Rental agreement - is there a way to make guest initial every page or important paragraph?

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Hi, I'm just touching base on this. Given the squirreliness of Airbnb's support backing hosts rules, I'm considering setting up an eSign (or similar) account to send my rental agreement to all prospective guests on any OTA platform plus direct, with the capability of initialing each page. I see in this thread this has been discussed. This would be MAJOR for anyone using OwnerRez and Airbnb. Just checking to see what the latest is on any development. Also if development is something that's a barrier because of programming resources, perhaps have you considered a partnership deal with one of these eSigning companies as an option for your customers? Thanks!

Five years later, I just now made a Feature Request for this. What's the status now on it?

The simplistic "work-around" isn't cutting it.

See also this thread:

https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/requests/support-initials-within-the-rental-agreement-form 

And as always, no ETA on development, but, the entire guest portal concept is getting a complete overhaul that will eventually provide more flexibility.

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I'd like to sound what's possibly a discordant note in this cry for new initials, callouts, etc.

I like a good contract, but I like happy guests too. This much initialing and choosing introduces friction into the process and will make for a suspicious and unhappy guest, who may feel like they're walking on eggshells.  While some may be OK with that, I'm not. It's totally off-brand for what I'm selling, and I'm dubious that a bunch of initials adds much weight to a contract.

I think you should just take a page from the legal book of the large online consumer brands like Ebay and Apple, and indeed DocuSign itself -- a simple slider that ensures that the guest has scrolled through the text. I wouldn't doubt that each of these brands went through a protracted battle with their legal departments, who wanted many of the same "features" but were overruled by people the people who had to deal with sales and customer service.

If you do decide to implement these changes, please give me a way to opt out. I try hard to keep my customers happy, not my lawyers.

I would like the feature. 
I won a case against a guest because I did have each page initialed and specific paragraph individually signed. 
this proved that the guest did read and accept the terms. 

I like that option.  The biggest issue is that guests don’t get away with fraudulent chargebacks.

And it was recommended to me by Ascent that I have them initialize in certain places in order to protect against that. 

I’ve gotten ripped off twice because of fraudulent chargebacks. 

I'd like to sound what's possibly a discordant note in this cry for new initials, callouts, etc.

I like a good contract, but I like happy guests too. This much initialing and choosing introduces friction into the process and will make for a suspicious and unhappy guest, who may feel like they're walking on eggshells.  While some may be OK with that, I'm not. It's totally off-brand for what I'm selling, and I'm dubious that a bunch of initials adds much weight to a contract.

I think you should just take a page from the legal book of the large online consumer brands like Ebay and Apple, and indeed DocuSign itself -- a simple slider that ensures that the guest has scrolled through the text. I wouldn't doubt that each of these brands went through a protracted battle with their legal departments, who wanted many of the same "features" but were overruled by people the people who had to deal with sales and customer service.

If you do decide to implement these changes, please give me a way to opt out. I try hard to keep my customers happy, not my lawyers.

I am pretty sure the callouts will be made optional, just like custom fields, you do not have to use them. Others like myself would rather have that option available so we do not have to deal with "we did not know" [insert here]: {your cancellation policy, that yours is a no-pets property, that no parties/events are allowed, that we cannot move a pool table from its position, that we cannot put bath oils and bubbles into the hot tub, that we cannot leave fire pit burning unattended, flush diapers down the drain into the septic} etc. Ebay and Apple have huge legal departments and deal in billions of dollars. Losing a few (thousand, hundred thousand, or million) bucks (on preventable stuff) here or there is OK for them, but not for the individual owners. So apples and oranges, an inapplicable example of a "playbook" to use. I prefer to keep myself happy 1st, then the guests, which means (for me) finding a balance between a positive stay experience for the guests (current ones and subsequent ones) while preventing misuse/abuse/damage to my property. My property is not for every guest and not every guest is for my property - and if these callouts serve to prevent mutually unsuitable stays, that will be a win-win.  

Corporations deal with this by having ironclad contracts that they follow up on when they feel the need to do so.

I have heard no-one say that initialed pages make for a stronger contract.  So I went to look and indeed found the opposite:

"The “every page” requirement is a hold out from a bygone era, before word processors, email, document management, and fax machines. There is no statute or law that demands that each page of a contract be initialed. Written contracts are binding if signed once by the parties to the contract–so don’t assume you wan wiggle out of a contract because you did not initial it on every page; the contract is binding if signed on the last page. Lawyers are creatures of habit though, and older lawyers tend to include a place for initials on every page of a contract, and will likely continue. The practice is waning, although you may expect to see it on real estate contracts for decades to come."

-- https://gimmelaw.com/must-contracts-be-signed-or-initialed-on-every-page

My contract is very strong and foresees many of the contingencies that you mention. I enforce it when I feel the need to do so.

To my mind, calling out all of the house rules and getting them initialed on a contract does nothing to protect me, and does a lot to annoy the guest.

But as you said, not everything is for everybody.  As long as I can opt out of this, I'm fine with it.

In the event that we do add a more formalized initialing feature, it would certainly be optional.  Naturally, you'd have to designate where the initials should be put and be required, so if you didn't place any in your agreement, there wouldn't be any.

Speaking as a guest, though, I know I myself personally loathe the super complicated "jump through hoops and initial everywhere" type of rental agreement.  And I have bailed on rentals because of those - I just wanna go on vacay, darnit, I don't wanna bring my lawyer with me!  So there's definitely a tradeoff.  There's a great deal of research in the Internet world emphasizing how you want to require the fewest possible number of clicks to make a sale.

But ultimately it is your choice.

Totally agree about hoops to jump. If the banks/courts were to accept the scroll down instead of initializing that would be ideal. 

I got to test the “initials” of paragraph and pages in court. Because I had it in my contract, the judge immediately ruled that I had established that the guest indeed knew the terms and agreed to them. 
it is not to say that I would not have won otherwise, but it made the first part of my case very easy to establish. 

We would love to see this! 

 

Speaking as a guest, though, I know I myself personally loathe the super complicated "jump through hoops and initial everywhere" type of rental agreement.  And I have bailed on rentals because of those - I just wanna go on vacay, darnit, I don't wanna bring my lawyer with me!  So there's definitely a tradeoff.  There's a great deal of research in the Internet world emphasizing how you want to require the fewest possible number of clicks to make a sale.

But ultimately it is your choice.

As an owner, I just hate it when a guest who booked 8 months ago emails me a week before arrival and says they want to bring a pet because "they didn't know that pets are not allowed". or someone who takes it upon themselves to move my slate top pool table from its position and break a seal (necessitating the pool table guy to come out, re level and refelt) because "We do it at home all the time"; or that they cannot bring 12 of their in-town family members for an impromptu party on a whim....If I, as an owner, only had to deal with reasonable guests like you, none of this would be necessary. But unfortunately, the number of unreasonable guests is growing.