Just wanted to share an experience with a booking I just got, where the guest was undercharged. Hopefully by sharing someone else can avoid.
So I don’t ever use Smart Pricing because the prices they set for my place are way too low. But a couple of days ago I went to take a look at it out of curiosity, after a thread on the subject came up on a group I am in. I literally spent less than five mins… I enabled SP, saw the silly price they suggested, and then switched SP off again.
A few hours later, I got a one week booking for the same room, at the price of £25 per night (it should be £35). I went to check that SP was off, and it was. I have four rooms listed, so I was able to compare and I noticed that the format in front of me on pricing looked different on this room. Even though SP was turned off, you could no longer see the nightly price feature. Instead, you can only see the page where smart pricing is turned off, and the base price below that (which shouldn’t be relevant since SP is switched off). I did not adjust that base price to £35 after checking out SP, because of this, ie it was switched off. I did go back to try to check that it was still listed as £35 after checking the SP, but this was only in an attempt to be thorough. When that page didn’t come up (where you can list the price), I thought it must be temporarily unavailable, perhaps because of a short delay, and that it would be fine as I’d never tinkered with that figure.
And yet! They went with the SP even though switched off. Not only that, but base price was down as £28, and guest got charged £25?! I’m
Not used to SP but I think I recall that base is the minimum so that seems to be another glitch, although perhaps I’m misunderstanding something there?
Customer Services weren’t very helpful.
Told me to send a message to technical team. But even that I had to pry out of her. Later on she softened up (we weren’t getting on great!) and she said she suggested next time I make changes that I should log out and log back in. Good to know. Makes me think they know about these issues. Had I not buttered her up a bit, I’m not sure I’d have been told. She was very blank in her responses.
Luckily I was able to cancel the booking as it was a third party booking. Plus the figures aren’t big. But would hate this to happen to anyone else. On a luxury entire house could be huge figures lost, and for the person just renting out a spare room … we are not making a fortune and do not want to get forced in to hosting a guest for a nightly figure like $25. It’s just not worth it, not with the constant early ins and late outs and all the communication coordinating these in between!