Tag Archives: airbnb glitch

Airbnb Admits There’s an Unfixed Bug on their Site

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When we first starting hosting a year ago, I noticed that when you put the name of our city into the Airbnb search engine, you get zero results, even though there are dozens of hosts in our city. When I complained about this, I was told there was nothing that Airbnb can do, that they rely on Google Maps.

Fast forward several months. I started looking into Google Maps, and noticed that the map is correct for our city. Airbnb put up the wrong map. The one they put up was for a city called Capacabana instead of Copacabana. Armed with this new information, I was sure Airbnb would finally listen to me.

Each time I wrote to Airbnb customer service, they acknowledged the error. They said they had reported this to the tech department and then closed the case. I finally got furious and insisted they not close my case until this was fixed and I got this response: “I apologize for my previous colleagues, but if you have any other inquires you can message me here and I will personally answer you. I won’t close this ticket until the issue has been fixed. I give you my word.”

The next message I received: “This support case is closed. Still need help? Visit our Help Center.”

I’m sorry but what is wrong with Airbnb? Not only do they not care, now they lie to me. A customer service representative gives me his word that he won’t close the case and several days later, case closed, with no resolution. You can imagine how much fun it is finding guests when your city doesn’t even exist on the Airbnb search engine. I have been complaining about this for a year and Airbnb does nothing to fix it.

“Smart Pricing” is a Zombie Algorithm from Hell

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As new Airbnb hosts, we set our base price at $50 a night – low for our area – and chose “smart pricing” and “instant booking” so that the algorithm would make our listing more visible in searches. We got lots of bookings right away and quickly became “superhosts.”

However, Airbnb’s “smart pricing” tool never respected our minimum, listing the guest suite for as low as $35. We called Airbnb for help. The Airbnb representative suggested switching off “smart pricing” and manually resetting our prices at $50 on weekdays, $65 on weekends. That was on September 30th.

That night at midnight, every open date on our calendar reverted to a sub-minimum price. Every time we’ve tried to fix it since then, the algorithm overrides our prices while we’re asleep. We have worked with five customer service representatives and counting by chat and by phone so far, and no one can fix it. Each has insisted on manually resetting our prices for us, or having us do so, with the same result.

For 30 days now, the correct prices have disappeared again each morning and our listing has been advertised at far below what it’s worth – an exhausting, stressful waste of time. None of these customer service representatives has been able to explain why “smart pricing” keeps posting our place at sub-minimum rates, rather than our desired $50 or more. They all promised to try to find answers, but no one seems to have access to anyone with the authority to resolve it.

We now have a guest coming at a rate of $35. We are asking Airbnb to either cancel this reservation with a full refund to the guest, or pay us the difference. One said she would try to get Airbnb to pay us the $15. We appreciate that. It’s not much, but it’s the principle at stake. When we’re cleaning the toilet between each guest, we do want that money.

I’ve told them by phone and text messages (all saved, along with images of the bad prices on our calendar) that we’ll be demanding the difference from Airbnb for any future reservations made at below-minimum prices. One representative also asked if we would switch off “instant booking” to avoid getting more reservations at sub-minimum rates, but I pointed out that our listing is already harder to find with the “smart pricing” button switched off, so removing both that and “instant booking” could send our listing in some sort of oblivion, and Airbnb could then simply forget about resolving our problem.

She did relay that a software developer insisted this isn’t a bug. The developer apparently wrote that once ‘smart pricing’ is applied, those prices will remain after “smart pricing” is switched off, for every date initially affected by the pricing tool, until those dates are history. Apparently, each time we try to make a pricing change, this outcome is extended in time, into the future.

They also acknowledged, finally, that this should be bumped up to a “senior” developer. For more than a month now, customer reps have asked for our patience while Airbnb’s software denies us the right to either set our own prices, or use a dynamic pricing tool that doesn’t go below our minimum price. This is a major bug that contradicts what Airbnb promises its hosts. We are running out of patience. “Smart pricing” truly is the zombie algorithm from hell.

You Aren’t Going to Believe This One About Airbnb

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So, someone else committed fraud against Airbnb, and they have apparently decided to make me pay for it, although they admitted to me that they know it wasn’t me. I had to stay a couple of days in Boston last month, so I thought I would try Airbnb since Boston is expensive. I had never used Airbnb before.

The day after my visa was charged for the stay, an additional charge for $471.01 to Airbnb appeared on my bank statement. Horrified, I contacted Airbnb and my bank and both opened investigations. Thankfully, both entities agreed that the charges were in fact unauthorized, and I got a nice email from Airbnb on September 17th, notifying me that the entire amount had been refunded to my account.

