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VRBO are nazis about hiding email. I was recently helping my friend who has a house listed on VRBO. The guest needed a respite caretaker for her autistic son, and since I work with the autistic classrooms at all the local schools, I knew of the perfect person. Was trying to get her email address to the CONFIRMED guest (one who had PAID and was confirmed…) and VRBO kept blocking the email in every correspondence we sent. Unreal!
I don’t understand the thinking of hiding emails yet publishing private phone numbers for all the world to see!
I don’t understand the thinking of hiding emails yet publishing private phone numbers for all the world to see!
Yes I agree and boy is it freaky sometimes to get a call out of the blue asking all these questions about your rental and sometimes people do it at such odd times. Fortunately, most guests communicate by email.
All of this means we’ve all got to get working on our own websites, so we can keep 100% of the profits instead of forking over a penny to all these pirates. . Billy Bob posted a few good templates through wix.com, especially set up for vacation renting. I’m going to get to work right now!
Wow I will try that I think but it really depends on how much time I am going to invest in this rental business. I work fulltime and teach as well so this small business was meant to support a son in law school and another son headed for grad school. We shall see but I will check it our.
Maintaining a website is a lot of work Kona, not that I want to be discouraging, but really, I webmaster and it’s not as easy as the people at Wix make it seem. Just be prepared.
I will… I have already noticed I am number one in the Google search when you type the name of my place, which for some reason seems to be fairly unique. I’m just gunna try one of their templates and see what happens. If it gets too busy, I can always hire my son to manage it.
By the way, here are the templates Billy Bob suggested.
Here are a couple of the Website Templates that might work for CabinHost…
Did you know that Frank/Sahib also doubles as a “Windoze Computer Technical Expert?” It’s true. I just got a call from him last night. It seems my Windoze Computer is having technical difficulty and I need to give them all my information so they can control my computer remotely and fix the issues.
Hopefully, this is the final episode in my FlipKey/TravelAdvisor saga. So after receiving phone calls to my home number (now removed from my listing) and cell phone from some unknown number - tried looking it up but it appears foreign which I did not answer, THEN I received a –
can you review your customer support experience with Fabio
well actually I CAN - which left me with an outstanding opportunity to tell FlipKey and Travel Advisory EXACTLY what I think of their “customer support” for hosts which includes verbal abuse and threats. By the way I did not use any explicit language but it was tempting. I hope to NEVER hear from them again or their guests and the whole experience has been torturous! Thanks for listening and I really hope this is OVER!
After your experience, I’m never booking through them ever again. However (gleeful chuckle… ) please see your PMs… I’m going to send you something you might find very very interesting.
Guest Cancels and then threatens to sue me!
This is a FlipKey/Travel Advisory experience but is worthy of noting since it speaks to some of the misconceptions that are occurring related to the share economy and vacation rental market. We had a confirmed booking through FlipKey for 3 nights over New Years for 4 guests. I accepted the booking without really going over it carefully and the guest wrote asking why there were two cleaning fees. When I reviewed the booking there were indeed two cleaning fees but the booking didn’t charge for the extra guests over two which added $50.00 to the booking. I politely informed the guest that though they were overcharged for cleaning they were not charged for the extra guests. Fast forward to a rash of vitriolic emails saying she never heard of charging for extra guests and upon further review of my listing she noticed I charge a pet fee and since she is bringing her two dogs that would add another $100.00 and I was hiding my fees and overcharging and it would cost close to $200 a night and she could get a hotel for that and on and on. I politely responded that my waterfront apartment was probably not a good fit for her and she was welcome to cancel. She did BUT then accused me of declining her reservation and going to sue me for her cancellation fee. Here is why I am writing this - why is it assumed that a vacation rental is cheaper than a hotel - of course it may be the same price or more BUT you get a whole facility as in my case two bedrooms, full kitchen with stainless steel and granite and a view to die for !!! I charge for extra guest because 4 people are four times more work than two. Fortunately FlipKey backed me up though they did write to me and say since you declined this guest you should return the cancellation fee which my email thread showed that was not true. Anyway lesson learned and I am hoping NOT to have guests through FlipKey since they never work out. By the way I use vacation rentals all the time and pay much more than I would staying in a hotel but again get the comfort and access to beautiful places - thanks for listening!
AND
Finally went off-line with FlipKey and TravelAdvisor after 3 weeks of being bullied!
Well I finally did it this morning - went off-line with Tripadvisor and FlipKey and the final straw was them accusing me of rebooking my property and not returning a rightfully earned, in accordance with my cancellation policy, cancellation fee. So here is the irony, I didn’t rebook the property at all, I just blocked the dates so I wouldn’t have to deal with TripAdvisor or FlipKey suggesting that I take this nasty guest anyway.After being threaten by the the guest - here is what she wrote to me " You tried to gouge me and my attorney feels the same way you declined my booking for the original stated price. If I do not receive the rest of my deposit, it will end up costing you more than the original deposit. Your choice." By the way, I never declined the booking. Then TripAdvisor and FlipKey threaten to suspend my listing “If you are unwilling to resolve this amicably with the guest [which according to FlipKey mean return the cancellation fee], we may consider suspension from our website.” Soooo after 14 emails and NO SUPPORT from FlipKey I have gone off-line with this booking service. Fortunately, I have only had 5 bookings from them in the past almost 2 years and I think it is basically that the platform is so hard to decipher and that they charge so much for booking. Anyway I am DONE!!
Thanks of listening and this experience has really turned me away from short term rentals since every time I received a threatening email from the guest or FlipKey I feel physically sick -
