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I sent a preapproval to guests this morning and now I wasted an hour trying to figure out how to block their dates because one of my regulars want to book the same dates directly.
I read How do I make dates available or blocked on my calendar? - Airbnb Help Center and I don’t get it.
There’s no drop down menu, it just says available.
Are you using a tablet or phone? Try using a PC instead.
Withdraw the pre approval!
@Ritz3 thanks, but I rarely use phones, hate them with a passion, it doesn’t work on the computer.
@Debthecat thanks, I looked at Withdraw a guest pre-approval - Airbnb Help Center – I tried that too, but didn’t see any option to withdraw anywhere. Seems like it should be right there, saw the notice that I had sent the preapproval, nothing else.
Fortunately, it expired now, I must have sent the preapproval yesterday eve, not this morning.
Before my first post here I blocked the dates at VRBO, but it didn’t synchronize with Airbnb or Google calendar.
I don’t think I can ever enable instant booking again.
And I just checked again, any date, no preapprovals, and no drop down menu to block a day.
My rules are working, one day notice, two days after each booking (3 days between guests).
But can’t manually block. I think I’m just going to up my rates at Airbnb so I don’t get many inquiries or bookings. Can’t deal with their “support” anymore, too stressful.
Air is too busy monkeying around with host’s front pages to help with anything of consequence.
Since I’m new here and count all my reviews at this point, a new one got added yesterday, but my total of reviews did not increase.
Wish they’d just leave the small stuff alone and concentrate on actually helping people.
Their setup will show that review count in the next few days.
You highlight the start date and drag through the end date and you’ll have a popup where you can block.
I don’t think I would ever disable instant book!
RR
@RiverRock Looks like I’ll never do instant booking again on Airbnb, might enable it on VRBO, maybe.
53 minutes on the phone with what Airbnb calls superhost support. That’s after wasting an hour trying to figure out why Airbnb isn’t importing.
Both Airbnb and VRBO export fine to my Google calendar, but Airbnb doesn’t import.
So I made the dreaded call, not much hold time, but then the torture started.
I thought I’d start with something easy, removing a 2nd listing that I had started to set up years ago, before Airbnb was so awful. I couldn’t figure out how to delete it.
That turned into about half an hour of repeatedly being put on hold and eventually being told that there is NO way to delete a listing.
So, on to the syncing. I made the mistake of mentioning that I can’t turn on instant booking because it’s not showing my bookings from other platforms.
Again he put me on hold, and I finally realized he was trying to tell me how to turn on instant booking. He had a young voice, but it was like being in the Alzheimer’s ward.
He insisted that I never told him about the calendar import issue and that I needed to EXPORT (which works fine.)
I had to end that call, can only put up with so much stupidity.
And I still can’t block any days.
So I guess my only option is to deactivate my Airbnb account once I get more bookings again.
I’m so looking forward to that day, but want the many REVIEWS there to be live. I guess I can put a RIDICULOUS price on Airbnb and most people will find me on VRBO.
Yup, I think I just found the solution to my Airbnb problem.
– update: The 2nd listing disappeared, thankfully. IT people must have removed it.
Have you tried a channel manager? Many owners swear by OwnerRez (actual name OwnerReservations). It should take care of all those problems for you.
@PitonView I hadn’t checked them out yet, thanks!
Really looks nice when you have several properties.
Pricing - OwnerRez – Another $400/year for one or two properties. I only have one property.
The pricing is pretty much what I’ve seen when I last looked around. I guess if I ever get more than one booking at a time again, it might be worth it.
I had NO idea what I was getting into when I offered to take care of that house on a net net net net basis for the estate. There’s really no money to be made unless you have a bunch of houses and hire people to do all the work.
I “tried” upping my rates, but was only successful in lowering discounts. Couldn’t edit the nightly rate and the weekend rate.
No edit button.
My gut tells me that the more I rely on and pay other companies, the more stress, expense and work I have.
Just running off VRBO and my own site might be best for me, less hassle, less cost and so much less stress.
The only thing I want from Airbnb at this point is to be able to send the link to prospective guests so they can see the reviews.
Called VRBO earlier today – no holds, just the answer I was looking for.
I realize it’s possible that you just came on to complain about Airbnb; however, if you are looking for help, your calendar there says that you are using a property management system. The right side bar of your calendar looks entirely different than mine and I don’t use any system and can block dates according to the help article you posted. I am guessing this may be what it looks like if you use a channel manager but am not sure. Someone else here would know though. Anyway, your answer to your issue is right there under the nightly price.
@JJD Thanks so much. That explains why I couldn’t revoke the preapproval, can’t block dates, etc.
Of course, I’m NOT using a property management system.
Maybe my account got hacked and someone else is doing this just to screw with me.
Or it’s Airbnb retaliating for not turning instant booking on.
It all sounds pretty crazy, but it is what it is. Thanks for letting me know, I tried so hard to change the pricing today, never saw that.
And I didn’t have booking open for a year from now, but Air turned it on and now I’m going through Customer Disservice hell trying to get them to make it an admin cancellation since he never should have been able to book.
Whoever’s in charge of Air’s system, both design and operation, should be fired, and they should design a new system that doesn’t allow system changes without notifying hosts first, so we can document our listings so that we don’t get penalized for THEIR mistakes. Better yet, there should be a way for hosts to download our listings so that when Air changes things, we can simply restore it from our local backup.
I remember when some one here laughed about being asked if she had hot water connected. It was pointed out that hot water was the latest thing to be added to the amenities list. Of course most of us were unaware of the update and off we went to double check everything.
At least the guest had actually read the listing.
It does make me feel better that it’s not just me. I often wonder whether I’m cursed.
It’s not just Airbnb. I was on hold today for an hour with US immigration to reschedule my 8 am biometrics appointment for a new green card in Las Vegas, 2.5 hours away. After about 10 minutes of explaining and verifying who I am, I was told that I had “reschedule” like it was a really big deal and that I would receive a phone call within 30 days. And no, can’t request an afternoon appointment.
Also had to get Senator Gosar’s office involved to get my social security last year without having to drive to Las Vegas documents the government already has. If I got just a little more than the $251/month, I would so retire! I can’t handle this BS anymore.
And when it comes to corporations, what I go through to actually get what I ordered and in working condition, not to mention warranty repairs …
With respect to downloading a backup, that won’t work when they make system changes. As they so often do.
With a properly designed system it would be easy. And hosts could make local backups every time they changed the listing.
But then I’m probably a little OCD about it, since I used to charge a lot of money to restore data on hard drives when folks didn’t have backups. That’s why my safety deposit box at the bank a few blocks away is full of hard drives and thumb drives.
There’s a good idea! I have so many old backup drives too, but that’s not helpful when the house burns down.
And I agree with you, one “should” be able to back up and restore listings.
UPDATE, over 2 months later.
Unfortunately had to set up a new account here as Firefox “forgot” my login and apparently 10 digits are required for the password (more than my banks), so I didn’t remember it. And password reset didn’t work, never got the promised email.
So, finally had to turn down an Airbnb booking request as I had a VRBO booking that wasn’t imported and HAD to deal with this.
The “property management system” message disappeared, but I still couldn’t do anything at the AIr website.
Posted at the Air community forum and found out that SOME features work on the phone app.
But there’s no way to import the calendar:
“Linked Airbnb calendars
No other calendars to link”
It’s greyed out, nothing happens when I tap / hit it. I’d love to stomp on that damned phone.
I don’t know how I find the will to live.
