availability settings - minimum stay - additional requirements - error?

[Rowena29]

Hello everyone,

Reasonably new to hosting, but spend a lot of time reading, researching, tweaking to be the best host I can be.

However I seem to have encountered a significant number of airbnb glitches where I have had to contact airbnb support and they have had to refer to the IT team.

For example In just 3 months of being live, I have had 2 bookings come through on dates that were blacked out on my calendar  Airbnb acknowldged it was a glitch and fixed, both times,  but very time consuming. (I also had my IB  wrongly deactivated for nearly 3 weeks over peak season - another "known issue")

Now another variation on a theme. I'm in Australia and we have a long weekend coming up 25 - 28 Jan.

. I had a 3 night minimum for 25 - 28 January. ( in availability settings =trip length - additional requirements)

I KNOW  it was working because I changed to travelling mode and tried to book the dates for 2 nights and I was blocked ( i have learnt the very hard way to double check everything - saves often don't save I have discovered!)

I now have a booking for 26 - 28 for TWO nights.  ( my regular or "normal" minimum stay length) when I go back into my availability settings, the additional requirement for these date has disppeared.

If I hadn't specifically tested it I would begin to doubt myself, but I know it was definitely set to 3 nights minimum.

Has this happened to anyone else?   I have contacted customer support - so far silence. No doubt it will yet again be referred to the IT support team.

I seem to be spending an awful lot of time contacting customer support about IT "know issues". I am getting a little disheartened. I am trying  hard to be efficient and professional and  keep encountering errors. (Airbnb customer support acknowledge the errors are at their end). 

anyone have any advice/words of wisdom?

[Emiel1]

@Rowena29,

It is a known secret such things happens and when Airbnb says they will "refer it to the IT team", it is end of story for the host. Better use "rule sets" from the multicalender (If you have it available) to achieve the same goal. Advantage is also you can see on the calender that special options are set, so also easier to recognoze when something suddenly has disappeared.

Best regards,

Emiel.

[Rowena29]

HI @Emiel0,

thanks for your response. It's been 5 hours and I haven't had a response from customer support yet (  the longest by far I have ever had to wait - despite after  been told when achieveing  superhost I'd get priortity customer support - so haven't "officially"  been told it will be referred to  IT  as an issue, but I'm pretty certain that will be the response. 

I haven't heard of the multicalender - and a search  seems to suggest it's only available for hosts with multiple listings - I only have the one - and after these constant problems can't say I'm tempted to want to list anything else!

Looks like I am at the mercy of the vagaries of the airbnb computer gremlins and the no support customer support.

Ho Hum.

thanks for responding. It can all be rather isolating.

Regards

Rowena

[Robin4]

@Rowena29

Rowena, I could say that you have had an unfortunate run, but to have three issues like this in as many months does seem to suggest that this has something to do with your settings.

In 3 years of hosting and more than 250 Airbnb stays, I have never had any of the situations that you have experienced. In the early days we used to have to ring Airbnb to reset out phone notifications when we stopped getting phone alerts but that hasn't happened for the past couple of years. I have found the platform to run very reliably.

It also strikes me as unnusual that you are not receiving prompt attention as a Superhost. Contactability and help is one of the real bonuses of being a Superhost here in Oz.

In a way it is unfortunate that Airbnb do not allow a temporary password which hosts could grant to other hosts to have access to their accounts to sort out these issues. Many simply problems can be fixed with a fresh set of eyes, and it would save an enormous amount of CS resources if we as a community could sort out each others problems. The access I am talking about would not allow sensitive material such as banking details or private personal information, just those sections of the listing that govern usability to be seen! It would be a sanitised access.

I worked in the email arm of support for almost a year and as a group we were able to satisfy 92-96%  of customer inquiries without having to pass them on to the company. But it is very hard to try and help when we don't have access to the information required to help!

All the best Rowena, I hope they can sort this out for you. I only post this to assure you that problems like this are not the norm and many of us have never experienced them, so try not to lose to much confidence in the company!  

Cheers......Rob

[Ann72]

@Rowena29, have you contacted support via Twitter?  I get the fastest response that way.  Message @Airbnbhelp on Twitter if you have an account.

[Rowena29]

Hi@Ann, no I don't have twitter and actually I've given up.  I will just accept the booking and hope the karma Gods are kind to me. The guest has excellent reviews and leaves excellent reviews, so that's something.