suddenly Airbnb arbitrarily dropped my pricing below my base price without smart pricing

[Marvin39]

I noticed that Airbnb had dropped my prices to 10% below my base price. When I complained, they started talking about 'Smart Pricing'.

My pricing has been unchanged for 3 years. I have never had 'smart pricing' switched on.

They say that pricing changes take a month to come into effect.

Magically last night the prices for next month corrected.

Do I have to refuse all bookings through Airbnb until next month?

So any ideas on how to get back the £5 as night that Airbnb have stolen from me?

[Matthew285]

Marvin, that is very strange!

Are you able to at least manually set the prices of the open dates in June to their proper price?

Or do you have no control over June's pricing because of this issue?

[Ute42]

.

"They say that pricing changes take a month to come into effect."

Is this a joke?

[Lex12]

Hi there, we've noticed if you increase base price through listing settings the change doesn't take effect until first day of the next month...but you can still change the remaining days of the month manually through the calendar. Funnily, when you lower prices it happens immediately!

The reality: airbnb don't make any of their platform's background clear and there are a lot of hidden mechanics like this. Higher pricing doesn't offer much gain to them and risks a vacancy instead of a booking. It's a numbers game for airbnb so they do anything possible to increase the number of bookings, not the % slice they take. Intelligent, sophisticated...and they will keep getting away with deceptive practices like this while they still have a monopoly. 

[Jude17]

Yah! Thanks.  That's exactly what I have been thinking.  Another monopoly...

[Ger15]

I’ve just posted the same question.  I foolishly switched on smart pricing and got someone booked into our room for €21! Not worth it to us. I immediately switched back to my usual price. But what’s confusing is that people who’ve booked in since this change have been charged totally random prices. Is there any way to contact Airbnb about this?