General Help and Questions

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Hi,
How will OwnerReservations.com handle the upcoming changes to the HomeAway inquiry system where they will no longer send owners the e-mail address of guests in an inquiry e-mail?

Owners will be asked to log on to HomeAway in order to obtain this information. Won't this, effectively, disable OwnerReservataions.com?

Peter.

Hi David,

I will email you the paper version of the application so you can see the rates page.

There is no extra fee for non-qual, foreign, PCI or any of that. No monthly minimum, no gateway, no annual, no setup. There is only a flat rate of 2.95%.

At the end of the month, you'll get a statement showing how much you processed and 2.95% of that will be deducted from your bank account.

Lately we've been dealing with an issue known as FANF - a new fee that Visa has leveled at everyone in the industry in response to the Durbin amendment, which hurt Visa and helped MasterCard. But even that fee will not be charged to you. If it shows up, our banking partner will credit it back.

Again, only 2.95% of whatever your gross processing is.

Look for an email from me with the application and T&C.

-Michelle

That's great news - I am thinking about moving over to your merchant account from the one I have been using. The site state:
"All merchant accounts have fees, based on Interchange rates. Our banking partner's fees are within the industry average at 2.95%. No other setup, annual, monthly or gateway fees are charged. Just a flat rate of 2.95%."

Is there somewhere that I can see all the terms and pricing (i.e. non-qual transactions, PCI compliance, etc (before I go through the trouble of signing-up?

Thanks,
David

Claudia,

You beat me to it! I was going to post on this thread to alert the watchers.

You can see the overview pricing here:

https://www.ownerrez.com/pricing

You can see a personalized pricing page in your account here:

https://app.ownerrez.com/account/billing

Active beta users will also get a 25% lifetime discount on their bookings fees, which is mentioned on your personalized pricing page.

-Michelle

Claudia, thanks! It's been a long time coming. We feel like we're a "real product" now instead of just a hobby that we were passionate about. Yes, you nailed it - existing users have a 7 day trial, after which the first month begins. New users still have a full 30 day trial ~Sam

I see you went live today. Congratulations!

So that I understand, we will begin to incur expenses, if not using your merchant account, starting next month? Since you have a trail period of a week, correct? So, any bookings made from July 5th on?

Thanks,
Claudia

NEVER MIND. Somehow those dates are reserved, when it was not showing reserved on another calendar. Sorry for the confusion!!!

Claudia

I don't follow. What's the inquiry #?

What dates are you trying to change the inquiry too?

Did you click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the Verify form after updating the date fields?

It is not in the Quote Screen.

I tried changing it in the Verify screen, but it still does not give me a Calculate screen.

Claudia

The inquiry will show as unavailable as long as the dates on the inquiry are already taken. Update the inquiry by going to the Verify tab (on the inquiry) and changing the date fields.

You may also need to change the quote dates as well if you already created a quote. You can do that by opening the quote, via the Quotes menu, clicking on the Dates tab and changing them there.

Changing the inquiry dates does not change the quote dates and vice versa. Inquiries and quotes are two separate entities in the system.

We know this process is a bit disjointed. There are a lot of changes coming to inquiries shortly.

-Michelle

I received an inquiry, which dates were not available. When I went back to change the dates to an available date, since they were flexible, I can't seem to get to the quote side. If I say I want to answer it, it has the message that the dates are not available.

How do I fix this, other than marking it as read and then manaually creating a new quote?

System can maybe do a check, after each change?

Thanks,
Claudia

Credit card fee would have been $12 and it is charged at the beginning of the month. So, it is not that.

Claudia

Hi Claudia,

It's the end of the month so it's most likely your credit card fees for the months, but that's just a guess.

-Michelle

Hi Michele,

I was charged $77.50 today under the name of Cornerstone! When I called my bank to find out where this came from, they told me it is a company named Sage/Cornerstone. Tim is looking into it.

Claudia

At the time I didn't think I needed it. I deposited the check and I throw out the envelope. I went through my recycling pile and couldn't find it anywhere. I have two piles of recycling, one in my office (doesn't get recycled as often) and one downstairs, where I open most of my mail and then recycle what I don't need.

Since emails were going back and forth if he wanted to use the credit card for the security hold, he eventually said yes. When I was ready to enter the information, I didn't have the address anymore. Another email out for the address and wait for him to respond.

Claudia

You're right - we need to ask for an address and phone from everyone, payment or not.

In the meantime, can't you find their address on the check they send to you?

Do they fill in the address for a check?

We would need the address, to refund the check. There is nothing on the payment side that gives an address or phone number. Absolutley no information on them, once booked.

