General Help and Questions

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OK. I will add them to my address book and hope that it will stop going in the Spam Folder.

Claudia

I'm sorry to hear that our alerts are landing in your spam folder. We've done a lot of work to make sure our emails don't do that, but unfortunately the email service providers (Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, etc) have their own policies.

Usually, you can configure your email settings to "white-list" certain email addresses.

In Gmail, any email address in your Contacts automatically is white-listed.

Also in Gmail, you can create a filter for messages that come from a certain email address to "never send to spam".

In AOL, you can white-list an email address by adding it to your AOL address book.

In Yahoo, you have set up a filter.

The email addresses you want to white-list are:

alerts@ownerreservations.com
bookings@ownerreservations.com
quotes@ownerreservations.com
inquiries@ownerreservations.com

-Michelle

How can I stop OwnerRez emails going into my Spam Folder? I have it on medium for control. When I set it to Low, it still goes into Spam.

Claudia

No idea, but if you email me your HomeAway login credentials offline, I'll login and look at it for you. That's the best I can do.

For other listing sites that don't allow two emails, you can set up a forward (in Gmail for instance) to send a copy of all inquiry email to OwnerRez. If you do that, make sure the filter only looks for inquiry email from the listing site. Do not forward all email or you'll be inundated with "unrecognized email" alerts from our system.

-Michelle

Hi Michelle,

I finally got an inquiry from HomeAway and it still only came in via OwnerRez. I did not get the original inquiry sent to me via HomeAway. What am I doing wrong?

Also, Vacation Rentals doesn't seem to allow two emails. Do you if this is incorrect?n I only get it via OwnerRez.

Claudia

Well, we could always put that in our email template, without having it as a separate link, I guess.

Claudia

Yes, that is high on the list as well. Not only pictures, but a link back to the listing site.

-Michelle

OK.

Also, can you add the capability to add pictures in the body of the email sent to the guest, whether it is the initial response letter or, moving forward, followup letters. Guest do forget which inquiry property we are are each referring to. I also like to add a few pictures, throughout my email reiterating what I am speaking of.

Claudia

Hi Pawel,

There's a monthly fee of $30, an annual PCI fee of $25, a per transaction fee of $.30 (I believe) and then a bunch of other fees for things like business cards, debit cards, international charges, "rate 2" and "rate 3", etc. MasterCard and Visa "brand usage" is in there too.

It was actually quite astounding to me to see how many interchange fees there are for "normal" merchant accounts.

The only OwnerRez customers that like the 2.25% deal are the ones that do more than $20k per month in processing. It's worth it at that point since the volume is higher.

-Michelle

Yes, the previously-booked people, that you had to enter manually, are a different story. You have to get their credit card info (by phone or email offline) and then use it to schedule the second payment and security deposit.

I was talking about new bookings, moving forward.

-Michelle

Hi Michelle,

When I go in there and go to "Add Contact", I already have another contact with my personal email address. I just hit SAVE and we will see if both OwnerRez gets it and my personal email. However, it was there already and I was not getting the inquiry in my personal email.

I will let you know if it makes a difference that I hit SAVE under the old contact with my personal email.

As for the quote, I quess I was thinking about the previously booked one, before I came on to OwnerRez. Those are entered manually, but they would have to give me their credit card info for me to enter it into the OwnerRez system. They are not done automatically. Correct?

Claudia

Hi Michelle,

Can you tell me what the fees related to the 2.25% rate deal are?

Thanks, Pawel

A number of things are incorrect about what you just said...

First, you CAN tell HomeAway to send inquiries to more than one email address. Go into your listing on HomeAway, click the Contacts tab and use the dropdown to select "Add New Contact". Then put in your email address. They'll send the inquiries to you and OwnerRez both.

Second, you don't have to have inquiries come into the system in order to create quotes. You can create quotes manually at any time. Hover over the Quotes menu in OwnerRez and click Create New Quote. Then, you can send that quote to the guest, either by sending them the payment form link in your own email or using the quote email form, so they can accept/finalize their booking.

Does that make sense?

-Michelle

Hi Michelle,

Thank you for the update. Can I ask you to include downloads of any pictures we want to include in the body of our email?

I do try to do what you suggested. It is very hard, in some case. For example, when an email comes from HomeAway, since HA only allows you one email address, it doesn't come to my normal email, so that I could answer it from there. I have to go into OwnerRez and try to get the email, then I have to work around trying to send them the quote or not available email. I could take the email out of the HA but then if they do book, then they can't send the payment via OwnerRez. And the scheduled payments won't take place because I entered it manually. Or, am I missing something? I am trying to have it go through the OwnerRez and keep the automatic payment system do it's job. As far as I understand, that can't happen if I create the quote/inquiry myself. Thus, it has to come in through OwnerRez. At least, for now. If I was able to do that, then I can manage it the way you suggest and just have it go through my main email address and then create it myself...for now.