I went to Boston and had a very nice stay in a lovely brownstone near Harvard Medical School. The host and I both gave each other positive reviews. I figured I would give Airbnb another chance.

This month, I decided to rent an Airbnb in Austin. However, when I went to log in to my account, I was blocked. Even more shocking, I got a pop-up window from Airbnb saying that there were “security issues” associated with my account and that I needed to “upload a government-issued photo ID” in order to access it. What?

I called Airbnb and the rep said that there were actually “technical issues” associated with my account rather than “security Issues” and that Airbnb would get back to me to resolve them, but she wasn’t sure when. I told her I needed a room next week and availability was low, but she still would not give me a timeframe for a response from Airbnb. I demanded to speak to a supervisor, who told me the exact same thing. They both sounded like they were lying, to be honest. Also, why would the website demand I upload a photo ID over a technical issue, anyway?

It looks like somehow I am being punished for what whoever hacked my card did, since Airbnb’s own records indicate that they cleared me, at least according to the email they sent me. I am a 56-year-old woman who has never had a parking ticket, and they are talking to me like I am some criminal. They can’t seem to tell me exactly why. I’m also  locked out of my Airbnb account. This is near unbelievable.

I would love to attach documentation to support all this, but of course it has my personal information on it. I also think it is interesting that my card got hacked after I gave the number to Airbnb, and only after that. Ah, the irony of the fact that whoever hacked my card may have gotten the number from them, on top of everything else.

SOS: Help Airbnb Understand my Birth Year isn’t 2020

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Yesterday I was sent an email from Airbnb in the evening requesting some ID details to be updated. I did this immediately including my birthdate and a verified photo of my driver’s license. You’d have thought it would be easy, but not so. Within 30 seconds 20 emails arrived in my inbox one after another, each one notifying me that a booking had been cancelled. All 20 bookings I had in total.

Some technical glitch at Airbnb had registered my birthdate as 2020. According to Airbnb I was underage (and somehow not even born yet) so without reaching out to me as a long-time Superhost Airbnb automatically cancelled every single booking and refunded every single payment to every single guest.

I called Airbnb immediately only to be put on hold for 20 minutes by one of their operators. I called back and the call was disconnected. There was no return call. I called back again each time explaining over and over the urgency of the situation. By this stage I had frantic guests texting and calling me asking why their booking had been cancelled. One guest rang Airbnb herself only to be told that the problem was at my end because I had cancelled her booking?

It is now the next day and I am still waiting for all bookings to be reinstated. I now have guests who have paid for their original booking confirming that they wish their booking to be reinstated only to be double charged. They have received no refund for the cancelled booking. One guest is out of pocket more than $7,000. I only get to talk to Airbnb at their offshore Philippines call centre, which is useless.

Double Charged, No Help from Customer Service

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I made an Airbnb reservation and had trouble booking with my credit card information. I kept trying until my card was accepted and the reservation was confirmed. I checked my credit card and saw that the charge went through. My trip was confirmed. I went on my trip and all was well. About ten days after my trip, I got a notification that Airbnb had charged my credit card again for the same reservation number and the same dollar amount that I paid before the trip. I contacted Airbnb and they tried to blame my financial institution. Then I explained that the reservation was paid in advance. I also submitted copies of the charge from my actual credit card statement. They still claim that the charge did not go through. I was then dismissed by Airbnb and told that they would no longer talk to me. Thankfully my credit card allowed me to dispute the second charge and I got my money back through my credit card company. Airbnb did nothing to resolve this.

Airbnb Screwed up and Charged me Twice

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I had been scheduled to go on vacation and had booked my flight. I went on the Airbnb app to book a four-night accommodation one day before my vacation. As I was making the booking and making payment, the app screwed up and rejected my booking. I then received an email from Airbnb stating that my booking had been cancelled and they were processing my refund. It stated that refund may take up to 14 days.

They had charged my credit card twice and cancelled the booking. Now I have to wait for up to 14 days for twice the amount for my refund. Now I’m short on money to use for my trip the next day as they had charged twice my planned four-night accommodation amount and processed a refund.

I called Airbnb. The call was almost an hour long and most of the time I was put on hold. I was calling from Malaysia and thus paying for the call. A manager was supposed to return my call within two hours but no call came.

It was a grave mistake on my part to book my accommodation through Airbnb. It has now screwed up my vacation as my money has been charged twice and its in the process of a refund that will take almost two weeks. Airbnb screwed up my vacation and they have no balls to take responsibility for their screw up. I believe there are many others who have the same experience that I have just gone through. Screw Airbnb.

