General Help and Questions

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Hi Cathleen,

Email History still shows whether an email had been opened or not?

Here is a brief video to show you how that looks:

Email History and Activity Timeline Overview 📧 - Watch Video

As I mention in the video, if there was somewhere else you feel the deliverability should show let me know.  And if you want to make your own loom so it is clear what you are talking about, feel free to email that to us at help@ownerrez.com

Hope that helps and hope you have a great day!

-Steve

A booking email history "feedback" used to show when the email was opened. Now, it's not. Why?

This has happened to me recently as well. There is no error that appears on my end -- it just doesn't send. 

I have issues responding to messages using the mobile version on my iPhone 14. I can type but the send button won't work. I either have to close/reopen or go to my computer.

I think it happens more often when I'm responding to an incoming message.

Next time it happens I'll try to screen record but curious if anyone else has a similar problem.

Hi Dan!

Can you please submit a ticket by writing to help@ownerrez.com? When writing in, please let us know which widget you're attempting to add the code to so we can take a look. 

Existing early bird and last-minute discounts should automatically convert into Vrbo “promos,” giving them the strike-through pricing on listings.

In addition to that, the new promotions will include:

• Mobile promos (targeted to mobile users)
• One Key member promos (for Expedia Group loyalty members)

Other promo types are already covered:

• New listing promo is supported through existing listing functionality.
• Length-of-stay discounts (weekly and monthly) already trigger the strike-through pricing automatically.

Vrbo says that only one promo can be applied at a time, and the one with the deepest discount will be applied.

Stacking:

Standard discounts should not stack on Airbnb, so you don’t need to add any additional conditions there.

For Vrbo, however both a Length of Stay (LOS) discount and a Last Minute discount can sync at the same time. To prevent stacking, set up a standard Last Minute discount for Vrbo, and then use a custom LOS discount with a date restriction.

For example, if your Last Minute discount applies to bookings made within 14 days of arrival, you can add a condition to your LOS discount such as:

“Booking date is more than 14 days before arrival.”

This ensures the LOS discount will never apply to bookings that qualify for the Last Minute discount, preventing accidental stacking on Vrbo.

I am incorporating the new VRBO OneKey and Moblie discounts, but I wanted to make sure these discounts were NOT going to stack with each other if a OneKey member booked via mobile? I also want to make sure that they don't stack with Early Bird and Last Minute discounts. I would like to only offer one discount and make sure they don't  all stack. Does anyone know if this is possible and if so how do I avoid multiple discounts being added?

When you connect to Vrbo through their API, Vrbo treats you like a professional partner: they show your listing, but all booking details are handled on your side. However, Vrbo works hard to keep guest communication inside their system to prevent off-platform bookings.

Because of this:

• Vrbo inquiries cannot be turned into bookings. Guests can only book after the inquiry stage is finished.

• The Quote and Pre-Approve buttons in your Vrbo dashboard do not work.

• When an inquiry imports into OwnerRez, it may look like you can send a quote or change charges, but guests cannot accept that quote. Vrbo blocks links that would allow it to turn into a booking.

Ways to adjust pricing for a Vrbo guest

Important: Vrbo’s ~15% guest fee does not go down even if you lower the price later in OwnerRez.

1. Discuss and Refund

You and the guest agree on a price through the Vrbo inbox.
They book at the normal price, and you refund the difference afterward.
Downsides: Guests may hesitate, and you might pay refund processing fees depending on your payment processor.

2. Adjust Rates and Min Nights

You and the guest agree on a price.
You temporarily change your rates/min nights for those dates, wait for Vrbo to sync (10–15 minutes), and the guest books right away.
Risks:

• Anyone could book at that lowered rate.

• Dynamic pricing tools may overwrite your manual changes on the next sync.

• Requires both you and the guest to act fast.

3. Instant Book Trick

If you use Instant Book, you can temporarily change your rules so bookings go into a “pending” status.
This gives you a moment to adjust the price before confirming.
Then switch your rules back to normal.

Title. No option to pre-approve on VRBO or OR.

I can convert it to a booking but then I need guests info to send it to them. 

I could do that but it would be a helluva lot easier to just be able to pre-approve them somehow, which it is not allowing me to do.

Hi James,

It appears that BDC had a temporary outage today. It seems to have recovered. Please try republishing your listings to see if the issue has been resolved.

All of my Booking.com links have become unpublished and I am getting (Request for forbidden hotel ID(s)) errors?

If i try and publish them i get a (Listing doesn't meet publishing requirements:
Data not found: Not found)

Simply put. please help.

And I've just realised that it is Thanksgiving in the US.

Here are a few strategies for adjusting pricing for a guest:

(Note: The Vrbo ~15% booking fee will not be reduced in amount if you adjust the price down on OwnerRez after the guest books.)

