Airbnb placed a booking on my calendar with absolutely no notifications - anyone else have this?

Airbnb took a guest booking, put it on my calendar and I did not get the email notifying me of the booking, nor a message in my Airbnb Inbox/home page nor the SMS I usually get alerting me to a new booking. 5 hours have now passed and a long chat with Airbnb helpdesk resulted in “No problems on our end, must have been you”. This guest was going to show up tomorrow and I had no idea until fortunately, he sent a message with a question and I saw the booking date on the message and looked at my calendar to see it. I’ve been doing Airbnb for years as a Superhost with 4.97 stars and this has never happened. Even my inbox on their webpage which displays EVERY event of any type has no record of this booking, so I know it has nothing to do with my email or text, etc - the homepage/inbox is solely their system talking to their system.

Airbnb told me to contact them if it ever happens again, but if it ever happens again, the guest could easily show up before I know (because I take private bookings as well, I keep a separate consolidated calendar that I update manually based on the booking/cancelation notices)

My question is if anyone else has recently had this happen? Perhaps its only a once in a hundred years glitch?

[update…the notice arrived 6 1/2 hours after the booking so just a glitch I guess.

This happened to me at 7:40pm…

Earlier today I was looking in my Airbnb inbox and saw that I had someone who tried to book today for a week later in September, but because of his ID, he was unable to complete the booking.

I didn’t get a notification on my cell phone, I didn’t get an email. I just happened to be on the website and saw it.

I wrote him and told him that there seemed to be an issue with his ID. I told him I could call Airbnb for him, which he said would be OK for me to do. I didn’t tell the girl in CS that I hadn’t received notification because she seemed to not understand the issue with his ID, so I was not going to bog things down further telling her about the lack of notification.

This was today (Monday) at 2:44PM HST. I think they are having a problem.

I am also a superhost with a 4.96 avg. with 346 reviews. I can’t have a response rate screw me up! :stuck_out_tongue:

I had an expected guest trying to message me and she finally called me. She said that the messages she thought she was sending me were not showing up on the thread. She isn’t the most tech savvy guest so I didn’t think much of it. Perhaps they are having issues.

I currently have my calendar blocked off due to the washing machine breaking, my own travel plans and multiple friends and direct bookings. If the washing machine arrives today and works as expected I’ll be open for bookings for a couple of nights here and there. I get a lot of last minute bookings so it’s essential I get notified.

Thanks for the heads up.

Yes, it appears to be a temporary problem at Airbnb. Because I offer and frequently receive same day bookings, it could have been disastrous for me with the 6.5 hour delay I experienced. But since then, I’ve received timely notices as normal.

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Good to know. Thanks for the update. …

Recently I had a potential reservation that Air said they needed something verified on. It didn’t end up happening but there was no notification through email that this was there. Also, had one that booked then cancelled, no email on that one either. Maybe if they’d gone through I would have been notified.

Interesting. A few days ago I had a guest trying to book but I got a message from Airbnb that there was an issue with their payment method, and that the dates would be held for 24 hours while they sorted it out. After 24 hours I get a message that guest withdrew their request. Fine. Then I get a message from the guest that they are still waiting for my preapproval please. Guest did not get any of those Airbnb messages and after I filled them in they updated their credit card and made the booking. I thought maybe the guest was pulling my leg but perhaps not.

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I have had this happen in the past; stumbled upon a booking I was not noticed I’d received. But, it was a long time ago and I assumed I’d missed a message but it definitely left me wondering.

This topic reminds me of a similar incident, around four years ago, so this is not a new glitch.

We got a message from a guest, who believed he was checking in the following day, asking us to confirm the car parking arrangements. We hadn’t received anything from Airbnb, and if the guest hadn’t contacted us we’d have been none the wiser.

Fortunately, we were about and got the apartment prepared etc the evening before. Around 22:00 that night we got the notification of the booking from Airbnb via email and a ping from the app. On the web site, it was simply there as a booking.

We now use a channel manager, which essentially means the Airbnb (or any OTA) software has to ask our CM if a booking is possible, and only then can a booking be made. Our CM notifies us immediately of any subsequent booking, which with one on Monday was around 30mins before Airbnb did.

JF

I check every morning, at least once during the day, and again just before bedtime, because notifications have failed multiple times, several times with bookings for days I’ve had blocked.

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Well, I’m definitely going to be more diligent about checking the site.
OT, but I just got a request for a month to month rental (which I don’t do) from someone that’s acquired a job close by and has a parrot and a rabbit that can live outside and zero reviews. Didn’t accept the inquiry.

“Awaiting Payment” happens to us sometimes, also. I’ve created a message template to alert the guest.

I did this mostly because I don’t want to wait around for all the red tape to solve the problem.

As soon as I get notification of the guest’s payment issue (and the 24 hours added on) I send the guest the template.

It says something like
AirBnB has informed us that there is a problem with your payment.
Unfortunately we cannot consider your reservation confirmed until payment is completed.
We’d appreciated it if you could contact your bank or credit card company and have this corrected asap.

Nine times out of ten the guest replies with their thanks… that they didn’t know about the payment problem.

Apparently Air hadn’t contacted them. (?)
The guest corrects the problem (which is usually very simple), we get a confirmation notice from Air and all is well.

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