@jenny-oest

Thank you so much Jenny!

@john-kanagawa you can disable it (under Setup, Bookings and Payments, Merchant Accounts) with the drop down action menu, but I don’t think you can delete it - probably because history needs to be maintained.

@carole I would tell her that the current reservation is non-refundable, but as a courtesy if she cancels her current dates, you will discount her next stay by $x amount. That way if she cancels, those amounts are not part of the reservation 🙂

The challenge comes if they turn to VRBO.

VRBO won’t support withholding those fees because Custom Cancellation Terms are available, but MyVR does not yet have them built out.

Believe Stripe changed their terms January 1, 2018. We put in a request for that feature a while back when we discovered the issue.

Our highest cancellation rate (65% !!) was Booking.com, so we simply changed our cancellation policy to “No Refunds Ever”. Now we get very few bookings, but we were losing money before that. Seems a better solution.

But yes, VRBO used to be 2 cancellations a year for us and now they are at 17% nationally. It’s a serious issue.

A Quote should do that. And if you have your reservation confirmation set up, these terms should go out as well.

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@joseph-sennish - Yes, I ended up using the “Modify Terms” to get this done.

Is this still the case? Would like to be able to have standard fees (cleaning fee, pet fee) that are automatically applied to all properties.

@darrell-looney112 I see what you’re saying. I never give them a choice (HAHA) - in that I tell them if I’m setting up multiple cards, they have to tell me at the time of booking which card to put into the system for each payment. Then if they want to change it later, they can, prior to the payment processing. But I’m afraid if I turn off the autopay, I might forget to follow up on the late receivable… 🙂

@carole yes I’d cancel. But I’d tell them that first. If they want the reservation, they’ll resolve it. I’d rather eat Stripe fees than have the chargeback and lose.

I have always explained what is happening to the guests and then cancelled on my site and have them rebook with the new owner or PM at the honored price. This will protect you against chargebacks or refund issues and truly release you from the property.

@Jenny-Oest Ahh yes, it is contract law … or it was before Covid-19. I had several chargebacks which we responded to based on the old fashioned response method:

Contract states within 2 inches of the signature line that the payment is non-refundable (in my case, or whatever the terms are) Provided the bank with a copy of the rental contract. Provided a copy of the signature (in the case of VRBO a screen capture provided to me from VRBO’s back end) IP address Copy of the confirmation that we provided a full value future travel credit (even though we did not have to)

We lost the first two chargebacks despite the above.

VISA then came out with guidance for the banks regarding covid/travel cancellations.
In the event a government order prohibits the traveler from traveling or the merchant from providing the service, but the merchant offers/provides a credit for the value of the booking, the customer / bank have no right to a chargeback.

I provided all of the above, plus a copy of the government orders (2 from Greece, 1 from Illinois) and won all three chargebacks.
That’s why I asked for more specifics …
I hope you never have to go through this, but if you do, the government order back appears to be key.

@glenn-garrard - do you mean can our system accept foreign credit cards? I’ve always been able to accept - I’ve had guests from Canada, Europe, all used credit cards. Or do you mean to allow disbursement of funds (your funds or trust funds) to a foreign account?

Thank you @Joseph-Sennish .
That is a great idea and we are already doing that.
However, it still does not answer the question of why MyVR would not be sending/updating the email address going to Stripe. Stripe is MyVR’s preferred and only option for credit cards.
I spoke extensively to Stripe and the only solution the would come up with is that MyVR needs to update their APIs so that the information is passed to Stripe.
We never needed to find out this information, but since the Covid 19 pandemic we have been dealing with a few chargebacks and one of the requirements for answering the disputes is “a copy of the receipt”. We all love MyVR, but the banks know Stripe, not MyVR. So the receipt from Stripe carries more weight than the one from MyVR.
All that said, the integration between MyVR and Stripe should work.

Be sure to submit this as a request. I think it’s a good one.
We’re in an industry where 100% refunds will be needed, and security deposits are also frequently used. This environment will mean those fees can be significant.

@beach-renter I just copy the quote and create a new payment schedule. If the reservation is already booked, I just change the terms to the new quote and notate the reason for the change in the notes.

@Tristan-Brotherton Thank you SO much!
You are the best 🙂