Problems, bugs, glitches and issues with AirBNB that need to be addressed

Drew10
Level 3
Sao Roque, Portugal

Problems, bugs, glitches and issues with AirBNB that need to be addressed

AirBNB website is full of bugs and glitches and it may cost you money in ways of wasted time and even reduced income if you are not extremely careful. For instance:

1. The Instant Booking turns itself on and off sometimes without you knowing it. The support of course blames you, the host and not their website.

2. Currency settings have a glitch or a bug that switches between USD, EUR etc. without you knowing it, so when you send an offer or confirmation of reservation watch what currency it is in, although that may not save your butt, because it may send an offer in undesired currency even if you check it twice.

3. The interface needs a steep learning curve and is quite confusing. They don't have a Site Map, which makes things extremely difficult to navigate.

4. Creating your own AirBNB Symbol feature lets you play with it, without WARNING, but it does not save your work. The support, two different support specialists admitted the feature is incomplete and does not work properly, yet no notice or warning is placed on it to warn you to not waste your time with it.

5. Calendar is several clicks away and until you learn where it is its hard work finding it, and many other features and functions.

6. Smart Pricing sometimes throws prices wildly by as much as 300% difference or turns itself off messing all your pricing up. Be careful with it. It's in Beta stage and you are the test rabbit who tests the feature for AirBNB without getting any rewards from it.

7. Smart Pricing charges around $50 (example only) for the summer (more or less) and then one day, boom its $15 most days, same days that were $50 just a couple days before.

8. When you clear some canceled reservation or change anything beware the site is full of bugs and glitches that can really hurt your pocket. Some days never clear and remain blocked or unavailable unless and until you notice that and fix it manually. AirBNB website is like a toddler, it needs daily and even hourly attention and if you leave it alone for a whle you may return to find a huge mess.

9. Some days that were blocked by me were made available by some bug or glitch on AirBNB website.

10. AirBNB staff says that AirBNB.com is only for USA and using it with a different currency than USD may put host in trouble, (I though .com was International,but it seems USA has usurped it purely for themselves accordingly to AirBNB) yet national websites such as AirBNB.de or AirBNB.fr do not have English language option for expat hosts. Truly a mess.

11. People (potential guests) will make a reservation in order to inquire host about local info only, most likely not planning on being a guest for that particular host. They just need the info, on events, car rentals etc. Which is fine with me. No big deal. You provide the info, others will host them. Glad to help out fellow human.

12. Every time I log in and hover over "MESSAGES" bar at the top I get this:

"Sorry, we can’t load new messages right now. View Inbox"

What's up with that?

13. The cursor just will not show up (in the photo gallery photo text descriptions edit) and I try hard for more than I would like to until I find the cursor (sometimes), magically, somewhere else and then erase everything to rewrite it again and etc.

 

14. Very often or even most of the time when I email response@airbnb.com I get the "email not received" message. AirBNB support says they don't see a problem and receive "all" of my emails, yet a lot of them never get responded to or addressed.

 

15. When AirBNB calls a customer, a host, they introduce themselves as "AirBNB". Yet they do not. AirBNB always call me and some guy or girl asks "Hi is this John?". This may seem familiar to them or to most USAmericans, but in Europe we do not use first names and we do not respond phone calls that are so familiar. There is sometimes also an issue of security. How many times AirBNB called me and hung up on me. What's up with that? They need to prop up their professionalism.

 

16. Trying to poost on here I get this: "Your post has been changed because invalid HTML was found in the message body. The invalid HTML has been removed. Please review the message and submit the message when you are satisfied." - yet nothing has been highlited. What's up with that?

 

I bet there are more bug, glitches and problems at AirBNB website or I may missed or forgot to describe some of them, but I am sure I got most of them here. I believe those need to be addressed if AirBNB wants to become a professional business. Hope this helps and share yours with others as well.

41 Replies 41
Clare0
Level 10
Templeton, CA

@Drew10 If you are using an app, yep, you are going to run into system glitches.  I use my laptop with Google Chrome for all my Airbnb business and have never run into any of the problems you have detailed here.  I suggest you use Google Chrome on whatever device you are using. 

 

I use an app, totally unrelated to Airbnb, on my IPad and everytime Apple has updates to IOS the app gets glitchy and I have to uninstall and reinstall it.  Really a pain and inconvenient too. 

 

As for the "invalid HTML" on posts on the Community Center, I get that too from time to time.  I just hit Post again and it goes away. No big deal. 

 

If you reject phone calls from Airbnb because they address you by your first name, well, that's up to you.  Be careful, though, it might be a guest trying to reach you. 

 

I agree that the Help set up should  be re-vamped because finding answers is not easy.  If you want, you can send feedback on this to Airbnb here:

https://www.airbnb.com/help/feedback

 

If you do not speak French, why would you use airbnb.com.fr?  I look at listings all over the world with no problem with Airbnb.com. 

 

I don't use Smart Pricing since it has no way of knowing when there are special events in my area and also because it doesn't have a way to factor in the Occupancy Taxes I have to pay.  Haven't heard of any host that likes it. 

 

Unfortunately there are some guests that don't know the difference between an inquiry (the place to ask questions) and a reservation request.  Hosts have to be on their toes to know the difference so they don't let a request expire which wrecks havoc on response rate and calendar availability. 

