When you got travel credits, you got higher service fee, in my case

[Jelena62]

Hello,

friend and I want to book apartment, and when she go to request to book she got this calculation, notice her service fee:

And when I go to same apartment, with my 22e travel credit, I got higher Service fee:

Needless to say, we are booking from the same city.

This is pretty sneaky.

Who do I talk to?

Thanx in advance,

Jelena [Surname hidden]

[Robin4]

@Jelena62

Hello Jelena, I have only just caught up with this thread of yours and, I can see what you are saying but, I cannot comprehend that this could happen. There is something that you have not mentioned here which must be affecting this and my feeling is, you have a small oustanding debt on your account which the system is applying through the service fee.

You say it does not happen from your friends account,  just from yours and that tends to back up what I am saying!

The screenshots I would like to see from you is, for the same listing.......

A/. The screenshot at the check-out page giving a breakdown of charges and the total required.

B/. Then another screenshot at the same point when you apply the credit/coupon .

If you do that then we could all establish if the credit charge varies when you try to apply the credit!

For the rest of us this is very worying and we would all like a difinitive answer here Jelena.

I have just recently used a coupon credit to offset the cost of a stay of ours and the credit charge remained the same regardless of whether I used my credit  coupon or not, and I have illustrated this with a screenshot in another thread.....

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/What-does-being-a-superhost-do-for-a-host/m-p/811917#M19...

Jelena if you are still following this thread of yours can you please keep us updated.

Cheers......Rob

[Jelena62]

Hello Rob,

I don't have any debt (is that even possible to happen? they take my money from my credit card), and I cannot choose to aply or not to apply coupon. It applies automaticly.

Earlier in thread, I have post listing with breakdown of charges, and that's it, I don't have more.

But, I can tell you what was the customer service answer. And that is what made me anger even more.

First guy, that took this case, misteriosly disappear, and than another girl jumped in, offcourse, they left me waiting every time for few days, I lost the apartment that I want to book, and another one, and another one... And the only answer that they gave me, with we understand your feelings, was: "However, the service fee is generated by the system and it cannot be controlled manually and it is not affected whether you have a travel credit or not."

And then I ask why me fee went from 22e to 21, 67. I know that this amount is ridiculously small, but it's not right to do that, to grab a little from this and that. And there is pretty big amount of us, customers.

And after that I got this answer:

Airbnb Support

7:10 AM

Hi Jelena,I hope everything is going smoothly. Apologies for the delay in response as I was out of office. I'm sorry to hear if your case has not been addressed but again, the service fee is system generated, and we are unable to control it. Also, the amount of your credit is 21.67Euros which you may use on your next home reservation.

As I have explained everything and we have advised you the reason behind service fee, I will now respectfully disengage from this concern and we will not be responding with regards to this topic moving forward. This will be my last message and again, I thank you for your time.

Thank you again for being a valued member in the community!

Best,

I officaly become some crazy person :))

And the reason I insist on that 0.33e (in one post to them, if you can even call it insisting), is that I notice with my previous bookings and abnb currency converting, how much I'm losing. We travel a lot, and sometime for two weeks we change 4 to 6 apartments, and every time we have lost money trough currency converting, once around 33e. They did not help me with that, google did, now I know what is a catch. And that was the moment that I realize that something is wrong. And the thing is, abnb is all about customers, and if so, they have to be transparent as much as we insist, and be super fair.

This matter is above some Erving or Coleen from customer service, it is system generated, and I can only make conclusion that their system is working for them much more that it works for me. It is programed that way.

But I always can try, because it is not ok.

[Jelena62]

And yes, they gave me back my 0,33e :)) 

[Lisa723]

@Jelena62 @Robin4 @Mika8 @Elena87 @Ana1136

Airbnb is totally non-transparent about its variable service fees, and goes out of its way to avoid showing guest service fees to hosts and vice versa, or give straight answers about how the fees are calculated. One of the reasons I don't trust Airbnb's pricing suggestions is that it has a strong incentive to persuade hosts to lower their price, which then enables Airbnb to increase its own service fee accordingly, offering the guest the same price but taking a bigger cut.

