General Help and Questions

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We will be designing it so that you have multiple options with Damage Protection:

* Always reserve Security Deposit no matter what
* Only reserve Security Deposit if Damage Protection is NOT purchased
* Never reserve Security Deposit

It sounds like you'd actually like a fourth option which is to always reserve BUT reserve a smaller amount if Damage Protection is purchased.

-Michelle

Hi Silvia,

You may be right. I'm actually not aware that HomeAway makes reviewers have an account. If that's the case, then you're right that it wouldn't have a high likelihood of success. That being said, HomeAway is not the only site owners want reviews on. We see a lot of FlipKey and VacationHomeRentals listings as well. Both of those sites allow open reviews with email confirmation at most. And there are a good half a dozen other sites as well. If HomeAway makes reviewers have an account, my guess is that reviews will begin to plummet on their site and they'll lift the restriction at some point.

-Michelle

One thing I don't understand is why guests received different emails than we do. Can we receive the same format as they do? For example, when a guests books a reservation, we receive an email that states we have to go into the link to look at the details. Everything seems to be the owner clicking on a link to go to the website. Why? If we wanted to go to the website, we would do that. I am personally, always on the website, so I don't need this link to have me go there to look at the website.

What I need is an email that TELLS me the details on the website, so I can file it, with the details in there. The customer has that email. If I go to the BOOKED and then look at email sent, and then I click on EMAIL Preview for the customer, I have EVERYTHING I need there. Can we have that SAME email that is sent to the customer, sent to us...instead of clicking to see the details?

This happens a lot. Owners clicking to get into website to see details on what transpired. Extra steps to do this.

Thanks,
Claudia

Hi,

when you do have that working could you keep the option to continue to receive the email via your own and the new owner rez email? I tend keep my email open and not the websites so would probably see someone responded faster than waiting to log into owner rez.

thanks, Silvia

Hi Michelle,

I am still not comfortable with having them ONLY accept my T and c online, I have 6 places I want them to sign to be sure they understand my terms and conditions. I would like to interrupt the process and be able to send them a hard copy of the rental agreement - T and
C and then allow them to continue with the online payment once I receive this via fax or scan.

Is something like that possible? I know from my own experience I no longer read the T of S of many websites I join and I am sure this is the same thing. I have no problem putting it out there for future referance and even clicking it but I don't want it to continue to the payment screen until I have the documant in hand. Sometimes people tend to read written documents more than digital, also my rental agrement has different fonts and bold and underlines etc. Would your system be able to handle that? If not today, in the future?

I usually include the number of dogs allowed if any were agreed upon and have them sign that paragraph, so there are no misunderstandings. Same with the maximum number of occupants and that no house parties are to be held with the max allowed in the house including children. sure this may not prevent them from having a party but I did notice many not return my rental agreement and not book with me which is prefectly fine with me.

Thanks, Silvia

Hi Michelle,

I think my sister asked this question already but don;t remember the answer. Do you envision setting up follow up correspondence from Owner Rez in the future? I know for now we need to do it manually but just curious if it's on the drawing board for a future enhancement.

Thanks Silvia

I have a question regarding this topic, I also sell the same damage waiver insurance through the same listing site and though I no longer take as high a security deposit I do still take a 'good care deposit' to cover the things damage won't - such as extra cleaning fees, fines the development might charge and I need to pay since they didn't - though those would be more than $75 usually. I feel the renter still has a vested interest in making sure the rental is left clean and fine free to avoid having their deposit actually processed, I usually send them back the deposit within a week when they buy the insurance else it's 30 days. Is there a way to override your shutting off the security deposit feature or how would I do this?

Michelle that would be great but not sure how that would work for homeaway and vrbo since don't they require the guest to login/register to post the review? That has been our major problem since they have instituted the new review process. Many of our reviews are no longer being completed due to this requirement.

How are the renters going to verify that they wrote that review? Through your system or homeaway's.

Silvia

Hi psiho,

Thanks for the feedback! Your currency and reporting requests are already on the dev roadmap, though not yet scheduled. Your second request - the ability to specify NO second payment - is a new one. I've never heard that before, but I like it! I can definitely see how that would be useful, and I'm going to send that up the ladder.

Please do check back on us. We're working very hard to be the best software in the biz.

-Michelle

My first impression is that this is very promising. Features are very well chosen not to complicate things but still powerful enough to manage apartments. Comming from online softweare development myself I know how hard is to achieve that.

Anyway, here are my showstoppers:
1) Curryncy limited to $ - this must be very high on your list unless you target USA only and that would be a shame for such a small feature. Maybe not complete multilanguage featurelist, only curency label to change (don't know about payment gateways)

2) Second billing due - validation rules do not allow it to be se to 0. here in Croatia it is very common to take 30% advanced payment but remaining 70% is payed in cash on arrival!

3rd important feature I miss is notshow stopper but I need it badly:

3) Reporting - maybe basic reporting or at least full export of data so we can do it in excel. Sometimes I need it for some tax reports (visitors list) or I need it for management decissions (stats on bookings, accepted offers, etc.)

Anyway.. congrats on a very good start and wish you luck in your future business.

Great.

