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Has anybody else noticed that there seems to be huge margin built into AirBnB quote and subsequent payout when you are listing in a foreign currency and payout in another? We list a property in Europe, but I listed the prices in GBP as we received a lot of UK visitors. The payouts I was receiving seem to have a rather large margin of error built into them when they are converted to Canadian dollars… circa 20%!
When I contacted AirBnB about it the problem guy was rather unhelpful about it, and didn’t like the fact the I was being quite pointed about this 20% margin in currency exchange that seemed to favour AirBnB. He was insisting it was my banks issue and all sorts of silly things that had nothing to do with the conversation that AirBnB was doing and the subsequent payout.
He did provide one useful piece of advice to list my property in the currency I will be paid in no matter the location. I guess this limits the amount of conversion sorcery that is done in the background by AirBnB, and theoretically the amount I am shorted on the final payment.
We are in Croatia. Our payout is in euros. Till 15 days ago exchange rate was around 7.45 which is regular. But last 3 payouts are around 7.23 which is very low. Also airbnb help center was pretty unhelpfull. We are trying to figure out why is this so. Did you get any logical explanation for your problem?
Thank you very much
@Barcelona76 we have a flat in Barcelona but sometimes direct payouts to our US bank account. We are listed in EUR and then the USD conversion is done at payout. Our last payout, where I had fund sent to the US instead of Spain, happened yesterday. The reservation was for 940 Euro and Air BNB sent a payout of 1027 USD, which according to Google’s exchange rate means ABB kept .70USD for themselves. I have never been paid out in anything but ‘whole dollar’ amounts, so I’m not sure payouts ever get granular enough to account for the ‘loose change’. The rate ABB used was .915Euro=1 USD and the proper exchange rate was .916 Euro= 1 USD.
First, the call center is really poor at answering this question.
Second, I was blamed that it was my bank problem at first and then later, from the call center, it was confirmed that the problem is the exchange rate from my customer or their bank.
Third, the PAYout from AirBnB matches my bank deposit to the cent. However, when I use xe dot com, the payout doesn’t match my original statement from AirBnB.
Anyone have a remedy to fix this? I feel this is a bit sketchy and not legal at all as there is no statement that I found that the hosts “absorb” the currency exchange.
