Blocked Dates Becoming Unblocked

Airbnb also recommend taking screenshots to prove you blocked the dates.

Every time I block a date I have to do it twice. Every time. It does seem that once I double check that they are blocked they stay blocked.

I thought the same until yesterday when I found that most of Feb 2018 and March 2018 had been opened.

I’m having the opposite problem! 3 Fridays keep getting blocked. I’ve unblocked them several times, now. I am perplexed.

@Alia_Gee. AirBNB clearly thinks your husband should take you out to dinner. :wink:
But seriously, I am now checking the yearly [which they just changed to something illegible) each morning to ensure that I am only available when I want to be available. And now, I will make sure that open dates don’t appear to be booked.

Those young, bros just keep breaking stuff.

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Friday night guests are how we pay for dinners out! (Saturday covers the babysitter.)

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I’ve noticed the random unblocking problem hasn’t happened to me since Airbnb altered the calendar to show diagonal lines through the blocked days. Fingers crossed that means they have done some work on the problem.
However, when I try and alter prices, I often have to do it more than once as it doesn’t “stick”. Occasionally even after several attempts it doesn’t work so I shut down the program and try again later and that usually works.

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I haven’t had dates become unblocked, but I did have all my seasonal/specific dates that I had entered as 2 night minimums go “poof” and just disappear. They were there 2 days ago but today they were all gone. I had to enter them again.

I think I figured out the problem, sort of. I had created listings on 2 other platforms, synced calendars, but hadn’t made them live.

But I think (? I couldn’t drill down quickly on my phone while the baby cried, so I may have missed an obvious filter) Wimdu was blocking my Fridays because those dates weren’t available a month ago when I first synced the calendars. Why it wouldn’t sync properly now I do not know, but i decided it was safest to delete the listing since it wasn’t playing well with others - not only was it blocking those 3 Fridays, it had marked all my actually booked - with - people dates as available.

Recipe for disaster, that.

This. Is. Still. Happening. Had houseguests for the weekend – daughter, boyfriend, a couple of their friends – and a guest was able to IB for Saturday night. he poor guy booked late Friday evening, excited to visit old pals of his in the area, and I didn’t want to leave him frantic about re-accomodation, so I didn’t bother to call Air. My house is not huge, but I was able to put two of my personal guests on an air mattress in the middle of the living room. I guess the rolling 3 month time period still unblocks days like PacMan as the calendar proceeds, and I need to do the work around of extending to 12 months and do the 3 month roll myself with blocking/unblocking.

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Thanks for the reminder, i better check my calender… (taking a break until mid march or my teenager decides he needs his own room, whichever comes first)

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The work around of putting a ridiculously high price on blocked dates should work.

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I don’t think I’ll use the “high price workaround.” I get business, folks visiting family, as well as tourists, and some of the former are repeat. I imagine a guest checking out my listing before putting in dates, and seeing my “priced from” rate. Then they put in dates in order to book and see $1000 a night. Are they ever going to consider booking with me again? Nope they’ll just move on to one of my 300+ local competitors.

It’s just a second fail safe. As long as the dates remain blocked they won’t even see those prices. What if the normal priced dates become unblocked and someone books those dates and only to be told those dates aren’t really available, so sorry. Will they consider booking with you again?

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Wouldn’t Air help with re-housing in that case, if I couldn’t scramble to accept the booking (which I’ve done the few times the inadvertent unblock has happened)? Their policy says they don’t penalize IB cancels for blocked date glitches, so they are aware this happens.

I believe so, I certainly hope so. If that’s your only concern then I wouldn’t worry about dates becoming unblocked. If you don’t like being inconvenienced and you don’t like your guests being inconvenienced then work arounds are in order.

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You don’t need to cancel through IB. This has happened to me four times now. I just call Airbnb and ask that they cancel the booking and they do.

Any news on this - happened to me last night.
The dates were definitely closed and now I have an overlapping night.
Any suggestions?

Was it IB? You can use one of your 3 cancels.

Hi @Debthecat

I’ve already suggested a solution in the post above yours :slight_smile: Just call Airbnb and they will cancel the booking.

The customer rep will say they need to check with the tech people and then come back to you and confirm they can cancel the booking, as they can see the dates were blocked.

Once I have contacted Airbnb and received an email from Airbnb confirming they have it in hand, I then contact the guest, explain that Airbnb has unfortunately allowed a booking on dates that weren’t available in my calendar and they will be in touch with the guest to cancel the booking.

Please don’t follow @Brandt advice and use up one of your penalty free cancellations under IB. There is no need to do this as it wasn’t your fault but a technical glitch on Airbnb’s side.

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