General Help and Questions

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I am told that after COVID getting banks or anyone to underwrite lodging businesses is much more difficult. As you mentioned for STRIPE you actually process under their "blanket" and they get to set a lot of the rules...and get to charge a premium price for allowing you to use process through them.

I would suggest you check with your local bank where you have an established relationship as they are more apt to work with you. You could then connect with a payment gateway like Authorize.net (they work with tons of the processors) and still have integrated OR credit card processing and likely at a less rate that the 2.9% and per transaction fee that Stripe charges... (I also think I just heard that they (Stripe) are now going to hold your money for 14 days before they pay you because of the increase in chargebacks.)

Taxes on that Pet Fee are another issue... The fee in our state is actually taxable just as any other rent for Lodging Taxes... so we have to request from the guest the total including state and local taxes. Since ABB remits these taxes on rent but not on the resolution requests, we then have to file with the state a return for the added pet fees basically doubling the efforts..

We've been doing the resolution request thing and it is just a bear to manage as the guests will not always pay it either so then it has to be escalated to ABB to resolve and many times the guest just refuses.

We've been actually toying with the idea of doing it direct via concierge services via a guest portal type app. We are currently researching those that have integrations to OR to see what options we might have there.

Be careful everyone - I think this is a total scam.
Hard to actually get a penny out of rental guardian and today, I learned the hard way they have been charging me a multiplier on long term rentals. Suddenly hit with $1000 bill where they multiply it every month. Of course it is there when I go to look at the details, but I did not see that. Even more annoying, is that I canceled the insurance in July and they are still dragging on. Hard to get rid of it once committed. Super upset.
If you do the math, and self insure, you are FAR BETTER OFF. Taking a small amount on each booking soon adds up - then you have the nominal amount they are covering, but don't have to fight with insurance company to get damages paid out.
rally unhappy - and I am usually happy with these guys, but this is robbery.

How were you able to add all of those additional pages? Did you have someone through OR assist you?

Hello:
I love your vacation guide. i'm trying to create something like this on my ownerrez hosted website.

How did you add the photos with text below? I cannot seem to do that when i add a new "page" to my site.

Any help is appreciated

Thank you,
Steve
www.hightidevacationhomes.com (still a work in process)

Yes, PriceLabs will override whatever is in OwnerRez. So you should control both your rates and your min nights there.

oh yeah another question i had was how to get the holiday calendar to reflect i have a 3night min on holidays? i have the US holiday selected but do i need to then create those as custom season ?

Thanks Ken.

question. it appears i dont actually have to set rates using this feature. is this true as i currently use pricelabs to set up my pricing. maybe i can play with pricelabs and set min nights.

will price labs override OR with respect to rules on min nights?

The simplest way to come close to what you want, is by using our Rate Calendar and Spot Rates:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/rates-using-the-rate-calendar-video

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/spot-rates

Note that, for min-night settings, a booking will be controlled by the min-nights on the arrival day. Any other min-nights later in the stay will be ignored.

I am wanting to set up a booking requirement during our high season of ski season where during these months, if a booking is wanting Wednesday they would need a min of 4 nights, on Thursday it would be 3 nights, same on Friday 3 nights, and Saturday 3 nights, and then Sunday / Monday / Tuesday are 2 nights.

I'd also like all holiday (US holiday) weekends to require 3 night stays ....I subscribed to the holiday US list but perhaps I still need to set a "seasons" of holidays ?

Thank you. It works now with 10.37. I did need to remove the 'ha' from the end of the property ID for it to work.

It doesn't make any difference - guests use the same OwnerRez system for signing agreements, regardless of how you get them.

Hi Ken,

How does this work with integrated API, regarding Vrbo?

