General Help and Questions

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Thank you for implementing the change! I just wanted to add, there should be a space between the highlighted amount due and the next word, "is due immediately (space here) and your booking will be pending for". Right now it shows: "is due immediatelyand your booking will be pending for"

I had to manually delete 10 reviews because they were duplicated.

No bookings are being duplicated. That's not possible based on how our system validates dates and properties. You don't have to worry about bookings being duplicated. It's just an issue (possibly) with the channel name being called "HomeAway" versus "VRBO".

UPDATE - I don't see anything unusual in the spreadsheet that channel bridge builds, other than the filename created begins with HomeAway account instead of VRBO account. I'm going to hold off on importing in case y'all use that in some way...

I use the channel bridge for downloading from VRBO - I have a new booking, should I be holding off on importing anything from VRBO until this gets resolved? I certainly don't want to have duplicate entries.... Actually, I guess what I should do is just check the spreadsheet that channel bridge creates and only import the very newest bookings so that no existing ones will be touched.

I'm sure that will work, but please let us know what we should/should not do about this ...

Any CC processor you want. If you get onto the HomeAway API integration, the guest and card info is passed to our system for processing and then we pass an approve/decline back to HomeAway while the guest waits at the checkout window. So it uses whatever CC processing you have in OwnerRez.

Would it be stepping over the line to alert people to three free days of webinars from vacation rental industry experts? It is free, and I did this last year. And I didn't sign up for any paid version of it. No I have nothing to do with it. I just got an email about this year's version

Most people can learn a huge amount about vacation rental stuff from this.

HA's current service, yapstone/VRP is widely condemned by owners.

Are you talking openedge or Lynnebrook?

This could be huge!!!

IF you can get approved. I doubt a CIA agent is vetted as mush as I was.

Thanks for the pro tips, Rich!

Good question. I'd set it up in OwnerRez but not the listing content (descriptions, amenities, photos, location stuff). Then put a basic property record in place so that you can play with it and get rates right or whatever else. Then later fill out your VRBO listing and import that into OwnerRez. If you move to our HomeAway API coming up, we can push your OwnerRez property data into VRBO directly and it will drive your listings.

You would create a Deposit record in QB to group together the payments (and fees) that settled together. So your payments should be pushed to QB with "Undeposited Funds" as the bank account. And then you'd have a deposit in QB that grabs all the payments that are part of that deposit and their fees so that the deposit total matches what came in on your bank transactions/feed.

Hi Dianne,

We have a lot of work to do in upgrading our QB support docs. Thanks for the nudge.

We are looking into this. A recent change to Channel Bridge was made to help with HomeAway logins and it looks like we may be classifying all VRBO stuff as HomeAway now. This is pending.

Is there a public URL for Apple Maps? There would have to be a web app or web end point where clicking "Apple Maps" could open in something. I'm not aware of one.

You can actually use them for HomeAway if you are able to join our upcoming, looming, awesome API integration with HomeAway. The users that are on that get to use their own CC payment processing just like direct bookings. HomeAway API passes through the guest credit card to our system. The pilot users that are on that are VERY happy.

In templates and places where Maps are used for Property Addresses, wouldn't it be a good idea to include Apple Maps?

I don't use it myself, but...

Currently shows:
Address:
{PADDRM}
Open this address in Google Maps | Yahoo Maps | Bing Maps | MapQuest

Talked to Lynbrook today. Nice people, VR specialists.

I told him my focus was not the cheapest price. And obviously you cannot use them for Airbnb and the HomeAway family because they use their own.

Will probably be activating this in a few weeks, when I'm closer to actually being live with vacation rentals

Check on Allrisks. Find an agent that sells them They've covered us for years with special short-term policies. I believe they're backed by Lloyds of London. https://www.allrisks.com/

Didn't mean to hijack the thread, but Blue's pain with openedge is how I feel

I have gone to 3 independent agencies.

Nationwide is looking promising. They had much better deal than cbiz (much higher actual cash value coverage for significantly lower price) and I am waiting for them to get back to me on the multifamily (has two commercial spaces alsop)

Of course, they haven't asked the questions above yet. They might ask questions and then drop me...

I may wind up with patchwork on the mutifamily. landlord policy which is pretty cheap, $2 million policy for cheap, and safelystay which has a middling pay per booking service. But if nationwide offers a decent price and doesnt drop me, I would go with that...

