I am taking Calendar issues to the top!

[Robin4]

I think enough is enough, and time has come for the hosting community to become pro-active.

Contributor Nikki from London reported in a post on January 20th 2016 that her booking calendar was randomly unblocking dates that she had blocked!

Since that post there have been over 300 posts in this past year reporting exactly the same issue….and these are just the tip of the iceberg, these are the ones that have come to the forum! The common thread in almost all of these instances is the use of Instant Book where the rolling calendar window is concerned. The Airbnb program is unblocking dates a host has blocked. And what is totally reprehensible is Airbnb are punishing hosts who cancel bookings as a result of dates they had legitimately blocked and which the system has, behind the hosts back, unblocked. Superhosts, who strive to do so much good for Airbnb, are loosing their status through an Airbnb fault.....not their own!

Here is a typical example.....

Chris

Level 2

in

Lawrence Township, NJ

‎03-10-2016 07:02 AM

I have my listing set so it won't receive reservations more than 90 days out. Every day, it unblocks a day at that borderland. It seems like when they release the day internally because it's no longer more than 90 days out, that unblock overrides the dates I have manually blocked in the calendar.

Because I have limited availability, this pattern has become obvious to me.  If you only blocked dates occassionally, it would be a huge mystery.  I've brought the issue to the attention of AirBNB and they told me to clear my browser data. I've explained in more detail and am providing screenshots, but they haven't even been willing to tell me the status of my ticket."

There are dozens more just like this one!!! This fault….and that is exactly what it is….it’s a fault, has been reported to Airbnb staff on numerous occasions and the complaints just keep growing and growing! More reports come to this forum daily. Obviously nobody is taking the slightest notice.

With all due respect to the Community Centre moderators, I am not convinced that posting on ‘Host Voice’ does any good whatsoever. I have not seen a solitary change as a result of any topic raised through Host Voice.

I am going to send this post to brian.chesky@airbnb.com  and see what happens. I would like as many other hosts as possible to paste this post into an email and do the same thing.

This issue has been with us for more than a year, If we can’t get those responsible for sorting this mess out to take action, then we have to go further up the chain until someone does!!!

Cheers....Rob

[Robin4]

I have my listing set so it won't receive reservations more than 90 days out. Every day, it unblocks a day at that borderland. It seems like when they release the day internally because it's no longer more than 90 days out, that unblock overrides the dates I have manually blocked in the calendar.

Because I have limited availability, this pattern has become obvious to me.  If you only blocked dates occassionally, it would be a huge mystery.  I've brought the issue to the attention of AirBNB and they told me to clear my browser data. I've explained in more detail and am providing screenshots, but they haven't even been willing to tell me the status of my ticket."

There are dozens more just like this one!!! This fault….and that is exactly what it is….it’s a fault, has been reported to Airbnb staff on numerous occasions and the complaints just keep growing and growing! More reports come to this forum daily. Obviously nobody is taking the slightest notice.

[Kristine1]

In March our Calendar stopped syncing past one year. I've sent several requests, called several times and their only resolution is for me to manually update my calendar.  I hope you're able to get these issues resolved. Our guests book a year++ out 😞 and I'm suffering because I can't allow bookings past one year on Airbnb.... 

[Camilla71]

This just happened to me - i had purposefully blocked days out on my calendar because we have family to stay and somehow someone has managed to book during that time and now we have to host them otherwise we get penalised.

Has airbnb provided a response to anyone on this?

Thanks!

[Chris232]

This also happened to me last night, immediately contacted AirBnB whom cancelled the booking with no penalty to myself.

BUT

The booking had been made by a new person to airBnB and no doubt he has been left with the impression of a cowboy company.

[Helen258]

Hi Robin

Having just done a search within our community here to see if there were other hosts out there who have experienced strange 'unlocking' of random dates, I came across this thread.  I just listed my room, went in to take a look at it all and found the dates I had open up for bookings had changed, deleted or added to.  Message to Airbnb, this is totally unacceptable and you need to sort your software glitch, or whatever it is that is doing this.  I found the whole listing process tiresome too - sometimes I could add text to some categories, sometimes I couldn't, the editing systems seemed to change several times meaning I doubled up on info or couldn't add stuff.  All very frustrating.  Helen

[Robin4]

@Helen258

I am currently doing work at another Airbnb support level and just came across this post of yours as I was deleting some emails.

Airbnb are currently up-grading their server which is affecting certain aspects of the companies operation. What you are experiencing is general but will not last for long.

Although we haven't been given a timeframe by the Tech team they assure us that they are on top of this and it won't be long before the system is running normally again.

Considerable effort is being put into sorting out the rolling booking window issues, the main problem being, it is random which is giving the programmers a devil of a time trying to get on top of.

Thanks for your patience Helen it will be sorted soon!

Cheers.....Rob

[Karen629]

It's still happening and if what you say is true how are you going to rectify all the declines people have to do or letting a reqest expire if you are not around because you thought your calendar was protected by the blocks you put in place?  This could be THOUSANDS of listings affected.  Being a programmer myself, this rolling out the calendar blah blah blah is unacceptable.  Don't put out an inferior fix.

[Karen629]

Thanks for the explanation about how instant book might be at fault.  I have a current long term airbnb guest till Mid October.  Now, to since he is looking for permanent housing, and my listing is not an income source, just an occasional guest when we are here, I left the following weeks open for him but BLOCKED on my calendar.   I also thought, why not be progressive and try the instant book thing.

Next thing I knew, I had two requests, back to back to one night here in Charlottesville, that is the night of the UVA game apparently and very popular, on a date that was blocked on my calendar.  After the final one, I got these responses from Airbnb:

Desiree’s request expires at 3:40 PM EDT on Sep 29. If you don’t accept or decline, Oct 21-22 will remain blocked.
Update from Airbnb: Desiree no longer needs accommodations for these dates.

However Airbnb left the booking request on my calendar so I had to decline, and also explain the situation.

Meanwhile, even before I saw this thread, I got plenty mad and thought, crap, what if people start instant booking on blocked dates?  So I quickly cancelled that whole process.  Interestingly enough, Airbnb wanted to know why, so I let them know they can't be trusted with my calendar and so I can't let them hijack it with instant book.

I don't have to tell you that I would have no problem canceling my listing if it's going to be a continuing problem.  My time is way to valuable!

[Steve2743]

It seems to me that what's needed is 4 statuses for calendar dates, instead of the current 3. Available, booked, blocked by host, and outside booking window. The latter 3 would of course all look the same to guests, but it would eliminate the possibility of both the Airbnb server, and hosts having control of the same status. A simple if/then system in the automated system would solve it.

If status == ”outside booking window"

    Status="available"

Else

   Do Nothing

[Steve2743]

On a side note, I know that the Airbnb calendar can be synced with the calendar from other home sharing sites. Is it possible to also sync it with, say, a Google calendar that you edit manually? If so, it might be possible so mark the dates on your own personal calendar (with the right syntax), so that if your dates to become unblocked, they'd be automatically blocked again every few hours when the calendars sync. 

Now I'm curious. I might play around with it over the weekend. 

[Nurse0]

It is the end of 2018 and this is still happening to me.. Already informed them and it seems like they know of this issue but still couldn't find a way to fix it.