Completely Cut off from Emailing Long-Term Guest

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Imagine my delight when I had a request for a full-month’s stay at my guest cottage in November. November isn’t exactly tourist season in inland New Jersey, so a month’s stay delivers Christmas presents. I replied to the inquiry; the woman wanted to come by to see the place before booking. She sent another inquiry, saying she was surprised that I hadn’t replied because my profile says I reply within an hour.

I replied. She sent another inquiry, puzzled that I hadn’t replied. I’m doing all of this on my cell phone while at the shore. Finally, I called customer service (thank you so much for posting the number – I couldn’t find it anywhere on the site). The woman I spoke with was very nice, could see that none of my responses had gone through, and had no explanation. She said that it appeared that she could send a message for me, so I asked her to let the prospective guest know that I couldn’t communicate with her through the system, so she could call me on my cell.

I provided my cell number and waited. Nothing. Bupkis. There were three more messages from the potential guest yesterday, and one this morning saying that they were really interested. I still can’t communicate with her. Now I’m going another round with customer service to see if they can make this happen. It’s over $3,000 to me that may be making its way south.

Problems with Airbnb Platform, then Customer Service

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I had an issue with the Airbnb app so this is a horror story about that. I was trying to book one night somewhere I was passing though and wanted to check out the outdoor scenery for a day. The app kept saying error every time I’d click to the end to book. I found out apparently two of the places were booked, but I wasn’t made aware they had even been booked.

I didn’t stay at either of them; I ended up at a hotel instead. Now I am being charged for two places on the same night, neither of which I ever visited. Airbnb is being monumentally unhelpful. The first time I called, the “customer service” lady hung up on me while I was talking. Then I talked to some guy that supposedly opened a case and I could message him on the site. I messaged and got no response in over twelve hours.

I just called again a few minutes ago and got a dial tone then an auto hang up. I really feel like this is a legitimate scam and not just a tech problem. If this isn’t a scam like I suspect I hope their whole customer service department gets fired and replaced.

New Hosts Beware: Airbnb will Change your Listing

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We are writing this in the hopes of saving other new Airbnb hosts the trouble we have had in our first two weeks as hosts. So, far we have encountered two major problems – three if you count Airbnb’s arrogant, incompetent, inadequate, and totally unacceptable response to our problems. I hope you keep reading because this stuff is actually hard to believe and you need to know it if you are going to try to become an Airbnb host.

In our first week as hosts, we encountered two major problems. One was disappointing. The other amounts to fraudulent representation and downright theft in my opinion. I’ll try to make this as concise and informative as possible.

Creating a listing is not hard. It is tedious. The Airbnb help system does little more than guide you through the screens. No insights, no explanations and absolutely no flexibility. But, with the assistance of the many hosts who posted their experiences in the Airbnb online community and other Airbnb informational websites, we got our listing up and running.

Our listing is a private home. We have two private (each with its own separate entrance) guest suites available. We set the price for our listing at $125, thinking we would be renting each suite for $125. We made sure to disable Smart Pricing and Instant Booking. We got our first booking at our set price of $125 minus a 20% discount as our first guests. The disappointment was learning from our first guests that although we made it clear in the text of our listing that we had two separate guests, that was not the way Airbnb presented our property.

Airbnb applied the pricing we set to the entire listing – i.e. “both rooms” not “each room” – resulting in us getting half as much revenue per room as we wanted and thought we were going to get. Furthermore, we learned when one room was booked, Airbnb marked that date as unavailable on the booking calendar, so no one could even see we had an additional room available. We were surprised by this (and monetarily penalized… keep reading).

After reading through the community forums we discovered we were just one of hundreds of Airbnb hosts who were both surprised and disappointed to learn this. We found out that if we wanted to rent each guest suite separately we had to list them separately. This cost us money with our very first booking. If our first guests would have known they could have booked our other guest suite, they would have booked another family member to stay with us.

We learned our lesson. We will list both guest suites separately, but why did we have to find this out the hard way? Nowhere is this made clear in Airbnb’s guidelines for setting up and creating a listing. We have noted hundreds of complaints going back more than five years about this particular issue but Airbnb has done absolutely nothing to address it. In fact, Airbnb appears to deliberately obscure this critical fact in its listing guidelines. That’s bad. What happened next is far worse.