1. Discuss and Refund: You can discuss a discount with the guest (via the Vrbo inbox or a quote). They book at the original price, and you adjust the charges and refund the difference if they paid 100% upfront. The downsides are that guests might be wary of not receiving the refund, and you could incur credit card fees on the refunded amount if you use Stripe or if the adjustment occurs after daily settlement by your payment processor.
2. Adjust Rates and Min Nights: Agree on a price with the guest, then adjust the rates and minimum nights for the booking period in your settings. The risk here is that once the new rates sync, anyone could book those dates. You and the guest must be online simultaneously; you make the changes, let the changes sync (10-15 minutes), and the guest books immediately. Note that if you use dynamic pricing, these manual adjustments will be overwritten during the next sync. This approach requires quick coordination between you and the guest. (This will allow the guest booking fee to be based on the new discounted amount)
3. Instant Book Adjustment: If you use "Instant Book," temporarily change your property rules to create a "pending" status. This allows you to process the price adjustments and then revert your booking rules back to their original settings

Or, if you are Request to Book: If you use the "Request to Book" feature, you can adjust the pricing on a booking request before confirming it. You and the guest agree on a price within the Vrbo inbox to make the guest comfortable with the request, then adjust the charges before confirming the booking.

Hi Karen!

A possible workaround that could work for direct bookings to calculate the surcharge on the entire amount,  including taxes, would be to create a custom surcharge instead of a Rate Adjustment. You can do this by going to Settings > Surcharges > click Create Surcharge > select Custom Surcharge under Advanced Surcharges. On the following page, you can configure the category, description, amount, etc. However, there should also be an optoin to place it below the tax lines. This should make it so that the amount is calculated on the entire amount: 

When configuring this, make sure to set the amount type to Percent of Subtotal, and to set it to NOT be taxed as well, since it would be placed below the tax lines:

Please note that this would only work for direct bookings, as OTAs like Vrbo won't honor this setting and will still apply the surcharge above the tax lines. You can create a separate custom surcharge for other OTAs like Vrbo, and increase the amount by the tax percentage. So, for example, if the processing fee is 3% and your taxes are 12%, you could set the processing fee to 3.36% (3*12%). Additionally, the custom surcharge would give you the percent of subtotal option to calculate on the other booking charges, and not just the rent.

If you decide to create separate custom surcharges, one for direct bookings and one for other listing sites, make sure to add a listing site condition to each one so the system knows which one should apply to each booking.

If you'd like us to look at your account specifically, please reach out to help@ownerrez.com

My client would like to do book 6, get the 7th free, and book 12 and get 2 nights free etc... but they don't want to give a flat 14.28% discount across the board or people booking say 9 10 or 11 nights only still get one night free, which make the percentage discount hard to do. 

Hi,

I am trying to customize the look of my 'Book Now' widget to match my website (Red Canoe Lodging), but I am unable to override the default Bootstrap styling on the Header/Jumbotron section.

I have placed custom CSS in the widget settings, but the .jumbotron grey background and default h1 font/color persist despite using:

1. High-specificity selectors (e.g., body .jumbotron).

2. The !important flag on all properties.

3. The all: unset property to try and clear default styles.

It seems the widget's default stylesheet is either loading after my custom CSS, or there are inline styles/scripts forcing the default Bootstrap appearance.

Could you please:

1. Help me remove the grey .jumbotron background?

2. Force the H1 header to use my brand font (Montserrat) and color (#C41E3A)?

3. Ensure the Phone Input flag doesn't overlap the text placeholder?

Here is the CSS I am trying to apply:

/* Brand: Red Canoe Lodging */
@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Montserrat:wght@400;600;700&display=swap');

/* Force White Background on Header */
.jumbotron, div.jumbotron {
background: #ffffff !important;
background-color: #ffffff !important;
padding: 0 !important;
margin: 0 !important;
}

/* Force Brand Font & Color on Text */
h1, .jumbotron h1 {
font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif !important;
color: #C41E3A !important;
text-transform: uppercase !important;
}

/* Fix Phone Input Overlap */
input[type="tel"] {
padding-left: 80px !important;
}

Thank you.

Is there a way to request that VRBO charge their fee based on the discounted rate? Seems like it would be in their favour to have positive customer service interactions like that one

Yeah, I'm having issues with it as well.  Overall, I've been disappointed with the Igloohome bridge system reliability  regardless of integrating it with OwnerRez.

Thanks - yes I found the documentation and I got the bridge. I haven't had luck with it yet (also haven't spent a ton of time trying yet either). Since I can bring the lockbox in to the house near the router/bridge that shouldn't be an issue.

I was having trouble getting the lockbox code to update to the lock so I need to try again.

I use an Igloo lockbox on one of our properties. There are a couple of options:

1. You can generate algorithmic codes automatically from OwnerRez. This is the advantage of not requiring any internet connection for the lockbox, or, in fact, any real network connection between OwnerRez and the lockbox at all.  The downside with algorithmic codes is that they're long (9 digits). That can increase friction for guests sometimes. I've literally watched a guest struggle to put their code into a lockbox until I finally unlocked it for them myself.  This may not be an issue for you, and the ability to algorithmically generate the codes without an internet connection could be an advantage. There are some tricky things to be aware of for those algo codes. For example, they must be used within 24 hours of the start time that they're activated for, or they will expire automatically. 
2. You can get a Wi-Fi bridge that will connect the Bluetooth lock box to the Internet. Technically, this can then be integrated with OwnerRez so you can do things like generate codes based on the last four digits of a phone number. However, this requires your bridge to have permanent plug-in power. Be within a Wi-Fi router distance. And be within just a few feet of the lock box in order to communicate with it over Bluetooth. I've also personally found this to be an incredibly unreliable configuration. It probably would not work at all for your environment with a car. Unless you can put the bridge and a Wi-Fi connection right next to the parking spot.

