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I am not a fan of Airbnb’s recent insistance we submit to their in-house wi-fi speed test – mostly because the tester captures our IP address with the “right to publish it.” No good.
On the other hand, if (as Airbnb says) wi-fi speed is the most requested filter and the platform will filter us out if we have not verified our speed with their tool, I want to maintain the visibility of our current ranking when a guest does a search. We are very busy (virtually 0% vacancy and usually booked six months in advance), and I want to keep it that way – I want us to keep pop up in the first screen of search results, so I am reluctantly agreeing to to get tested.
The problem is when we go to the app it is buggy and won’t let us complete the test, The “Start Test” link is greyed out. When we go to the START TEST link it is greyed out. If we go directly to the site of the third-party doing the speed testing everything works okay – it just becomes buggy when we try to use the Airbnb app as the buggy intermediary between us and the testing site.
We have asked Airbnb support for help, and they are “looking into it.” Given their uneven record when it comes to solving problems of any sort, we are not optimistic.
Really? That’s not cool, especially, as you say, they capture your IP and make it public. Plus, it says it isn’t even available in all countries. This is all I could find and it didn’t mention filtering us out if we haven’t used their tool. Have you seen that somewhere you can share? Thanks!
Listing the Wifi speed is a really good way for hosts to get shafted by guests cancelling and demanding refunds (which Airbnb will give them) because they didn’t get the speed listed.
Speed varies deepending on the devices guests are using and the number of devices being used. If there’s a server problem or an area wide outage the guests will be able to use that as a “full refund” scam.
There are also a bunch of posts on the Airbnb forum today and yesterday saying that Airbnb’s speed test is non-functional.
I have the standard “not responsible for service outages caused by circumstances outside of our control” messages, but who knows if that would be upheld by Air (probs not). I mean, if you are there to work and my wi-fi is in and out, I get it. Or if I’m the only one w/o power, etc. However, when that goes down here, it’s usually pretty widespread, so they’ve go nowhere else to go anyway than can guarantee any better. I don’t cater to staycation folks anyway and they don’t book me, thank goodness. I don’t even have a work desk or task chair anymore because no one ever requested it (was advertised as available upon request). On the other hand, my husband and boys stayed there for a couple of weeks while we moved primary residences and as a result we upgraded the slow wifi, so I know it’s zippy now. He wasn’t haven’t it!
Well, I know I said that I thought this was intrusive on the other topic, but if they’re now planning to make folks IP addresses “public” then it makes it a gross infringement on hosts privacy.
We have always included our internet speed on our listings, and never worried about it being unreliable. Perhaps that is a worry in the USA and in developing countries, but in Vancouver (Canada) the infrastructure is quite reliable.
If someone has a lame device, I can always document that the wi-fi signal is being sent at high speed, even if the device at the other end isn’t capable of processing it at full potential.
I don’t have the notice they sent alerting us we needed to do this – but they said two things:
If we have not verified online speed WITH THEIR PROCESS by Nov 4, our manually-entered wi-fi speed would no longer appear in our listing
They pointed out that the most commonly-used filter worldwide is wi-fi speed… so if they have removed our current entry and it has not been replaced by their “verified” entry, our listing will not be captured when someone includes “High-speed wi-fi” as a filter
Yes! This is a big problem for those of us in less-developed countries or in rural areas (we’re both). Our Wi-Fi is line of sight and goes out when it rains really really hard.
Believe it or not, that’s better than the prior option which would go out after the animals would chew the wires that run across the forest floor to get to us. And sometimes the provider is down island-wide for a few hours or the electric company “takes” our power for a few hours for maintenance.
I’ve included a warning on the “Amenity Limitations” that our WiFi is subject to provider limitations and occasional weather interruptions. If someone asks me about WiFi speed, I just tell them “we can usually stream one high-def movie (not 4K) to the TV but more than that is unknown”.
I wonder if this is a phased rollout (I am in the US and you mentioned you are in Canada)? I say this because I just went to my listing & the manually entered (actually it had been a list of checkboxes with speed ranges to pick from ) speed is there. But, when I click on “edit” the checkboxes are gone and I see this - the speed is gone (although you see it there to the left in the gray area) and it just says the wifi is available throughout the house. Frankly, I like this better and will delete that 400 mps when I figure out how:
I also opened a travel search in an incognito window. I can filter on “WiFi” as an amenity, but the speed isn’t a filter option & my place shows up. On my listing it shows “WiFi” as an amenity. I will have to check back after 11/4.
Do you have that filter where you are? I have never seen anything other than just “WiFi” as a filter option. Are you able to tick on “High Speed Wifi” and not just “Wifi” when you are looking for a place to stay?
