What have we become? Terrible treatment of guests and hosts

[Lorraine14]

I had a charming guest book for 38 nights. 

With monthly discounts the fee came to £60 per night. 

They stayed for 34 nights and extended another 11 nights. 

Air bnb removed the monthy discount from THE WHOLE booking including the nights already agreed and paid for and added the additional cost to their bill. 

It took me 2 days to get someone to understand that you cant alter a price once its agreed and paid for and the guest has already stayed for the nights. 

it was never fully understood. 

Imagine if you went to a hotel and stayed for a week at £100 per night, you wanted to stay an extra two nights and the hotel told you the price was £120 a night, you agree but they then charge you an extra £20 a night for all the nights you had already stayed. Madness!

People in customer service hanging up on me. people in customer servcie repeating the same thing over and over seeming incapable of understanding or listening.

trying to sort out this glitch for my guests was a terrible experience.

I have now received an email saying there is a problem taking the payment for the remaining nights and asking if i want to cancel my guests stay as Air BnB are not responsible for the payment if its not made. 

My guest his wife and their baby have been staying since March 24th and extended on the 11th of April to include 24th of April until 12th of May. 

Air BnB did not take the extra payment at the point of reservation. 

On the day the reservation extends Air BnB are now encountering what will likely be a clerical error but are suggestng that I throw the guests out because Air BnB are not responsible for collecting the payment.

Air BnB ARE responsible for collecting payments they are an intermediary between guests and hosts and collect a fee for providing this service.

I've been part of this community for ten years but honestly I dont recognise what it has become anymore.

[Candee0]

Ask your guests to cancel the extra add on days. Then send them a special offer with whatever the price you agreed on. I think that should work.

[Susan1028]

Great suggestion for rhe last 2 weeks @Candee0 but abb also altered the previous month's stay by increasing the price.

[Emilia42]

@Lorraine14, You are in full control of your pricing. When you altered the reservation why not just send the guest a special offer for 11 nights at the 60-euro per night or whatever you agreed upon. Don’t involve Airbnb CX unless your absolutely have too.

[Lorraine14]

I didn’t alter the reservation.

the guests did.

They rightly assumed that it would be a simple process to add some extra nights and had no idea it would result in so much confusion.  

This situation has been resolved after hours of unnecessary nonsense.

The reason why I posted is to question what the community has become.

Its very telling and sad that your advice is not to involve Air BnB unless necessary. 

[Ben551]

Hi @Lorraine14  - I can totally understand your frustration.  You and your guests did, what anyone would think, was the right thing - amending the existing booking to extend it for [x] days. 

What you encountered is a known bug that I have seen other hosts talk about before.  I first encountered it myself when a guest asked to stay for longer.  What I learned was that the Aribnb booking platform is incapable of 'adding extra days' to an existing booking, without fecking with all the pricing for days already past.  I even looked into whether the Airnbb system could handle an entirely 'new' booking for the extra nights, however I found this problematic because of the extra cleaning fee it applied. 

In the end, I had to do what @Emilia42  suggested and amend the booking myself, take control, then carefully adjust the pricing the Airbnb sytem tried to apply (retrospectively, as you described) until it came out at the correct daily rate. 

This process could, and should, be much simpler for hosts to manage...

[Susan1028]

@Ben87 

I've run into this as well and ended up doing the math to amend the pricing on all nights to debit the upcharges and extra cleaning fee.

This is a common happening in the lodging industry and airbnb needs to get hip with the business they're in.

[Emilia42]

@Lorraine14, I look at Airbnb solely as an online outlet to market my listings. Airbnb takes a small percentage from me and in return advertises my apartments to thousands and thousands of people. My apartments are my business. I try to handle as much as I possibly can on my own and with my guests. From all that I’ve read on this forum, this is my approach to staying sane.

[Ben551]

@Emilia42  I think yours is the approach to have 🙂

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Lorraine14 

The fact that when a guest tries to change dates for a long-term booking something goes wrong and the discount disappears which ends up looking like we are *trying to overcharge* the guest for trying to make a change has been a problem for at least the past 1~2 yrs. It's a very well-know glitch of the system and unfortunately Airbnb doesn't seem to care or plan to do anything about it. I always make a point of telling guests about this glitch and ask them to contact me first if they ever need to change their booking details. 

I host a lot of long term guests and many do end up having to adjust the check in/out date by a day or two because of changes to flight schedules. The approach @Emilia42 suggests is currently the easiest and best way (under the current circumstance) to change the dates on the booking and get the pricing right while avoiding the glitch. 

[Nicole-and-Gabrielle0]

Just out of curiosity, is this community monitored by Airbnb? Do they hear your voice? Are any of your expressions counted against your status?

[Ben551]

@Nicole-and-Gabrielle0  occaisionally we have actually had an Airbnb response to discussions on the forum... one discussion actually resulted in Airbnb management offering to host a conference call with myself and Sarah... but it is rare.  I expect the community managers of the forum flag relevant discussions upwards when necessary. 

Take the recent discussion in the Airbnb updates section for example -

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Airbnb-Updates/Making-reviews-more-fair-for-hosts/ba-p/958608

There has been an absolute 'flood' of 'likes' on that thread, to the point where I'd say it has gone close to viral.  I guarantee that amount of 'likes' on some community penned responses has earned some attention from Airbnb...

[Stephanie]

@Nicole-and-Gabrielle0 @Ben551 

Glad to have you back, Ben! All the community managers here read every single post here on the community, a regularly feedback hosts and guests concerns. The more information about what contributors want to see changed, the more equipped we are when taking it back to Airbnb. As you rightly pointed out, @Ben551 , the thread mentioned is garnering a lot of attention since it was included in the Airbnb newsletter. This action was to do exactly that - drive more traffic to it so we can could garner a wealth of feedback on this feature to digest and deliver to Airbnb. 

Many thanks,

Stephanie

[Ben551]

Hey that’s awesome, thanks @Stephanie - although just a slight correction...

The flood of attention and likes has been for well over a week. Trust me, I noticed when my feed filled up with 600 “likes”. The newsletter however was only posted out yesterday.  I was expecting the newsletter to make some sort of comment on the viral flood on host feedback... especially since the posts were from so long ago. April newsletter mention for a post in the first week in March...

[Stephanie]

Hi @Ben551 , the Newsletter goes out on and around the 15th of each month 😛 It was only published in the community yesterday.

Also, we have had a massive influx of new users following the announcment of new Super Hosts (granted you have an eagle eye but I have the benefit back end analytics.)