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Are any instant book, smart pricing hosts having issues right now? I got an IB yesterday for Thursday and Friday of this week and they booked at half of my price. Double checked all my settings, made sure there were no coupons or discounts (I’ve never offered discounts), and everything is set correctly.
I’ve never had this happen in the 4 years since I turned on IB and smart pricing. Opened a ticket with CSR and they have agreed that all my settings were correct and that the customer should not have been able to book at that price but they have to bump it up to the “engineering department.”
Just popped open my listing and it’s again advertising a price that is lower than my minimum. Sent screenshots and again they’re saying they can’t figure out why.
I asked them to check and see if the guest had some type of coupon that should have been paid by Airbnb but was incorrectly taken out of my money. No answer to that yet.
So, my question, is anyone else with IB and SP experiencing this right now?
Don’t use either IB or SP. I am dismayed however that when someone looks for places in my area without a date, the per night price is based on my one week discounted rate. If they then put in dates for less than 7 nights, thankfully it charges correctly but probably doesn’t make people happy. Airbnb should give you the difference but they never will.
I don’t use IB or SP either…don’t use IB because I
a. don’t trust Airbnb to notify me and worry I will miss a booking and
b. I don’t trust myself to remember to look every day!
Don’t use SP because it makes very little sense to me. They often recommend a lower price even though I have had the busiest June and July since we started 6 years ago. Then, on days when I am not booked, they occasionally suggest a higher price. If I am not getting booked at the lower price, why would anyone pay more?
My pricing is based on the median price for comps in my area. I am about $5 higher than the median and do not charge a cleaning fee. I have adjusted the rate slightly higher for weekends that have special events in town but generally keep it the same rate year round.
I am also annoyed with the display of the weekly rate when no dates are put in AND when they show dates in the far future implying closer dates are already booked.
i use smart pricing, but price the lowest at my current average rate, and let the highest be something like $800/night. it’s never rented my place out at less than my stated lowest.
That is the issue I am having right now. After years of using IB and smart pricing with zero issues, someone instant booked two nights last week at $71/night lower than my minimum SP setting. SP has never booked below my minimum, until now. I caught it immediately and contacted support. Another guest booked about 2 hours later and the price booked correctly.
I made no changes during that time. However someone was able to book at a drastically lower price followed almost immediately by a correct booking. It makes no sense.
Air has told me my price settings were correct, they could see I made no changes, no discounts or coupons were applied and they can’t figure out why it booked those 2 nights so low. They can see my entire pricing history and agree the amount was incorrect but the level of “unsupport” they are providing is unbelievable. It’s been a week now and they have not figured it out nor have they offered to refund the difference.
On another note, showing there are still good people in the world, the guest asked me why I had given them such a good discount. They were shown my correct price when they initiated the booking, however the confirmation showed the greatly discounted price. I told them what had happened and when they checked out they left the price difference in cash on the nightstand. They were not asked for it in any way.
I’ve been saying that here for years so it’s great to have someone else say the same.
Many hosts seem to dislike it but as long as you set the minimum and the maximum, and train the system to know which are your premium times, it’s a great tool.
Sometimes it has priced my rentals at more that I’ve ever done and the result has been bookings.
This is the point. It has NEVER booked my room below my lowest setting. I have been one of the biggest cheerleaders on the planet for why people should use smart pricing. I defend it at every turn because it’s made me a lot of money.
My absolute drop dead lowest price is $170. About 80% of the time, it books me higher. It has never gone below my minimum. Until last week.
I made no changes.
Airbnb took an instant book at $99 and refuses to reimburse the difference even though they’ve admitted in the support thread that it booked incorrectly through no fault of mine.
No, of course not. I don’t know why you would think that and I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. I was merely replying to @jeannez to say that I was pleased that she had posted that SP can work brilliantly (as you know yourself).
So many hosts post negatively about it and for the sake of those who read-only or for new or potential hosts, I was pleased to hear that someone else posted about the benefits, as did you.
SP seems to have a bad name at this forum, as does IB, and the fact is that we’re all different and different systems will work for different hosts. There’s no right or wrong.
Of course there can be glitches but I’d venture to suggest that these are the exception rather than the norm…
While my example is not as serious as an Airbnb glitch giving a drastically reduced price and refusing to make up the difference, this is typical Airbnb attitude. I once had my text alerts stop, resulting in me missing responding to a request in the alloted 24 hours. After first suggesting that maybe my text inbox was full (duh,no) then insisting that it must have to do with my phone provider (no) the CS rep finally deigned to pass it to their tech team, who confirmed that it was a glitch on their end.
Even though I contacted the guest at the 25 hr. mark, apologizing and explaining what happened, and she went on to book with me, Airbnb refused to remove the ding on my response rate, even though it was admittedly due to their glitch.
I think it’s Price Tips that have a bad name, not Smart Pricing.
But, I’ve never used it because I just like doing the pricing myself. And there have still been glitches where the price I set was changed by the system. Smart Pricing isn’t the only part with glitches. I just got a 2-day booking last week even though I have a 4-day minimum, so there’s that too.
Every time I go into the calendar to make a few changes, the price tips are way below what I charged last year and this.
For me things are kind of screwed up. Didn’t get any bookings for a long while after the May update. Weeks later I got 3 within 1 1/2 weeks and since then zero.
I blocked days out here and there struggling with low iron/anemia and my 16 year old cat that suddenly got sick and was euthanized 1 1/2 weeks later. This has been a rough time and don’t really care about Air right now, in fact I’m sick of them. I’m probably going to move from the area and doubt if I’ll do this again.
Sorry about your cat. I lost my 13 year old dog in November and I’m still sad everytime I glance at the spots where she liked to sleep.
She was terrified of thunderstorms, and when we had the first big storm of the season a couple weeks ago, I had just gone to bed, and at the first crack of thunder, my automatic, instant thought reaction was that I needed to call her up to my room.
As far as quitting hosting, it’s always good to change your life when you realize what you’re doing isn’t bringing you joy anymore, rather than waiting until it’s stressing you out and making you unhappy.
My kitty that died was one of two that came with me from Wa. St. They were best buds and my one remaining one is struggling. He doesn’t do or go where he used to. I had no idea until hearing from other people that they go into mourning and their behavior is completely different.
I agree, the confusion between price tips and smart pricing throws a lot of folks off. Price tips should absolutely be ignored imho but up until last week, smart pricing has always done a great job for me. And I still have it on as it’s a great feature.
And for me it’s not so much that they made a mistake in the pricing, it’s the way it was handled. This was only the 3rd time I’ve had to contact CS in almost 7 years, none of them were handled very well.
If they’re going to go through the pretense of saying superhosts have a dedicated help line and will get preferential treatment when a problem arises, they should actually offer that or don’t, and don’t advertise it. But 7 days, 27 emails and 4 or 5 representatives all saying something different is enough to frustrate anyone.
I think they quit the pretense a few years ago and it’s no longer offered or advertised. I remember thinking that before the pandemic and now you’ve reminded me. It’s been years since I called them but last time I did I had the impression the “superhost” cs line was just funnelled into the regular queue.
They actually do still call it a superhost line and say they offer preferential treatment. But it was obviously funneled through the same line as everyone else judging by the responses I received the first 6 days. That’s why I said they should either do it or lose it.
This incident was very similar to the messages I exchanged with you a while back when I was trying to cancel my first and only booking (third party who I told I would cancel if she booked) and they threatened penalties then as well. Only cancellation ever in almost 7 years.
I know it’s on us to actually manage our listing but when they don’t play by their own rule book they’ve issued us, it’s very frustrating.
