Sean242]

Yes, is am now experiencing the same issues. I like replying to messages right away, and now I end up just seeing them in my email hours later. 

I have doubt checked all the setting. The account is on both my wife’s phone and mine. 

I will reach out to support today.  

[Vera12]

I have the same problem and now will lose my Superhost status because of it. I called Customer Service and they are HORRIBLE. On my side my notofications are turned on, on their side they are not. I used to get an email, a note from the app, and a text message and now I get NONE. They explained it's a known bug, they can't do anything, they have different departments that don't communicate (like that's my problem), its a glitch "it's not personal" (very condescending as if I think it is a "personal" thing because I will not accept that they have zero responsibility to have an accurate Superhost award system that does not punish hosts for THEIR glitches). They said airbnb is "a self-help system" that expects hosts to report things in Feedback (which, by the way, when you do tells you that they will not get back to you, thank you for wasting your time submitting your urgent concern into a black hole that may make our system better someday) and not to customer service. Do these people receive any training at all? It sounds like they are 19, sitting in a loud party room and just smoked a bowl, highly skilled in "passing the buck" - and that's including the "manager" I asked to be transferred to. What are all the fees they collect for then if they can't have responsibility for removing at least the consequences to Superhost status that their bugs create, if nothing else (i.e. lost reservations, etc)?? So consequences of bugs are 100% on hosts who have 0 control over bugs?  Come on Airbnb - you can do better!