Different currencies on different HA sites

[Martha]

I just had an email from a (French) guest wanting a small reduction as some people weren't coming - no problem as I can lock the mazot and take a bit off.

They had a small grumble 'especially since we were surprised to be charged in pounds'

Now I was pretty surprised myself. They booked via Arbritel but it came through on the HA dashboard. I checked, and our prices on Arbritel are definitely in Euros.

And a quick search confirmed:

"Which currency is displayed on my rental rates?

The currency displayed on your rental rates for your property is determined by the HomeAway website through which a traveler is viewing your property. For instance, if a traveler is viewing your listing on HomeAway.com, VRBO.com, or VacationRentals.com, the rates will be displayed in USD; conversely, that same listing will display rates in GBP if viewed through HomeAway.co.uk."


Since they are clearly auto-converted by the system, I assumed that my quote (in pounds) would appear to the guests as Euros. But apparently not!

I've asked them to clarify. But meanwhile can anyone shed any light? It seems ridiculous. Does that mean the guest has to pay international charges? No Eurozone guest has ever mentioned this before.

In fact we intend to switch to Euros next winter anyway, but it would still be good to know.

On Airbnb you pay everything in the currency you are working in, not the currency of the host, as I remember?

[Martha]

Just running through a test now. It does indeed show you as priced in pounds once you are actually making an enquiry, but converts the prices to Euros for you.

So does anyone know if there is any issue with this? Do you actually pay in Euros with your card, and no financial penalty?

Or is it like when you pay for something with a UK card in Euros, and you get a lousy exchange rate and and extra charge? In which case I can see why they are a bit peeved.

[Martha]

Continuing with this as the guests (who were delightful people) have now left and I am trying to solve this puzzle. They booked through Abritel but were charged in pounds, resulting in them getting charged about €150 in currency charges on their account. This seems nuts! Has anyone else encountered this?

[Martha]

I seem to be ploughing a lonely furrow in this thread, maybe there is another discussion that I've missed?

So after some unrelated lousy service from HA (surprise surprise) I talked to a couple of people there and they have all confirmed that you can only take payment in the currency that your linked account is in, and there are some pretty hefty charges being levied on the guests. They do not (and have no plans to) offer payment in the guest's own currency (as airBNB do).

This is certainly not all that clear as my guests were surprised to be hit with big currency charges on their account. In future, I'll be warning all affected guests about this and advising them to use an FX company to avoid charges.

I am one individual, and I can offer two currencies to pay in. Pretty pathetic that a major travel company can't offer this (and was very shirty, patronising, unhelpful and rude with me about it as well)

[Dusty]

Hi Martha,
thanks for following this through and keeping us up to date with your progress, its useful to know and probably explains why we very rarely get enquiries via OD partner sites.

[COYS]

Pretty pathetic that a major travel company can't offer this (and was very shirty, patronising, unhelpful and rude with me about it as well)

Of course they could offer it Martha, they choose not to & make a few extra bucks on exchange rates & charges instead.

[paolo]

We are listening Martha! I haven't looked at this thread before, the thread title maybe sounded more ho-hum than the contents deserve. Thanks for the updates.

[Martha]

Hah, watch out for my next thread title, I'll be spicing it up in future!

"You won't BELIEVE the COLOSSAL charges stolen from my lovely guests. Shocking details inside!!!!"

Of course they could offer it Martha, they choose not to

Indeed Lousy!

The thing is, if they pay via an FX dealer, they lose their credit card protection, and the convenience factor, so that's not ideal either. It's hard to know what to suggest

[Ben McNevis]

The thing is, if they pay via an FX dealer, they lose their credit card protection, and the convenience factor, so that's not ideal either. It's hard to know what to suggest

Ah. Now there's an interesting thing: Someone on one of the facebook groups pointed out a few days ago that card payments made through intermediaries don't have Section 75 protection.

It's there in black and white on the UKCardsAssociation website:
http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk ... chases.asp

And, they even go to the trouble of mentioning Expedia by name:

Intermediaries include buying through a payment platform like PayPal, through an online marketplace retailer like Amazon (when you are buying a third party’s goods through Amazon), or through an aggregator like Expedia, which sells on flight and hotel bookings. Agencies like these often have their own payment protection systems in place.

