General Help and Questions

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Hi David,

You stumbled across a very rare bug in the sync process - one that we already knew about but hasn't been fixed yet. Basically, every couple of hundred syncs, if a booking is deleted and then re-added quickly (based on the guest using a credit card that fails and then succeeds on the next attempt) the new booking won't show up in HomeAway Connect. It only happens with HomeAway Connect syncs and it only happens in a rare circumstance.

As I said, we are already aware of this issue and a fix has already been developed. It will be released in the near future (several weeks).

For the time being, I have been watching it every 24 hours or so and tracking ones that don't appear to have missed.

I just looked at your properties and didn't notice any bookings that weren't on your HomeAway Connect calendar. Did you already manually fix it? If not, let me know which dates are problematic.

Thanks for the feedback.

Are the Homeaway and VRBO calendar sync broken. I checked and FlipKey was updated but Homeaway Connect was not. I did the 'test' and the system said that the test was successful.

David

No, not yet.

It is the second/next item in the development queue right now.

The current feature being worked on our travel insurance/damage protection integration with Travel Guard. This will allow you to offer fast one-click travel insurance and damage protection to guests directly in the OwnerRez workflow. You can then automatically not reserve security deposits if the guest opted for travel insurance, and so on.

After this is released, we'll be beginning work on inquiry interception and management. Inquiry management is very important to us because it will provide much-needed tracking information between listing sites and bookings.

As for a general date, look to have the first feature release on this no later than mid-to-end August. We develop in a small iterative way which means that each new feature release contains only a few basic options and then we push out a few more options after that and so on. This allows us to focus on what works and get customer feedback quickly instead of spending month/year long chunks of time on large efforts.

Have the inquiry features described below been released? If not, can you give a general date for when they might be available?

The vast majority of inquiries come to owners through property listing sites like HomeAway or VRBO. Each inquiry comes in email form which doesn't allow the owner to easily store, track and book based on that information, at least not without doing a lot of double entry.

We're going to fix that problem. By providing a "middle tier" that intercepts the email, we will enable owners to prepare quotes with just a few clicks and track which bookings came from which inquiries.

Greg, I just wanted to let you know we now integrate with the HomeAway Connect calendar. Any booking that is added, updated or deleted/canceled in our system is now updated in almost real time (a 5-10 minute delay) to your HomeAway Connect calendar.

Read more about it here:

https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/new-calendar-synchronization-for-homeaway-vrbo-and-the-gang

Hope that helps,

Michelle

Hi David,

We've got Travel Insurance and Damage Protection both at about 75% completeness in terms of development.

In Q4 of 2010, we decided to hold both of those features and spend more time working on core aspects of the current system. Feedback and helps requests have been pouring in at a very quick rate on things that we deemed to be more important.

We believe that existing features should be rock-solid before moving on to new ones. For instance, surcharges have a lot to be desired and there needs to be a mechanism for guests to sign leases (or the owner to upload a manual one) outside of the quote/payment form process. Both of those aspects are much more integral to the day-in/day-out process of managing bookings than insurance.

I too would vote for the per booking fee. I think this will make you very competitive.

David

I see that there is mention of the insurance on the checkout screen and on the Ownerreservations website, but it does not appear that the feature is implemented yet. Is there a time line to make that happen?

David

Yes, that's correct. I was just pointing that out as an example of what WILL be done for quotes. Not done yet though.

The development roadmap items look good. A clarification question - the email menu is only for bookings - right? Not the quotes section.

Hi David,

That's a great suggestion.

If you look at a booking, you'll notice an "Email" menu that shows the email sent (or not sent) to the guest (and if they were sent, when it last occurred). It also shows cancellation emails if the booking was canceled.

We plan on expanding this to a number of other things, including quotes.

These items are already on the development roadmap:

- Quotes overview page should have a "X" flag icon for indicating email status
- Quotes should remember when email was last sent and have menu to send/resend like bookings

I've just added this to the roadmap:

- Quote confirmation email to owner should add "What now?" section stating "Now send quote to guest" with action link for more information.

Do you think that covers it?

Just a comment on the quote process and the way it is reported.