Claudia

No, but we're planning on doing it anyway. The idea is to ask the guest at the bottom of the review "Do you mind if we submit this review to TripAdvisor, HomeAway, etc on your behalf? We won't share any private details". If they say yes, we'll use the public review pages on those website to post our review. The guest will then get confirmation emails from those sites (TripAdvisor, HomeAway, etc) asking if they really posted the review which hopefully they'll confirm. That's the best we can do. We believe it should work well.

-Michelle

That would be great if we can have the link to our reveiw. Any luck with HomeAway or VRBO letting you enter it into their system, once received?

Claudia

We don't send them any survey ourselves at the moment. We include that text - "we MAY send you a survey" - because a lot of owners like to send a review request (from FlipKey, HomeAway, etc) to the guest after the fact. We like to alert the guest that it might be coming so when they get the review request email, they understand why they're getting it.

Here's a forum post about it last year:

https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/general-help/security-deposit-release-email

In addition, we are designing our own review system that will ask the guest to fill out a survey. Our goal is to ask the guest directly for the review, since they're used to seeing our emails, and then be able to update all the listing sites so the review is everywhere.

-Michelle

When you release the hold on the card, you state that a survey is sent. What does the survey say and where do I go to see the response?

Is this like the REVIEW? Where do we enter the link for a reveiw?

Claudia

*Very* strange observation. He's saying that when he clicked to go to the renter agreement page, it crashed. I don't see anything like that on my end. Well, we'll continue to monitor. ~Sam. PS. I looked in the servers logs and it appears that other guests have used Apple/Chrome with no problem.

Hi Sam,

Here was his response...

" On chrome when the finalize button was clicked it seemed to try and go to a new page that it couldn't find and thus showed the 404 error. On firefox when thr button was clicked it opened up a new section within the page that had the contract details. Seems like chrome wasn't able to understand that the click thru opened a new section within the existing window.

This was on a MacBook pro using the latest updates for both browsers.

Sent with Yoyodyne technology. "

Thanks,
Claudia

Sam, I will try to find out a little more information. He did say maybe it was something on his side. Since I don't understand some of these things, I figured I would just copy and paste his statement. I know one little word that is misplaced could make a difference, when it comes to these things.

Claudia

Claudia, as it happens, we have an Apple machine in the office w/ Chrome already loaded. I tested a public quote form from start to finish. Zero problems. It looks perfect and went all the way through smoothly. Please let me know if your guest forwards any screenshots or mentions anything specifically. It might be a problem on their end with an extension or plugin they have installed. ~Sam

On Windows, we test for Chrome, Firefox, IE8+ and Safari. On Apple, we test Safari and Firefox. Chrome on Apple should be (theoretically) identical in rendering behavior as Chrome on Windows. Did your guest provide any more information? I'd love to know what they meant by "doesn't see to work". Rendering issues? Buttons didn't work? ~Sam

Here is a email I received from a guests trying to book online...

You might want to tell your booking agency that it doesnt seem to work on Apple computers using the Chrome browser.

Thanks,
Claudia

Hi Claudia,

It CAN be done, certainly, but there are no plans for that kind of thing right now. Auto-complete is what it's called, and it's a great suggestion.

-Michelle

Is it possible to have it auto fill a previous email address or name? I am not sure if Auto Fill is the correct term. You know when you start to enter something and the computer searches for what it might be and starts to fill it in?

That would then let us know that the email address or name is familiar with the system, thus letting the owner know that we had a previous dealing with them. Whether it was just an inquiry or an actual booking.

Can this be done?

Claudia

Not that specifically, but we'll be adding CRM features in the future that merge all the bookings, quotes and inquiries for a guest into a single contact history so you can see things like this.

-Michelle

Thanks for the ideas. Please do send me a copy of your spreadsheet. I can't guarantee that we would produce the exact same report for you, but it may expand our idea-base.

-Michelle

I was looking over your report section, for what will be coming up. I wanted to see if you had the usual, standard information. For examaple:

Will you generate a report which basically provides...

Date of Contract
Name / Total People
Dates of Rental
Actual Price
Taxes Paid
Total w/o Sec. Dep.
CC/CK
Website
Paid
PAYPAL
Balance Owed
Cleaning Fee
Credit Card Fee
Damage Insurance
Real Total - After Cleaning Fee
Email Address
Nts Rented
Website
Comments
Total for Listing Bookings

All of the above, going across, in a row?

This what I currently have that I call my BIBLE. It is not in a report form, but in an EXCEL spreadsheet. When it comes time to pay for the taxes, it is all there, calculated already.

This spreadsheet is a VERY QUICK and easy glance at EVERYTHING that is happening with my bookings. All the information is basically on this one speadsheet.

If you are interested in seeing it, please let me know and I will send it to you, so you have a better idea what I am looking at.

Thanks,
Claudia

I don't know if you have this in the works already, but do you have where the system alerts the owner that the email address or Full Name inquiried previously?

This always helps to go back in "history" and see what happened with that previous request. Did they book? Did we have a conversation and it didn't work out?

Thoughts?

Claudia

Great!

You guys are all doing such a great job! You are very fast, too. Well, from what I see since I began here.

Claudia

Small stuff, and it's going to be fast. Mostly small tweaks, grammar fixes, enhancements. Your request to have a fixed amount for the first payment was included.

-Michelle

Can I ask what is currently in the works for the next sprint?

Thanks,
Claudia