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Hi,
We do have an availability/property search widget which has a location drop down. Once selected the widget will only show properties that match the criteria chosen by a potential guest, and then once that property is selected it generally would take the guest to a page where they can book that property.
If this still isn't quite what you're looking for, I'd recommend reaching out to our helpdesk with more specific details as to what you're trying to accomplish and we'll see if we can work with you any.
~Caleb
This is why I haven't integrated the API. It seems like I will lose some personalizing capabilities. Right now I import their contact information manually and then push out my rental agreement contact form which then puts them in my system for future email triggers. It is a bit clunky but since I only have 3 properties I can still manage it this way.
I have imported VRBO bookings (and AirBNB) that won't fire the automated triggers b/c the system says there's no message thread. Now that my API is integrated, I tried to "create" a thread by sending a VRBO msg via ORez, that didn't work.
Will this be fixed with NEW reservations created via VRBO and I just have to manually send the imported bookings?
All sorted. Had to get the listing owner to go into his account and confirm his identity? Everything worked again after that?
Snooze still exists in the mobile app if anyone else needs it.
This could be the Airbnb API screwing around with their launch.
This morning I spotted the warning
Attention needed! There is a problem with your Airbnb channel account. The connection is no longer authorized. Please reauthorize your Airbnb channel account.
So i check and it is one of my customers accounts. I click reauthorise and OR says your listing is verified. But it takes me to my airbnb settings page.
Go back to the customers. repeat and the same happens.
Click on fix it and it takes me to my airbnb account (on airbnb) with my details. I confirm an it says done.
Come back to OR and nothing has changed.
nb the whole layout on AIRBNB has changed. The snooze option is hiding so i've switched it to request to book.
This might just be me but its probably not a coincidence that it happens today.
Any help gratefully received.
More detailed information is in the above posts in this thread - it is not necessary to pre-approve anything. The guest should simply proceed to book via Vrbo, your manual participation in advance is not required.
Since I'm using OwnerRez, I'm using their "trust accounting model" for my property management clients.
Unless I'm missing a trick, while the accounting makes sense, the banking doesn't. It would seem, in order to keep everything straight, that I will need to open a new "trust" account for each client. Also, since I'm listing on Vrbo and have a private site as well, that I'll also need to open an account for each client on Stripe.
Banks don't like this. To them, multiple accounts means something fishy is going on. I'm being met with disbelief and obstacles.
How do other people manage this? Do you have one "trust account" for multiple clients? Is there a bank that understands this and you like?
I'm a little stuck. I need to onboard clients and I've been delaying until I found a solution.
Thanks for anyone's help.
Good to hear, good to know. So far I'm happy I just get frustrated and stuck from time to time.
I'm thoroughly confused on how to handle VRBO inquiries. I've responded, but I'm unable to pre-approve via VRBO's portal and the guest info wasn't imported to send a quote via OR.
What are the proper steps when an inquiry is received?
I have my own website and have the booking widget on it but there is not a search option for location. We have properties across NC so this is very important to us and in fact, the website capability is one of the main reasons we chose OwnerRez. At this point I am considering changing to Guesty unless someone has a work around?
Hi All,
Received a message from Booking.com today encouraging turning on Security Settings for Messaging including only allowing certain emails for contact guests and blocking links in messages with guests. I was wondering if anyone else received this and what your approach is going to be or if there is guidance for how we should set this up to ensure that links to rental agreements, our websites etc still work and that messages still get to the guests.
The settings are found under Property | Messaging Preferences | Security Settings.
Thanks
the company that can be trusted to guide people through it all is going to become a dominant player.
Well, that's the trick for sure. If you examine our ratings and evaluations as I do, there's a clear pattern - OwnerRez is known as having the best quality support in the industry, but certainly not the fastest. What we are working to do is to increase the speed without compromising the quality, which is why we can't "just hire" people - we need to carefully select the very best, and then train thoroughly.
Those who have been with OwnerRez for any length of time can testify that the support team has grown enormously over the past few years, and this will continue as we seek to provide the very best possible service. I can assure you that OwnerRez leadership does not view support as an expense in the sense you mean - we know full well that improving the areas where it's needed while not compromising what we do well, is absolutely essential to our continued success.
Thanks for your response. It sounds like from other responses that timely communication is an issue. This may need to be prioritized over further development until it's running smoothly or you may begin to lose competitive advantage.
Thanks for the response. These are good tips!
The other way to do this is set a higher base price and then use discounts to achieve your pricing. You can do this both on OwnerRez, or if you use a pricing engine like PriceLabs, you may be able to do it there. Or you can use a combination (but be careful not to stack them unintentionally).