Nobody should be surprised by this "sneakiness" -- it's built into the system.

[Robin4]

@Lisa723

Hi Lisa, Yeah to a point you are right but, I am yet to see a company who makes a big deal about their service fees, and somewhere along the sales process they seem to creep in. I don't think Airbnb are that different to others. In fact they will actually show the service fees in a randon search just as those screenshots of Jelena's show.

What I feel is happening here Lisa, a random search by @Jelena62 or her friend is showing the information that any random searcher will get. Once Jelena inserts her travel credit details, the system verifies her status and knows it is specifically her who is searching and applies a credit charge that will take into account any outstanding transaction amounts on her account! 

Look,  its the same for me with CS! If I have a problem and call Airbnb from a number not on file with Airbnb, I will get the regular 'welcome to Aibnb......'and get put through the automated dailpad gateway and parcelled into a phone queue to wait my turn to talk to someone!

If however I ring from my Airbnb registered phone the system, after recognising the calling number answers me immediately with 'Welcome Superhost, someone will be with you shortly" and with 30 seconds I am good to go with a CS agent somewhere and my information is already on their screen when they answer. I have alerted the system that it is specifically me who is calling!

Lisa, service fees for hosts are determined by their cancellation policy but are fixed within a 3%-5% range. Service fees to guests are more variable and do float through a wider percentage, dependant on a number of factors but I think you would find every government trade practices commission would be down on Airbnb like a ton of hot bricks, if it could be proved that Airbnb were doing this and Airbnb would know that. Goverment consumer protection departments are very sensitive to store/company credits and offers, deferred transactions, and I can assure you, this one would not go unchallenged for long!

Cheers.....Rob

[Lisa723]

@Robin4 I also list on vrbo, booking.com, and tripadvisor. Their fee structures are transparent. Airbnb's is not. I've never heard of a guest somehow owing money and that being invisibly factored in to service fees on a future reservation. If I understand you correctly, that idea makes no sense at all to me. I do congratulate you on your confidence in government consumer protection departments... 

[Robin4]

@Lisa723

Hey, I am no doubt wrong Lisa...I sort of hope the times I have been right throughout my life outnumber the times I have been wrong ;-))

I did however come across a case in support where the guest owed an amount of money which Airbnb could not access at the time. The guest closed their payment method but did not close their account. 

Some considerable amount of time later...and if memory serves me it was more than a year, the guest wanted to book and the system had still kept track of the fact he had an outstanding obligation. I can't remember what the wash up of that case was..... it was not one I was personally involved in but, it did strike me at the time, that this was a 'fairness' that I had not seen in Airbnb before!

Hosts will automatically get any financial obligation taken from their future payouts, no ifs no buts.....but guests seemed to get away scott free. I always thought that unfair and here I was faced with the evidence that perhaps the guest does not always get to screw the host and move on to the next leaving a checkered past behind!

As I said Lisa, I may well be wrong and I am simply assuming that is what is happening here. 

To reduce the value of a coupon to one user and not another just doesn't seem logical.

Cheers......Rob 

[Lisa723]

@Robin4 I think the point was that one user had a coupon and the other did not, and the one with the coupon saw a higher service fee-- substantially reducing the value of the coupon.

[Robin4]

@Lisa723

Yeah but both would have seen the same amount until the point where the coupon was revealed. There was something specific about that coupon that made the difference to the service fee rate.   Not the inclusion of coupons in general, just that one!

It hasn't to me or any of the other host/guests that I have talked to this morning. I have run it past a few of the local Airbnb hosts I know this morning and their experiences have been the same as mine, you get to the check-out box, you are faced with the figure on the listing booking page, the regular service fee and a sub-total. Next to it in the box for 'Insert Coupon code' as soon as I put in my code the amount of the sub-total reduces by the amount of the coupon...the service fee does not vary.