Claudia

Hi Claudia,

As with all updates, we are tackling small items first and then expanding. This approach allows us to evaluate what we're doing right or wrong quickly without spending 6 months to a year working on a massive feature that may not be needed.

First, we'll be working on small email changes under the covers. We're going to be storing email so that you can see what's been sent. We'll also be adding a simple set of mail merge fields, or "tags" as you call them, so the standard message bodies that are there now can be saved with something different. After that, we'll be setting up a template structure so that you can craft multiple bodies for each type of email form. After that, we'll be expanding to HTML messages (or "rich text") so that you can have your own font and colors and such.

Of course, this could change as we move through the process based on the success or failure of the updates.

You may want to use OwnerRez in parallel with your own email program. In other words, respond to inquiries as you normally would, inside your own Gmail or Hotmail email program, and then use OwnerRez to generate quotes and accept payments. So you talk to the guest and get them to the point where they want to book. At that point, create a manual quote in OwnerRez and send them the link (either copy/paste the payment link into your email or use the quote email form at that point). We have a number of users that do this because they want to maintain their own email style.

-Michelle

"After that, THE VERY NEXT sprint is all email related. Major major email changes coming.

- Michelle"

Hi Michelle,

Can you give me some examples of the changes in email you are working on? I am really struggling here with the way it is now.

Also, I know you can't give me a date, but can you give me a ballpark as to the date you would LIKE to implement the above sprint?

Thanks,
Claudia

I agree with everything David just said. You guys are great!

Claudia

Thanks for the (as always) super quick response. In the interim I will take it out of the contract as it is causing confusion (which I already did). Please let me know when the display issue is fixed.

I am always amazed at the super fast responses to issues and how the product continues to develop and make owning a vacation rental easier!

Keep up the awesome work!

David

Dave, I was going to come back with this. I thought that might be what you were looking at. That's a display issue with the quote - which we've flagged to fix ASAP - but the actual final PDF that's being generated has the right dates in it. So if you were to go ahead and finish accepting that quote, turning it into a booking, you'd see that the final PDF has the right dates in it. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. ~Sam

I just took a look at a test quote I did for July 9 and 10th and the dates in the contract are being populated as:

Arrival Date: May 30, 2012
Depature date: May 31, 2012

Here is a link to the quote:

https://app.ownerrez.com/forms/quotes/c65bde3ad9fe42b18061322babbd28db

David

Sam,

I took it out last night since I had a guest notify me that the dates in the contract were wrong. I did a test quote to myself and saw the same behavior - I will put it back in right now as another test.

David

Thanks for the heads up, Claudia. That really helps. I'm looking into one other possibility right now.

Sam, I went back and looked at my contracts and I have the inserts for booking dates. They are fine on my end.

Maybe the insert used is "Booking Date" and not the other "Booking" inserts.

Claudia

Dave, we couldn't reproduce the problem so I took a look at the renter agreements in your account. You have two renter agreements, one of which is being used. I don't see anywhere in that renter agreement where you have the 'BookingArrivalDate' or 'BookingDepartureDate' fields inserted. Can you be clearer about what field is failing? I also tested those fields on my end and didn't notice them acting incorrectly. ~Sam

Hi David,

We're looking into this now to see if we can reproduce what you are seeing on our end.

-Michelle

If I use the insert field Booking arrival date and Booking Departure date in the contract,the form is date that is displayed is not the actual booking date, but the date that the form is completed by (I think) that date + x days (x= the number of days of the stay). It would be nice to be able to put the correct date in the contract. Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks,
David

If you're referring to software fees, yes. Any bookings that are paid for via a merchant account we set up (whether the payments are credit card or e-check) will be free.

-Michelle

When you integrate Echeck using Sage, will it be free for us owners, since it would be done via Sage?

Claudia

Our software is 100% web based. It makes no difference what type of computer you access our software from. You can use PC or Mac, and we support IE, FireFox, Chrome and Safari browsers.

It's like your online banking. You just login, from any browser, and it's all there.

-Michelle

I presently have a PC laptop. I have working with that with OwnerRez with the PC. I entered all my information on there. If I bought a Mac laptop would there be an issues with the old information? Would I have to reenter everything or it is fine to just ocntinue?

Thanks,
Claudia