If I generate a quote for a reservation - but DO NOT send it to the customer I still get an email stating:

A quote has been generated for Shaken, Not Stirred
Here are some of the details...
Guest Name: Test Test
Arrival Date: Tue May 24, 2011
Departure Date: Wed May 25, 2011
Generated By: Test
Get all of the details >>

This quote has not yet been accepted by the guest. You will be notified again once the guest accepts this quote and finalizes the booking.
Think this shouldn't have happened?
More than likely, if the person who generated this quote was not supposed to, it was an accident on their part. Login to your account and see if they corrected the mistake or give them a telephone call directly. If there are games afoot, contact us immediately. You can go ahead and reply to this email. This email account is monitored.
Why are we telling you this?
Here at OwnerReservations.com, we take security very seriously. If it's your property, you should to know when someone is generating quotes for it.

Reading the email - it appears that the quote has been sent to the customer, even though it has not yet been sent. I might also be good to see in the status for the quotes not just open, but pending - or email sent, or not sent. Something to let you know at a glace that the quote has not been sent to the customer yet.

Thanks,
David

Thanks Sam - I'll report if I see it again. I am posting a feature request in another post.

@Dave

Sam Westcott here - head of development. What you're referring to does happen from time to time, but that's completely the fault of the email client.

What we do, in using a standard From and a custom ReplyTo, is the recommended best practice for sending email from applications such as ours.

If we used the owner's email address as the From, our deliverability rate would decrease, which means that your quotes would end up in guest's Spam/Bulk folders more frequently.

This is because a lot of major email providers (Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, AOL) check the "SPF Record" for the sender to see if they have authorized the sending server for their domain. You can read more about SPF here: http://www.openspf.org/Introduction

Most web apps now follow this practice. For instance, you probably get inquiries from VRBO. Notice on your inquiry emails that the From is always set to inquiry@vrbo.com and the ReplyTo is set to the guest's email address. When you hit the reply button, your email program is supposed to ignore the From and use the ReplyTo.

Thx,

Sam

It does not appear to be working properly. I did a reply to the quote email and got and automated response stating it was an automated response and the owner did not receive the email. I am mobile right now so I can not copy the message. The client used was from my Android phone. I will do some further tests from other clients and report back.

*UPDATE*

It worked from my website based client. I also tried again from another phone and it worked. I'll see what I can do to recreate the issue I had.

David

Hi DPVR.info,

We use quotes@ownerreservations.com as the From Address on all sent quotes, but the ReplyTo Address is your address (the address of the owner sending the quote).

When your guest clicks their "Reply" button in their email client (Outlook, Gmail, etc) it will automatically use the ReplyTo Address and not quotes@ownerreservations.com

When you got the test quote, did you click the "Reply" button in your email client? If so, and it didn't use the right email address, can you tell me what email client you are using?

I noticed that the reply email address for quotes is quotes At ownerreaervations dot com not the email address listed on the form when I send the quote. I responded to a test quote to see if you were routing the email, but I did not get a reply. Am I missing something or is this an error?

For someone who doesn't get many bookings the 5$ per booking is great, sometimes i get no bookings sometimes 3 or 4 per month. But mostly people book from June to October only.

You're right that those terms are unclear, as written. That's a result of the developers having to squeeze the text into the label area without much room. In the future, we'll change the text on that page to make it clearer.

You've pretty much guessed them correctly pretty much across the board.

Here's a full explanation:

"First Payment Percentage" means the amount of the total charge that you want to be collected at the time the guest accepts the quote. So if you want the to pay the entire amount up front, you'd enter 100% there. If you want them to only pay the first half, you'd put 50% there.

"Second Payment Days" means the number of days before the arrival date that the second payment will be collected. The second payment is scheduled at the time the guest accepts the quote, and the system automatically collects it. You don't have to remember to come back or bug the guest again. You'll receive emails on that day if the payment succeeds or fails (as will the guest).

"Days Before to Reserve" is the number of days before the arrival date that the security deposit will be reserved. The security deposit is not collected in the sense that a payment is collected from the guest's credit card. It's merely a hold that is put on the card.

"Days After to Release" is the number of days after the departure date that you (the owner) will get an email from the system telling you to release the security deposit. The security deposit is not automatically released because the system does not know if the guests caused any damage to your property. The system sends you an email as a reminder. The release process is a very simple (one click) form that releases the security deposit and sends emails around.

Sorry for the confusing language.

Hi Sam,
Kudos on your new website. I'm new and hope to see results soon.