There's a workaround that has been covered pretty extensively in the Facebook group "Unofficial Ownerrez Support Group." Basically, you have to go in and set up Custom Field Definitions. Those fields need to be marked as a "Required Entry" during quote acceptance so they will show up when the guest is sent the form to sign the Rental Agreement. You set up a Custom Field for each clause. Give the Facebook group a look and then let everyone know what we can do to help. Also, this Forum exchange might help: https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/general-help/help-with-required-fields-in-rental-agreement

We've released a new version with some better calibration for the listing numbers. Make sure you've got version 10.37: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/channel-bridge-updating-to-latest-version

And give it another whirl.

If that doesn't work, send in a support ticket and we'll schedule a screenshare to debug.

RE safari chrome, that's referring to the fact that on iOS devices Chrome is really actually just Safari under the covers as Apple don't allow any other browsers on their platform. Sounds like that's not the issue in your case, though, you're probably on desktop or laptop since you can channel bridge and it used to work.

I am the owner referenced in the first message who had to file an FED against an AirBnB guest who refused to leave the property and was staying with unauthorized and unidentified additional occupant in my unit as non-paying guests.
Luckily, I had a full signed contract with initials on each page as well next to important clauses. This established without a doubt that I had a contract with the individual who rented my property and that all information and rules were disclosed prior to checking-in.
The judge pointed the initials out in his ruling. I therefore really want to be able to continue this practice since I tested it in a court of law and know that it helped me win my case.
Now that I am using Owerrez for my bookings, how do you suggest I proceed to still obtain a similar signed contract from my guest? Continue using my 'external' option or is there a way to format the contract in a similar fashion through this software?
I also really need my guests to be able to type information themselves in the contract.
Thank you for your advice.

I tried again earlier today - same error.

When did this change? It worked up until maybe a month ago and I don't recall being prompted to change anything on HA/VRBO, but I did switch to the new rates system on OR.

I don't really do much business on VRBO so I didn't worry too much about it, but I've changed my rates a bunch since then, so it's time to get them to match current rates in the off chance someone finds me on VRBO and tries to book.

I'm not sure what you mean by Safari Chrome...Safari and Chrome are two different browsers. I currently use Google Chrome on a Mac with the OR Channel Bridge extension (and yes, I was signed into VRBO, as OR's website directed me to on the Channel Bridge page).

So in the meantime, what are your recommendations for those of us who are facing added restrictions, regulation, and community intimidation suggesting that our guests are oblivious to the contract which must have specific items related to noise and pets included? If you are unable to manage this within your system is there an API that allows us to send through DocuSign or others a separate more involved contract that you are able to host at the moment?

You'd probably want to do that with our new Tags feature - you'd create a tag that you manually add to a booking once the guest has done whatever it is that you want them to do, and then set having that tag as a criteria on the trigger.

No. I mean something that they need to fill out for me and I would have to manually enter as a trigger stating YES, before send the last email with the Keyless entry code.

Right now there's not a way to do signatures on SMS. You've only got a couple hundred chars so it'd be easy to eat that up -- and you can't put in logos etc like normally go in footers.

If you want to hack it:
- Add an account level custom field (text type, not rich text)
- Enter your footer info there
- Reference that field at the end of each SMS template

Nope - we still plan to overhaul the rental agreements in the future, but don't have an ETA yet.

Just checking on any updates. Tx

I want to add a brief signature to SMS messages (just my name and website) automatically. I do not see where can I define that other than in individual SMS templates? tx

If you are using channel bridge and not API to push rates, you need to 1) be on "new rates editor on both Vrbo and OR 2) be on chrome browser with extension installed (not safari chrome, native chrome) 3). be logged into vrbo acct on same computer

I tried that first and OR just returned an error saying it couldn't find a property with that ID in my VRBO account.
I'll try again when I'm back at my computer, but I'm guessing it'll be the same result.

You mean a signed Rental Agreement? There's a criteria in the Trigger you can use, so a given email won't be sent out if they haven't.

Yep, Vrbo is changing a lot of things under the covers as they continue to merge brands together.

One thing to try... what if you use the Vrbo mapping in OwnerRez, but put in the number without the "ha" suffix. Does that still give the same error?