My renter paid the deposit by check. He happened to give me his credit card information to put a hold on his credit card, for security purposes. I went to enter the information and couldn't find anything on his address (nor phone number). I searched everywhere. I ultimately had to ask him for the address, for me to continue to process his Security Deposit.

Claudia

The only address we save from the guest is on the payments they send. So to find it, navigate to the booking, click the Payments tab, view a payment and you'll see the name, address and phone number they used to submit the payment. I'm referring to credit card payments of course.

We already have on the dev roadmap an update to make the guest provide a "main" address and phone number (or several) before submitting their payment. This will be on the contact page prior to signing the T&C when accepting the quote.

Some background... When we built OwnerRez, our original goal was to be simple and minimalist by nature. We didn't want the owner and guest to have to wade through dozens of forms filling in tons of information, and we didn't want a cluttered design. Since then, we've realized that there are quite a few things that guests still need to provide for the owner to be comfortable, and we've been adding them one by one.

Hope this helps,

-Michelle

Where would I find the guest address, after they booked???

Thanks,
Claudia

No, we don't, and we don't on purpose. We thought about doing that way back when we first start ed syncing calendars (whether or not to check periodically to make sure that the booking was still there) and decided against it.

There were several reasons but the biggest is we want our calendar syncs to "do no harm" first and foremost.

If you change your calendars manually, we don't want our syncs coming long and changing them back to something you don't want. Our system should only add, update or delete bookings from third-party calendars the FIRST time and then leave it at that.

There are some updates we're going to be making so you can get more transparency into the sync process, but the "do no harm" rule will still apply.

Thanks, I had done that already. That was what I was going to ask next... does ownerrez periodically check to see that the calendars are in sync? Oh, wait. I remember you said that it is only one way. Never mind.

Thanks,
Claudia

At the moment, no. Either a booking exists or it does not. It can only be marked pending if no payments have been entered. We don't have a tentative status.

In the situation you cited, you'd have to wait until she decides to cancel to cancel the booking.

That being said, if you're mainly concerned about getting inquiries for it in the meantime, you could always manually open the dates back up on your HomeAwayConnect/FlipKey calendars so people still think you're available. Just login to those sites and remove the booking from their calendars.

-Michelle

Is there a way to put a BOOKED transaction in a pending state? What happens to the calendar? Does it change to tentative?

Someone booked for Labor Day and is now thinking she MIGHT have to cancel. I want to put the calendar in a tentative state, and have her as TENTATIVE on OwnerRez.

Thanks,
Claudia

Very interesting. Yes, that is what I will do. Enter it under Extra night.

Thanks!
Claudia

Hi Claudia,

You could always specify a custom amount in the "Extra Nights" box.

-Michelle

EDIT: I'm referring to the same thing Paul just said. :-)

I understand. Lot of owners ban anything less than week slots.

In that case, open your Weekly rate and under the Extra Nights field, deselect the "Calculate the rate for extra nights by using other charge types" option.

An amount field will appear below that and you can enter the pro-rated amount.

I understand. I will have to try to figure out the correct format for the added nights. There is no PER NIGHT stay. It reduces the more you rent.

Claudia

I found the reason. Peter's quote fell inside your rate period called "Fall 2012".

Inside that rate period, you have one and only one rate category: a 'Week' type which you define as 7 nights.

Peter's quote was to arrive 10/7 and depart 10/20. That's 13 nights.

Since your Weekly rate is defined as 7 nights, the system could not calculate two weeks. Two weeks would be 14 nights. Peter is only staying 13.

In that situation, the system looks to other rate categories (such as the 'Single Night' type) to see how to calculate the remaining nights.

If you had a Single Night rate defined, the system would have added 6 more nights at the Single Rate to the quote, in addition to the 1 Week. Your quote would have looked like this:

1 week (10/7 - 10/13) at Fall 2012 rates
6 nights (10/13 - 19) at Fall 2012 rates

Go add a Single Night rate to your "Fall 2012" rate period and it will fix the problem.

Alternatively, you can also define the "Extra Nights" field on your Weekly rate to enter a specific amount. That would also have fixed this problem.

All of your rate periods need to have Single Night defined. Without that, you can't be 100% sure that the quoting system will also fill every variation. What happens if someone requests 3 or 4 nights instead of a week? You probably want to have a nightly rate.

-Michelle

Hi Michele,

Look at the last booking for Peter. When the quote originally created, it only had $725 for one week. I had to manually change it to "13 days". This had happened before when it was full 2 weeks, where I had to manually change it. I just forgot to write it up.

Claudia

Hi Claudia,

I ran some quick tests with the parameters you mentioned. Everything works fine for me. I generated 2 weeks, 3 weeks and even some combination week/weekend/night ones.

I'll take a look at your account in a little bit to see if I can figure out where the problem is.

-Michelle