Turning off rental agreements

A lot of our guests are actually businesses booking last minute for their employees who are working away from home doing installations. They want a quick and easy checkout process with a tick box to say they agree with the terms and conditions - just like if they book on one of the OTAs. I am concerned that for this type of guest/businesses, forcing signing of rental agreements is not expected and will result in lost bookings but there doesn't seem to be any way of turning it off.

You can turn off renter agreements entirely by going to the Rules section of the property and setting agreement to "No Renter Agreement".

Instead, though, I would recommend going to Settings > Legal Agreements and making a very simple template with the guest name, occupancy, and dates. That way you've at least got something simple on file in terms of an agreement, but the guest still doesn't have to read through a bunch of legalese.

Thanks Chris. If I set "No Renter Agreement" then the guest doesn't have to agree anything at all. I cannot have a tick box on the booking form requiring them to tick it to confirm they agree to the terms and conditions. I can have a custom field, but there is no checking that they fill it in correctly (they can put "No") prior to paying.
It is the having to fill in the name that is a waste of time as they have already entered it earlier on in the booking process. Am I really going to have to manually check the name they have written down matches the name they put on the booking form as the system does not verify it all?

The purpose of making them enter their name, is so they can't later claim, "Hey, it was just a checkbox, nobody ever reads those." They have to actually manually type their name in, and we record that they did.

We have had suggestions about a more convenient side-by-side display of the name of the guest as booked, the name used to sign the rental agreement, and the name on the credit card, so you can eyeball them and see if they seem plausible. That may come down the road.

Every single booking site and Agency and booking system based in the UK just has a tick box saying "Accept terms and conditions" with a link to the terms and conditions. I'm concerned that guests will be put off bookings at all by having to write their name down in this non-standard way and drawing so much attention to it that guests will think I'll be there with a checkbox checking up on them during their holiday.

There doesn't appear to be any way to insist on a ticked box in custom fields so that I can make it the same as the industry standard?

There currently is no way to switch to a checkbox -- right now, the only supported signature is a typed name. We do have plans for a renter agreement overhaul in the future which will add additional types of fields etc., so I'll note this idea down in our planning documents for that.

I'm not sure about that side of the pond, but in the US a checkbox is considered pretty weak in terms of intent, almost not an agreement at all and certainly not a solid basis for arguing in court. That's why we ask the guest to type their name -- to show that intent. OTA's aren't in the business of enforcing your agreement, so they just do whatever is quickest, but to be honest typing a few characters isn't that much of a roadblock. It makes the guest take a second to read the agreement and think about it, which is the primary point of having an agreement.

If you don't really need a binding signature for legal purposes, I'd suggest just turning off the legal agreements entirely. Instead, write your language in to the booking confirmation email template, or into another T&C email template.

i have been doing it for years an no one is put off by e signing rental agreement. 3 properties. i do not know how it is in UK, but here in the US best defense against chargeback is actual rental agreement signed or e signed, not just tick box. i just won a chargeback because I had all that. renter could not claim that they did not know, missed it etc. You also need to realize that agencies do not have THEIR money on the line in case of a dispute or chargeback. it is YOUR money on the line and they will gladly let it go, no loss for them (maybe no profit, but definitely no loss). Think about it.