JTVR - every insurance company is different. They all have different underwriting guidelines, but I know the pain you're going through. My wife has an Allstate agency and I've seen lots of weird situations. Just move on to the next company and try them. Or try an independent agent, they might be better able to fit you with a company that **wants** these kind of properties.

I am going thru hell trying to get a new VR ins policy for two diff buildings

Cbiz won't do my multifamily. What, you mean there's a common hallway? We can't do that.

There is only one exit from the second floor?

Do you have hard-wired smoke alarms? ( it would be over $10,000 for this large building)

Slice wouldn't do the building because there was a commercial space in the first floor...

How old is a building? Do you have knob and tube wiring?

We can only do actual cash value. Of course that means we will seriously depreciate any work like a roof or windows or etcetera Etc

You live in the building? We can't insure that!

You don't live in the building? We can't insure that!

Sprinklers?

Where are the nearest hydrants? Firehouse?

Is the building ever vacant? (no, vac rentals are never vacant. Have u ever covered this before???)

Do you allow people? (OK, made that one up)

Online transactions like vacation rentals, especially card not present, are probably in the high risk category. Think Lynbrook specialized in VRs. Maybe openedge not. This kind of stuff may only get worse.

Oh, initial conversation was fine too. he offered slightly lower rate than stripe. but now dragging me through over 3 weeks of 3rd degree...exhausted my patience. Not worth it.

I checked with Lynnbrook about 3 months ago and got a call from a very knowledgeable person. He was surprisingly open about how their system works, costs, etc, spent about 15 mins on the phone with me. I was impressed at least with that call, but haven't activated them yet (awaiting my website)

I filled out the lynnbrook form like 3 weeks ago, and they never got back to me!

So 3 weeks of dragging me through 3rd degree. I had to send proof of paid property taxes (they could have looked themselves online - it is publicly available) as they could not "verify ownership". I had to give statistics on how far in advance each cabin books, with percentage breakdowns of 1-5 days, 5-14 days, 14-30, 30-60 days etc. I had to give data on how much down booking deposit is. Now they are asking for last 2 years of tax returns saying this is "high risk". WUT? I have over 800 credit score and I am not even applying for a loan, mind you. All this nuisance is not worth to save .025 over stripe. I have been with stripe for over 2 years and NEVER had to go through such nuisance, I simply signed up online. I work for a major bank IT for Pete's sake, and they can see it by my email. All this for me to receive my own money? pass.

Hi everyone. Are any other VRBO customers noticing that downloads are labeled "HomeAway" rather than VRBO? And because of that are duplicating data that has already been downloaded? I download bookings and reviews every Monday (and sometimes again on Thursdays). My downloads today are filenamed HomeAway rather than VRBO and all data is importing in duplicate.

Hi All!
I have done a good search on this topic but can't find the answer to this scenario. I hope someone can clarify.

Here's my current secdep setup:

A few months ago I set up my property rules so the system does an automatic security deposit *hold* that happens three days prior to a guest's arrival. Just below where you choose that, in the next section on the page, you have to choose to either SEND an email reminder or NOT send. I didn't know which one to choose, so I selected the "recommended" option which is "An email reminder will be sent to the guest *IF* a security deposit is "NOT* scheduled to be automatically collected."

That language was a little confusing but because it said "recommended" next to it, I went ahead and selected it even though it felt in contradiction to prior setting. Honestly, I figured that because the secdep was going to be automatically collected, the email just wouldn't get sent except in specific cases.

Fast forward to today... I have a guest arriving on the 14th (three days from now) and my guest received an email (which I was CC'd on) asking her to "click here to submit your security deposit." That confused me, because I expected that the secdep was going to be held automatically, as per my property rules selections.

Are you still with me? LOL... :-)

She DID click through the link provided and submit her $500 deposit, but then I got worried that the OwnerRez system would ALSO do the automatic collection, so she would end up with a $1000 hold on her card. To prevent a double hold, I went immediately into her booking, clicked on TRANSACTIONS, clicked on the security deposit transaction, and switched the automated secdep deposit option to "Do Not Collect." Was that the right thing or the wrong thing to do? I really have no idea.

Secondly, since she received an email to click and submit a deposit, does that mean that my secdeps are NOT being automatically held, even though I chose the automatic hold option in my property rules? Because I thought the email reminder was ONLY going to come into play for bookings where the secdep was NOT going to be automatically collected.

Going forward, how should I configure my email reminder settings so this doesn't happen again? Do I just choose "Do not send reminder" and if so, will that work?

Thanks so much!