 

Anyway, those are my thoughts!

 

 

 

 

Drew10
Level 3
Sao Roque, Portugal

Hi Clare,

 

I am using a desktop, a PC and yes I am using Chrome or Firefox, tried both, same problems. These are NOT related to a browser indeed.

 

Do guests sometimes call from 8005959 number?

 

These are problems that keep reoccurring and I sent multiple messages about these problems to AirBNB. They took some of them as suggestions for improvement.

 

I am new, so I'm using Smat Pricing as a test of the entiure AirBNB system. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

Gladly I am a webmaster of 20 years. I imagine what ordinary people are going through.

 

Guests asking me questions even if they don't book - not a problem. Actually I love answering questions for anyone. I would even pay them to ask me questions 🙂

 

Cheers

 

 

I am using a  desktop with Chrome and I have ALL of these issues and dozens more.  I have been getting emails from Airbnb to update my listings or they will be delisted. But when I go to the page and try it errors.  Sent the screen shots and full documentation to Airbnb and after a month airbnb support still says they can't figure out why or fix it.  Garbage IT dept.

Niels-and-Sofia0
Level 2
Amsterdam, Netherlands

Hi,

 

It's almost a week that our listing is not visible on the map. We are listed green and all but not visible with Google Chrome for example. 

We are hosts for years so we know how everything works. By coincidence someone told me that they can't find our house on the map and that's how we found out. 

response@ airbnb.com told us that there's a bug in their system they are checking out. This was a week ago and after that each day we receive a different answer (and a different person of course).

 

The customer service is polite as usual but they have no idea how to help. It's such a hassle this whole week dealing with phone calls and emails and still no solution. The last thing we heard was Friday that they are still investigating. Totally unacceptable for a company like Airbnb.

@Niels-and-Sofia0 Yes, Airbnb has issues last week but were resolved on June 14. Just looked at your listing...you're on the map and so is your Guidebook!

 

@Clare0 Thank you Clare. 

 

We are checking and so do our friends in Amsterdam. When we are logged in we can see the apartment but not when we are logged out. When I send them the link they can find it but when they go to search or on the map we are not visible.

Last night some neighbors told us that they can find us on their iPAD but not from their PC or iMAC. We tried and it's true.

 

We also did the Government ID verification just a couple of hours ago thinking it might help but nothing yet. 

@Niels-and-Sofia0 Try using Google Chrome.  I never have any problems with GC.

@Clare0 yes that's what we use, we use Google Chrome. All tried from different computers but we are not on the map. 

Noone can find us unless we send them a link. 

Thank you for your input so far. 

I have the opposite problem  😞  

IE works, wekk, Chrome does not

As a guest, I used Chrome.  The site said to use the app. I used the app.  It rejected a good credit card and my valid driver's license for a full day.  I contacted the host. He approved me, and still Airbnb would not accept my request for reservations. It is one egged up mess.  I wonder how many guests can't get a perfectly valid reservation and how much business hosts lose.  I went to one of the older companies and had a booking in less than five minutes.  At a lower cost.

PS the profile can't even get my city right despite hours on their site and app in the last year.  I live in Cambria, California, having left my prior city of residence two years ago.  I'm done with Air BNB.  A total waste of time.

Indeed!   I have read the comments here and I am a guest.

 

I also have had the same in the last 48 hours its become a bit of a nightmare to book and I just want some inexpensve accomodation for a few days for an essential trip,  not a holiday.

 

Booking a place has become like a lottery.   

 

I have had good cards rejected.  I have even called my bank who confirm my account is fine.

 

I am trying to book at different places over a busy period (christmas) I book one place for one night and its fine then try another date and same host and my card is rejected for no reason.  Same as when I try and book with a different host and date.  Same story.

 

Also when I try family and friends cards accounts same, one place/date it works another it does not.

 

It took several tries for my intial booking with paypal to work,  then it didnt,  for why I have no idea.

 

I also clicked on a calender for one host and the dates where free so I went to book,  it then said "dates unavailable" even thogh the calender was totally clear.  Some overlapping time lag or something if they are or were booked.

 

I called a number for San Francisco as it was listend (I live in Portugal) its the only contact number I could find.

 

Spoke to a man who I will not name here who really did not seem at all enthused by the problem.  Said it would be passed to "investigation" and they will be in touch.  (Actually the call centre is in Tampa btw . . .)

 

Anyway,  it is a problem.  Airbnb is a great idea and service,  espcially not just fora  holiday,  people like me who need to book accomodation fast and hassle free for important or non holiday travel.  I never had a problem with airbnb before.

Update.  Now repeatedly there is red lettering saying "check expiry date".  Though expiry date is without a doubt correct.  Is this a browser issue I hear you say?  Possibly but I have no issues wth any other website atm. I use chrome if that helps anyone.

 

Ok there are much bigger problems in the world but sure is frustrating!

@Niels-and-Sofia0

If you have instant booking enabled then there is a question that you have to answer:

who can book instantly.?

if the answer to this is "only persons with a government issued ID " then your listing OF COURSE is not appearing to an anonymous search!

Because if one is not logged in , AIRBNB could not ever know if he/she has a gov ID,

So no need to show your apt to him/her

 I hope that helps