As an example, if you wanted to charge $250 a night except for one- and two-day stays, where you wanted the price to be $500, you could set a base rate of $500 and then set a 50% discount for stays of 3, 4, 5, or 6 nights, which would yield the result you want. (After 6 days, you'd run into your weekly discount....) Obviously, you could vary what discounts you want to to encourage or discourage particular lengths of stay.
I wrote a similar complaint recently. It's far from ideal, but I was encouraged to see that OwnerRez was hiring help-desk personnel.
Personally I think they might be missing a trick because in an area as fast-moving, complex, and stuffed with cash as this industry is, the company that can be trusted to guide people through it all is going to become a dominant player. Companies generally need to stop looking at customer service as a cost, and more as ongoing customer retention marketing, and word-of-mouth marketing for future customers.
But I digress. As OwnerRez deals with their scaling problems, I've found that the best way to get assistance with a pressing issue is to use these forums, and follow up with the help desk if it's an issue specific to my account.
If you do send a message into the help desk by email, you will get a response saying that they got it. If you *don't* get that response, maybe that's a clue that your message went to spam. I always look for the confirmation before settling in to wait for a few days.
As a side note, I also read the forums and contribute when I can help. If everyone did this it would alleviate some pressure on the help desk staff.
That's a bit more difficult, but it can be done using CSS. Here's more information:
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/hosted-website-css-magic#hosted-site-hero-unit-font-color
Thank you for this. I was able to get the text in, but I would like to edit the font, size, and position on the page. The place that the words land on the photo is not ideal for reading if that makes sense... Any tips on changing just the font type and size of the banner text on top of the hero unit photo? Thanks!
This support doc may be helpful:
Is there a link to step by step instructions for setting up text on top of the Hero Unit photo on website? Also how to change the text font... Thanks!
Weird but thanks for digging that up.
Thank you so much for your help!
There is no normal situation where you should go weeks with no reply at all to a ticket.
But, looking at your account, I do see that happened to you... your message was identified as spam, which is why nobody ever saw it. :-/ I've fished it out of that bucket and sent it to the right place. Sorry for the delay!
As far as a portal to see your ticket history, that is a possibility for the future, but we don't have any timeframe in particular.
Also having the same issue. I think I've sent in a couple tickets and it's been a few weeks with no reply. Getting a response that it's being worked on would be great or even a place to log in and see your open tickets would be beneficial.
Any plans for that Ken?
OwnerRez has limited support on the weekends, so, it is normal for tickets sent on Friday or late Thursday to be in queue until sometime Monday or Tuesday.
While we are looking into adding chat support, the real issue is a shortage of support representatives - which is why we are in the process of hiring more, though it will naturally take a bit to get them fully trained and up to speed.
Our immediate goal is to reliably respond to all ticket requests within 1 business day. At the moment, we're hovering around that - it's achieved more often than not, but not consistently. Once that goal is accomplished, we will work to further reduce response time. But even more important is to maintain the quality of support - it's not acceptable to us to "just respond" without having a substantive, useful answer, which in turn requires experienced trained staff.
For having such a great platform, OR really fails in their customer support. No chat feature and multi-day response time. I sent a request a few days ago with an issue i was having and still haven't gotten a response.
Anyone else having these issues? Any ideas on how to get a quicker response from OR? It's hard to understand why so many companies have a chat feature but OR doesn't see that as a priority.
Currently when a new booking comes in i use the "notes"field to create a mini-checklist of everything i need to ask and badger the guest before check in.. A short list of like Did they fill in the security deposit? did they register with our HOA community yet? Did they fill in the Docusign lease agreement? are they bringing pets? etc etc.... it is an extensive list. Is there a way to have a "check list" automatically generated per booking per property, that i can just click to check off as things arrive? Bonus Points, if this could be AI Driven through triggers to automatically remind (aka badger) guests every 48 hours until they complete their tasks. Either feature suggestion or ways to make this work as-is today?
I am already using tag automation, however we can not setup multiple triggers from that. I need a very simple ability to say "send this email every day at 9am until this tag/task is removed". Right now your system will trigger ONCE on DAY1 and not RETRIGGER on days 2-99.
This should be working automatically, so, please write in to the Helpdesk with specific details, including the booking number, and screenshots from Airbnb showing the transaction history of the booking, as well as the refund, so we can investigate.
Last night the water went off at a property, in the middle of a cold windstorm. The guest was cool about it. The owner and I agreed to give him a partial refund, which I did, via Airbnb.
OwnerRez isn't showing the refund, at least not in a way that I can find it. Do I need to enter this manually, and if so, how?
Any help greatly appreciated. I was unable to find anything in the help archives.