All that said, I just came here on the forums to try to find examples of other people using Keyboxes that are integrated with OwnerRez because I'm finding that the Wi-Fi bridge solution for my Igloo keybox is really unreliable.

@Katie - thank you for pointing us in the right direction to update this text in Form Messages. While the update text page allows us to include formatting (bold, font, line breaks, links), it does not seem that the destination actually allows for it: 

As the guest is unable to make changes on this screen (should the dates, number of guests/pets, etc. be incorrect), they will have to be directed to email us to make those changes on their behalf. (Bummer #1.) Being able to add our email address into that text box as a clickable link is needed to make this process as streamlined and easy as possible for our guests. Is there plans to make this destination text box accept the formatting added in the Edit screen?? 

Thank you! I noticed I'm unable to bold anything or insert any coding into that form message. Will that be updated in the future? 

Additionally, when checking out on this new Confirm & Pay form this is the message for paying with check. It is not correct for my vacation rental policies, where do I update it? 

Ok so that was my next question...Stripe charges me on the total. Is there not a way to add it to the total amount and not just the subtotal? Or is there some kind of work around? Could you charge the guest separately for the cc fee after they book? May not be worth it on smaller bookings, but larger bookings start to add up.

Hey Becca!

If you'd like to update the text that's displayed underneath Confirm and Pay, this can be done by going to Settings > Form Messages > click Create message > select Quote Confirm & Pay - Step (1) Confirm / Pay Page from the drop-down. On the following page, you can update what you'd like it to display underneath the Confirm and Pay form, then save the changes. Once you do, it should show the updated text underneath Confirm and Pay: 

Looking for some assistance! Where do you update the wording below Confirm & Pay on the new "confirm & pay form" that launched in the October update? Previously, we could alter the wording on the booking process screens under Settings - Form Messages. Those screens don't seem to apply anymore with the new update. Thanks for the help!

Make note that adding it this way will only apply the percentage to Rent and not your additional surcharges (pet fee, cleaning fee, etc.). There is a feature request out there for a new-style surcharge that will apply to rent + surcharges:

https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/requests/allow-a-new-style-surcharge-that-can-apply-a-to-rentsurcharges-for-cc-processing-fees

Hi Karen!

If you'd like to add a credit card surcharge for your guests who book on your website, you can create a new surcharge for this by going to Settings > Surcharges > click Create Surcharge > select Rate Adjustment under Standard Fees. From there, you can select the category, description, and amount. More on how to set this up here: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/surcharges-common-issues-questions#credit-card-fee

If you only want this to apply to bookings from your website, you can do this by adding a condition to the surcharge. Select Listing Site is One of, and then select your listing site from the drop-down. 

Hello, I'm trying to find where to add the credit card surcharge for my direct booking website. Is there a place we can add that? If a guests books direct, I would like a 4% fee added to cover the credit card fee. 

Hi Fran, I've got some follow-up questions that would make this a better conversation to have with a support ticket.  I'll be sending you an email to follow up further.

There is not at this time. In the ribbon view, one mutual block can be generated from multiple bookings, so there is not a booking to block relationship.

Hi all,

Just wanted to share what I’ve recently uncovered in case it helps someone else.

In 2019 I signed up for credit card processing through Ascent Processing, which eventually switched me over to Elavon (US Bank). I was told I’d get a competitive flat rate around 3.3%, which seemed fine for my vacation rentals. Over time, though, I realized my effective rates were running 5–7%, even in normal months with steady volume.  I always found the entire system confusing to navigate and opaque overall, which is why I suspected the rates we were paying were too high but was never able to get to the bottom of it.  

Recently, after months of digging and talking to multiple reps, I finally found out my account had been set up with the wrong MCC code (7011 – Lodging). That code is meant for hotels and resorts, and Visa expects extra “lodging data” that vacation rental systems like OwnerRez don’t send. Because of that, every Visa transaction downgraded to a higher-cost tier. In other words, my account was misconfigured from the start.

Elavon admits this now and says they can fix the MCC and move me to a flat-rate plan, but they’ve refused to refund the overcharges — saying Ascent was the one who set it up wrong. Ascent, of course, points back at Elavon. Meanwhile, I was also getting hit with $75/month PCI “non-compliance” fees for years, with no outreach or help on how to fix it.

If you’re using Elavon or Ascent, check your MCC code right away (if it says 7011 Lodging, you’re probably overpaying) and make sure your PCI compliance is current.

I’ve switched to Stripe now (flat 2.9% + 30¢, no PCI or downgrade nonsense), but I’m still trying to get Elavon/Ascent to make this right. Posting this so others don’t end up stuck like I was.