Lisa I really would like to get to the bottom of this because, if it is happening the way Jelena has described and there is nothing specific with her account then that is shamefull and needs to be exposed and brought before the company executives in this little regular televised chat thing they seem to have become so comfortable with every now and then!

I would love to see Mr Chesky squirm over a directly put question like that....."Brian, can you please explain why the value of a credit given to a user by Airbnb for a valued contribution to the company is stripped of its value by an equivelant rise in service fees when it is used? Can you please tell us, not just if it happens, but how widespread this anomoly might be?"

Lisa, I think I would actually watch one of those Q&A's to see how something like that would be handled!!!!

Cheers......Rob

[Sarah977]

@Robin4  And how about, "Brian, can you please explain why currency conversion fees where charged on a booking where the host was a US resident, the guest a US resident, both with payment and payout methods in the US in US dollars, but the listing in Mexico, when no money ever needed to be converted?".

[Robin4]

@Sarah977

Yeah Sarah, totally shameless!

I did an Airbnb stay last year....fortunately it did not happen this year because, I know a lot more about the platform than I did last year and I would have raised Cane, if the same thing happened this year.

Last year I just accepted it as being something that happens when, as a 'foreigner', you deal with an American company!

But Sarah, I am an Australian citizen, resident in Australia, I have an Airbnb profile for my Australian listing. Both my payout preference and my payout method are in Australian dollars and my prefered currency as stated in my account is...... AU.

I booked  through Airbnb an Australian listing that was less than 80 Kms from my home and listing.

The transaction was processed in US dollars and was subject to currency conversion fees.

This is wrong and deceptive on every level! If the comapny states publicly that it will process all transactions in $US, then fine...... we know where we stand and either accept it or go somewhere else....simple. But they publicly state they will process transactions in supported currencies!!!

Article 95 of Airbnb rules state.....

"When you enter your payment information, you can choose to pay with one of the various currencies we support. You can also change your default currency at any time by going to Profile and then Settings, or by changing currency on one of the pages where the currency selector is available. Depending on your selected payment method, there may be some currencies that will not be available."

AU is an accepted currency, so Airbnb are breaking their own rules by processing a transaction in an accepted currency and then applying US currency conversion fees to it!

As I said Sarah.....shameless...absolutely shameless!

I do on most occasions support and defend Airbnb but, I will not defend them when they are demonstrably wrong...and this is one such example!!

Cheers......Rob

[Sarah977]

@Robin4    In the case I mentioned, it was even more egregious, as the host dealt in US$, the guest also, so the company couldn't even claim that they had to convert anything because they're a US based company. This case was told to me by a guest who it had happened to the year before in another listing in my town. I happen to know the other host, who's a lovely person. Both the guest and the host had long back and forths with Airbnb, who wouldn't back down, claiming they had to charge a conversion fee because the listing wasn't in the US.

Unless the CFO is as dense about money matters as the tech team is about creating and maintaining a user-friendly site, or many CS people are about human nature and interaction, which I seriously doubt, the notion or assertion that Airbnb takes a guest payment made in Euros, converts it to US dollars to pay out the US host, then takes US-based dollars and converts them to Euros to pay out European hosts, is ludicrous. It would be financial idiocy. You can safely bet your great-grandmother's wedding ring that Airbnb maintains accounts in all currencies they accept. Aussie guests' $ goes into their Australian dollar account, no matter where in the world the Aussie has booked and Aussie hosts are paid out of that account no matter where their guests come from. Constantly changing currencies is a money-loser.

The only reason I could believe that they exchange currencies, has nothing to do with host or guest payments- if they're smart, their financial wizards are playing the money markets with all those wads of different currencies.

[Cormac0]

@Jelena62

what you're essentially pointing out is that the credit you received is been taking back by a higher service charge. 

So, these Airbnb credits would appear to be a scam!

[Jelena62]

Not the whole amount, part of it, the service fee is slightly higher then it is when you don't have credit. and then when you click to book apartment, credit itself goes dowon slightly more.

It looks like that abnb found the way to make gift less expensive for itself.