Regarding typos, I wanted to mention the following:

On the "BILLINGS DETAILS" page, there are several boxes:
the Top box says: "First Payment Percentage" I assume it means: Deposit portion of Rental Fee" ?
the 2nd box says: "Second Payment Days." That one is confusing and I can't understand its grammar. Does it mean: "Second Payment (deposit???) due 14 days after 1st deposit"?" or: "Full Balance due 14 days before 1st day of occupancy (move-in day)" ?

Under "SECURITY DEPOSIT"
the 4th box says: Days before to reserve: Again confusing grammar to me. Does it mean: "Days Before Reservation?"
the last box says: Days after to release: Should it say: "Days after End of Rental?"

Thanks for any clarification and... continued success.

Michael

I am new to this vacation rental "Business" and not knowing if my property will rent more than once a month, or once a season or... at all. I believe that a fee PER RENTAL or transaction is preferable and will not scare potential customers (us the property owners) away.

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the feedback.

On number 2...

We do support multiple rate periods throughout the year. You can set as many as you want. Here's how...

Open your Properties (here's the direct link: https://app.ownerrez.com/properties) and click on the property you want to adjust. Click the Rates menu. Notice the "Rate Overrides" section underneath the Default Rates? You can add as many as you want.

Here's more about it in a blog post: https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/rate-overrides-for-seasons-or-specific-dates

On number 3...

It is not possible to support the HomeAwayConnect calendar system (the calendar that fuels all the HomeAway sites) because HomeAway does not allow 3rd party integration. They have a 'property manager' mode that allows some integration but a) it's very limited and b) it only updates the HomeAway.com website specifically, not the other HomeAway sites (VRBO, VacationRentals, GreatEscapes, etc).

We have spent a fair amount of time talking with their development team, and we foresee adding that integration in the near future. It is one our biggest goals because so many owners use that calendar.

You can find other software vendors that advertise "supports HomeAway calendar" but they do not actually support in the way you would want them too. I have only ever seen one vendor support it such that you can actually keep your listings up to date across all sites, but the method they use goes against the HomeAway official terms of service by emulating a user's account when logging in. Again, that is expressly forbidden by HomeAway.

I clicked into this because I am about to streamline my booking procedure anyway but it's not looking very promising right now.

1) There is no way I would ever pay $35 a month. I probably average 3-4 bookings a month, that is with 2 units (a duplex). In the high season, we have guests stay a month or more. In the off season we have at most 50% occupancy, either way that is not many bookings a month. $5 a booking might be possible if it saved me a bunch of time over my current method of using email and Word.

2)The underlying assumption of your default rates is that rates are constant throughout the year. This is not the case for us. I used to have 9 different rate periods, although I am now simplifying to 7. And each of these periods have different weekly rates, monthly rates, may not allow less than a month during certain rate periods, etc. I am not sure if this could ever be accouted for, but the software would have to be many times more complex.

3) But even disregarding all that, the real deal killer is the apparent necessity to maintain a seperate calendar. If you can't use the homeawayconnect (formerly rentalo) calendar, then the need to update and maintain an additional calendar makes it pointless. I can certainly understand why you couldn't use the homeawayconnect calendar but we dropped all of our rental websites except homeaway, vrbo and vacationrentals.com (all owned by homeaway now) in large part because now we only have to worry about the accuracy of one calendar.

It's a pity because the advantage would be that you could, in theory, type the guest name, period, and rate only once and generate all documents (we use three - holding reservation, rental agreement, and confirmation) error free,

Hi Skikirkwood,

Thanks for pointing this out. You're correct. I've requested that that be fixed in an upcoming hotfix due out later this week.

I can't imagine how we missed a typo of that size after all these months.

Thanks for the feedback,

Sam

Yep, I saw that too and thought the same thing some time back. It's not actually on the quotes page. It's on the "prerequisites" that show when you haven't set up your rates and such.

On this page:

https://app.ownerrez.com/quotes

I think you want "PayPal Pro", not "PayPay Pro"

Hi Freeman611,

There is no price right now. The service is entirely free while we work through the public beta phase.

The eventual price structure will be a flat rate per month or per booking. For instance:

1) $30-40 per month for 1-5 properties, tiering up after that per property.

2) $5 per booking with no monthly rate. So if you have 3 bookings this month, you'd be charged $15 at the end of the month.

Which of those two models do you like better? Or should owners be allowed to pick either model?

Thanks for joining,

Sam

Dose anyone knew how much for this software? I can not find any price on the website.

Thank you!