I was a bit surprised to see this after all the noise from consumer programmes like You And Yours advising "always pay by card to an agency".

No protection at all. It's one big fat lie!

[Martha]

That IS interesting. Something to consider for sure. They say that their own protections cover you instead though I wouldn't like to try clawing cash out of them!

[Martha]

The first response from HomeAway:

"We are very sorry to hear that there is some confusion based on how the payments are charged to potential holiday makers.

I would kindly like advise you that the currency will show depending on what website the holiday maker is using, however your guest will pay depending on what currency your bank account is set up to.
...

In regards to any charges made by the bank, we cannot control how much the fee is that is charged as that would be based on the direct banks conversion rates."


Here is the message I have sent to HolidayRentPayment after a spectacularly unhelpful conversation. (A slightly less cranky version of this has gone to Home-Away as at least the person was polite there.)



- I can offer payment in pounds or euros, and I'm just an individual. Why can't a company whose business is international travel do the same?

- Even worse, although I have Euro and Sterling accounts myself, in order to offer this, I can only choose one currency to use with the HA group. So I will always have around half my customers having this problem when booking through you.

- If you can't offer booking in major currencies (really???) then it should be made extremely clear to guests that there will be conversion charges, so they have the option of using an FX converter. It was not clear to them at all. In the future I will make it clear to guests myself, but I am disappointed that it isn't very obvious to clients, resulting in me receiving a very rare complaint about *my* business due to the services of *your* business.

Lastly C)
If I complain about your services I expect the response to be "I appreciate that this caused problems for you and it is something that we will take on board". What I got was a very rude response along the lines of "That's not how we operate so I refuse to discuss this any more" with no constructive suggestions at all, no offer to mention it to management, nothing. I can't believe I am the only person to ever be affected by this. In fact I know there are at least two other complaints, as two sets of my guests complained to Abritel about your services.

_______________________

Will let you know what the response is, I'm not expecting much.

[vacancesthezan]

The first response from HomeAway:

"We are very sorry to hear that there is some confusion based on how the payments are charged to potential holiday makers.

I would kindly like advise you that the currency will show depending on what website the holiday maker is using, however your guest will pay depending on what currency your bank account is set up to.
...

In regards to any charges made by the bank, we cannot control how much the fee is that is charged as that would be based on the direct banks conversion rates."


Here is the message I have sent to HolidayRentPayment after a spectacularly unhelpful conversation. (A slightly less cranky version of this has gone to Home-Away as at least the person was polite there.)



- I can offer payment in pounds or euros, and I'm just an individual. Why can't a company whose business is international travel do the same?

- Even worse, although I have Euro and Sterling accounts myself, in order to offer this, I can only choose one currency to use with the HA group. So I will always have around half my customers having this problem when booking through you.

- If you can't offer booking in major currencies (really???) then it should be made extremely clear to guests that there will be conversion charges, so they have the option of using an FX converter. It was not clear to them at all. In the future I will make it clear to guests myself, but I am disappointed that it isn't very obvious to clients, resulting in me receiving a very rare complaint about *my* business due to the services of *your* business.

Lastly C)
If I complain about your services I expect the response to be "I appreciate that this caused problems for you and it is something that we will take on board". What I got was a very rude response along the lines of "That's not how we operate so I refuse to discuss this any more" with no constructive suggestions at all, no offer to mention it to management, nothing. I can't believe I am the only person to ever be affected by this. In fact I know there are at least two other complaints, as two sets of my guests complained to Abritel about your services.

_______________________

Will let you know what the response is, I'm not expecting much.

We also offer our guests the option to pay in euros or sterling, By cheque (French only), Paypal, Bank transfer but not card. We have been "in discussion" with Homeaway because we have adverts in HA, AB, OD all in euros but with the option to accept sterling (not at their rate though).

When we last spoke to the PTB (powers that be) at HA re why we wouldnt accept their "super" payment system. We explained that it wasnt that we wouldnt accept but that we couldn't. It would always be optional (in addition to the above) and MUST be in either sterling or euros to suit our guests.

If HA (or their derivatives) could sort this out we for one would have no hesitation in signing up to it.