@mike-wesling Would you mind updating the community with any feedback on using Assurant for nearly the past year - please?

@gary-gena-davis Hello, I can shed some light on this question as well:

HomeAway (and other channels) are very strict on the content that can be sent to a customer while they are still a pre-booking or inquiry state. You’ll notice additional things like the customer’s email are filtered - this is done by HomeAway to prevent any possibility of a booking being taken off their platform and booked independently, and taking away their cut of the booking. HomeAway filters out links as well, so when you’re making quote changes within MyVR, the renter isn’t receiving any sort of updated payment link to pay the new quote.

That being said, after the renter commits and completes the booking, HomeAway is no longer strict about their messaging, and you would be able to send a revised quote. Here’s how I recommend you handle this situation given HomeAway’s restrictions:

Have the renter navigate to your listing again and submit an inquiry for the correct dates Have them complete the booking with the correct set of dates, they would need to pay your full standard rate Once they have completed the booking, you would now be able to adjust the quote to reflect the discount, and the customer would be automatically refunded

One possible workaround would be to configure the rental rates for the property in a way that the customer wouldn’t need a separate discount (creating custom rates.) That way when the customer makes an inquiry for those dates, the final price you intend to be charging them is already being reflected.

Welcome everybody! Thanks for all your help! ! !

Darrell

@JENNY OEST, @DARRELL LOONEY112 - thanks for your feedback - Jim

General Advisory to Avoid Phishing Attacks
If you receive an email from an online service provider requesting that you sign-in to your account, avoid clicking on links in the email to sign-in. Always go directly to the service provider’s website on your own by typing the website address in your browser. This will ensure you are going to the correct place and not being directed to a spoofed website.

Hi All,

As a MyVR integrated user, what should I do to prepare for HomeAway communications changes?

This depends on how much customization you’d like in your inquiry auto responses:

Level 1: Do nothing. Your current auto responses will be sent as is and HomeAway will remove the restricted content
Level 2: Tweak Customize templates to work well after HomeAway strips content.
Level 3: Add custom templates for HomeAway, VRBO, VacationRentals.com

Just wanted to give you a quick update. It turns out that we had already implemented text only messages for HomeAway about 10 months ago when we made a similar change for FlipKey / TripAdvisor. The messages sent to HomeAway guests do not include rich HTML versions but rather a text only version. These currently still include restricted content such as links and email addresses in the message and HomeAway has not yet started stripping away that content.

We’ve learned a number of things while verifying this will continue to work as expected.

@John-Hughes asked if messages with links will be sent. And I’ll echo @Jenny-Oest response here. If the message contains any of the restricted content, HomeAway will simply strip that content out before presenting to the renter, but will not prevent the delivery of the message. Any email addresses, phone numbers, links or attachments will be removed by HomeAway.

@Jenny-Oest mentioned creating message templates with auto responders specific to inquiries from the HomeAway brand of sites. Internally we briefly discussed and think that might be a little more than necessary.

One thing that I would consider doing is modifying the content of the message to read well, whether or not the message includes restricted content.

For example:

BAD

Hi guest, Thanks for booking our property. Feel free to email us at myprop@myprop.com or call us at 775-225-1111 with any questions about your inquiry. Or checkout our website: myprop.com. Thanks, PM

GOOD

Hi guest, Thanks for booking our property. We look forward to connecting. Many thanks, PM myprop@myprop.com 775-225-1111 myprop.com

That way when the message is stripped of any restricted content, it does not change the message.

GOOD STRIPPED

Hi guest, Thanks for booking our property. We look forward to connecting. Many thanks, PM

If small tweaks like this do not work for your situation, the next best option sounds like creating templates for HomeAway specific inquiries.

Hope that helps. We’ll be monitoring this closely and making a few small adjustments this week in preparation for the change.

@Jenny-Oest said in [RESOLVED] Temporary Infrastructure Issues:

How do we report a system down?

The most effective way to report a potential system outage is to use the Report an Issue link after clicking on the Support button in your account. Although we do actively engage in conversation from forum posts, reports of problems as a rule are surfaced more quickly to our team.

In the event you experience what appears to be a system outage, we are likely to be aware of the problem, so the steps to follow would be:
a) Check our status page: http://status.myvr.com/
b) Submit an issue via the Support button in your account

If you are unable to access the Support button in your MyVR account, then please shoot me an email: markus at myvr dot com (it is highly unlikely we don’t already know of the problem at that point via our monitoring systems, but better safe than sorry).