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Never had any calendar glitches before, but 2 days ago my calendar had 2 days blocked for “Minimum stay”, for no reason.
I have a booking from Mar. 28th, checking out on the 31st. I have dates blocked from April 6th-13th for a direct booker.
I use a one night prep setting and have a 3 night minimum. So the night of the 31st should have been blocked for prep time, and then I had available nights from the 1st through the 5th.
But the 1st and 2nd showed as blocked for “Minimum stay”, and the 31st wasn’t showing as blocked for Prep time.
I didn’t bother calling Airbnb to sort it out, because I got another direct booking for the 31st-6th, filling in the calendar.
But hosts might want to check to make sure there aren’t any erroneous blocks on their calendar, in case this wasn’t just a one-off glitch on my account, but a system bug.
I saw the same thing. It was after I opened up the dates ahead of those two nights. So I selected all the dates in the “hole”, set the minimum stay requirement again. Then it disappeared.
I have used the prep day setting since I started hosting in 2016, and it has always worked seamlessly. This erroneous “Minimum stay” block is the first time I’ve ever experienced a calendar glitch.
Blocking a prep day manually would work almost all the time, but not if 2 requests for consecutive dates came in at the same time before I’d had a chance to block a date. In that case, I’d have to either decline one of the requests or explain that one of their requested dates was unavailable.
When you check your calendar (which I do rather obsessively every cpl of days), does it show as blocked? I’d freak out! Not that it matters much, as I fall into the “dismal bookings” group lately…. Just always on the lookout for those all too common glitches!
Hi everyone - I’m pretty new to hosting and have to say that I’ve had so many “glitches” with the platform, seriously affecting my income. I spent 3 weeks with customer service trying to resolve the effects of the first glitch which, despite pop-up confirming my rate changes for 2 very important special events, the rates reverted to the original price. Of course I got immediate bookings at the low rate.
I was so upset with their CS’s robotic responses that they were sorry, they believed me, but they couldn’t help me, that I decided to pause my listing to take the time to decide if I wanted to continue. And, lo and behold, the pause for the following year unpaused in sporadic patches.
Of course I blamed my newbie-ness at first, then remembered that a super host friend set one of the dates that automatically reverted. Later, he had the exact same thing happen on his device, on his listing, All I can say is that I’m very disenchanted with the company. The guests have all been great. My friend has become a co-host, as he has access to the higher echelon of super host customer service & will be able to advocate for me. I’m booking again, but really, I’m so disenchanted with the company, I’m still deciding if I want to continue.
If any of your issues were related to being new and unfamiliar with how Airbnb works, a more experienced co-host may help. I wouldn’t expect a “higher” level of superhost customer service. Based on anecdotes here, it seems it’s not any better. That said, if all your guests have been great then you really have no reason not to continue hosting.
Don’t expect Airbnb to do anything but get your bookings and deliver your payment. You can’t set it and forget it. You must monitor your listing, ideally every day. Also read extensively here. Experienced hosts who read the posts here know that dates become unblocked or that prices sometimes seem to change. One trick for future dates you don’t want to book is to set a very high daily rate as your base price for those dates before blocking the date. Then if it magically becomes unblocked it’s unlikely to be booked.
I’ve had almost no problems in 8 years and over 1000 bookings and I attribute part of my success to finding this forum within the first year of hosting. I’ve avoided a lot of problems because I read everything here.
Thank you, KKC! I’ve been lurking here for quite a while. I’ve learned a lot and put suggestions and tips to use.
My problem wound up not being from my lack of experience. The super host customer service rep did reopen my race weekend listing at the higher price after I’d canceled that booking, as it was the 3rd booking where the price reverted & I’d already accepted the lower, reverted rate for Gen Con. I couldn’t afford to let my second event booking go for a nominal rate because of their glitch. I’m thankful that, at least for me, the super host CS person helped with that. I got nowhere for 3 weeks’ effort with my CS people.
I’m always happy to hear when Airbnb CS does help a host. I suspect it happens most the time but no one is mad when they do so they don’t post about it. The fact that people mostly publicize their problems really skews our perception of reality.
The fact is that most Airbnb bookings go well and most hosts are happy with Airbnb. I hope your road ahead smooths out.
The last 2 times I called CS, which is very rare for me, to get them to deal with inappropriate requests blocking my calendar, they were surprisingly helpful. They even called me back immediately when I was told to hold the line and the call was then dropped.
I do have a Superhost number for Canada that I have never seen listed anywhere, aside from wherever I first found it and wrote it down, and I now can’t remember where I got it years ago.
Thank you, KKC. Since I spent 3+ weeks getting absolutely nowhere with CS, the acceptable outcome came only when I gained a co-host who is a Super Host & he called. I can’t exactly call this a success on my part. But it will do!