Within a week we got our second booking, which we accepted. Big mistake. To all hosts: never accept a booking until you have examined every little detail. Here’s why: we had set our price. We made sure we turned off Instant Booking and Smart Pricing. We weren’t looking for bargain hunters. We were looking for folks who wanted a special experience in a magical place and were okay with paying a little more to get it. Airbnb cares nothing for that. If they see a new listing that isn’t getting enough action (making Airbnb money) then they will take action and arbitrarily lower the price without even notifying the host. That’s right – they will cut your listing price without even telling you. Little did we know Airbnb had lowered our price from $125 to to $60 for both rooms, i.e. $30 per room/per night.

Now, we are stuck with a booking that is paying us less than our set price, because as a new host we don’t want to cancel the booking. That’s not even enough to cover our costs. We reset the listing price, using the Airbnb hosting interface, to no avail. The host interface reports the price we set, but the listing continues to show on Airbnb’s website at much lower prices that on average are less than half of the price we set.

We thought this must be a glitch in their software. We spent hours on the phone with Airbnb support, who were absolutely no help. They could neither fix the problem nor explain why it occurred. They said they had to escalate it to “IT”. The bottom line is that Airbnb’s customer support people are essentially script readers. If the problem is not covered in their script then they are useless.

This problem is now a week old. Calling back Airbnb tech support is a waste of time. They just say the incident has been reported to IT and there is nothing they can do. They can supply no time frame as to when or if the problem will ever be resolved. Are you kidding me? I’ve worked in high tech for almost 40 years. I’ve run customer service departments and development projects. I worked in development at Microsoft. This is the most incompetent, arrogant, and totally inept customer service I’ve ever encountered. Microsoft’s customer support (of which I’m not a fan) is a 10 by comparison. Airbnb’s support doesn’t move the needle on the scale. It’s worse than nothing. You think it can’t get any worse? Nope. It can. Keep on reading…

As I said, this problem is now a week old. In that week, we’ve been doing lots more reading and research on Airbnb. We’ve read hundreds of online posts from other frustrated hosts. This is what we’ve learned: this pricing issue is apparently not a glitch but corporate policy. Many, many other hosts have had the same experience. Clearly, what’s happening is that Airbnb is using an algorithm (an automated computer program) to set whatever arbitrary price they think will net the most bookings (meaning money for Airbnb), totally ignoring, and in fact actively circumventing, the wishes of the owners of the property.

In my opinion this is fraudulent misrepresentation and essentially amounts to Airbnb stealing our money. We aren’t looking for bargain hunters. We have a special and beautiful property that is worth every penny and more. All we want Airbnb to to do is turn off their pricing algorithm and leave our pricing alone. That’s where we are now. We have had to snooze (temporarily disable) our listing because we don’t want any more bookings at the prices Airbnb is setting.

Airbnb is literally stealing money from us and apparently brazenly plans to continue doing so to us and others if we allow them to. Airbnb is the most unresponsive and arrogant company with the worst customer service of any company we have every dealt with. They are a multi-billion dollar company. They need to be held accountable. They need to support the folks that are making them money not abuse them.

P.S. This is just the tip of the iceberg. While researching our problems online we read of many others, including those from hosts who have had their listings suddenly disappear and their bookings drop to zero. Beware!

Airbnb Refund Ripoff from Wrong Calendar Dates

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I booked a duplex through Airbnb and the money was paid up front. As it turned out, there was a mix up with the dates reserved and I had to cancel said reservation. We showed up to the duplex for the dates of our vacation but the duplex was full. It turns out my reservation was made for the following week. This was not right. We were six hours away from home and had been there waiting to check in for nearly 12 hours. Begin panic mode.

The host agreed to put us into another condo for the night but that’s all he had. Not the greatest but… okay. We were charged another small fee for that. Then we were left to find somewhere completely different, costing us double the initial amount of the trip altogether.

Back to Airbnb… I cancelled the wrong reservation immediately which was exactly seven days ahead of the reservation date (standard timing for refunds). Here’s the kicker: I then tried to get back on Airbnb to find another place to stay, thinking I was to blame for the mishap. However, when I was trying to select the dates needed on the calendar, it was plugging in the same days selected, only it was for the following week. That’s what happened – a website error.

I notified my host and Airbnb immediately. Still, I got the runaround. If I hadn’t been so stressed out and upset from the whole ordeal, I’d have thought to record what I was seeing in order to send it and prove to them. When asked to do an audit, ‘they don’t see anything.’ If I had any more money, I’d sue their ass for illegal practices and emotional distress. All they did was reserve a spot on a calendar and take my money. That’s it. Besides making my life hell the last two weeks. I don’t know how they sleep at night.