HomeAway Payments - Changing Currency

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Lets Go To Puglia
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HomeAway Payments - Changing Currency

Post by Lets Go To Puglia »

:twisted: RANT warning :twisted:

I have just had the most frustrating telephone conversation with HomeAway. I want to change the currency on my rental to EUR and I have online payments for that rental.

I have been a customer with Yapstone for the HomeAway online payments for about 5 years. I have instant payments and get paid within a few days of the guests paying HomeAway / Yapstone.

HomeAway say the only way they can change the currency with online payments is to disable the online payments, and I have to reapply. They cannot guarantee which payment service the new application will be allocated to and if it is not Yapstone then we will no longer get instant payments. Instead we will not be paid until after the guest checks on.

The person I spoke with was next to useless, just kept explaining the difference between instant payments and check in payments and apparently unable to do anything other than quote from a script.

So it seems I am stuck with continuing to receive payments in sterling and get paid when the guest pays or switch to EUR and get after the guest checks in.

And HomeAway of course could care less..... Finally time to ditch HomeAway who can only do what the system is programmed to do, and of course it is programmed in their favour

Rant over
Ciao, Debbie

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KathyG
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Post by KathyG »

I've had a frustrating few calls with them too! Last week they told me that they were ditching Yapstone in the next few months as if you renew now you have no option but to get paid once the guest has arrived. When HA take over the payment system there will be a 'get paid now' option.....
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Lets Go To Puglia
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Post by Lets Go To Puglia »

Seems they are not consistent with what they say .... First I was told that the payment provider was allocated by their computer system "randomly" (as if). Then I was told the provider was allocated based on the country of your bank.
Ciao, Debbie

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Martha
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Post by Martha »

It's pathetic. I've never had or been offered instant payments, incidentally, so it's interesting that there may be a 'get paid now' option.

I'm glad they are at least ditching Yapstone, who are little better than crooks IMO.

No advice I'm afraid, only sympathy. I am switching to Euros soon myself and not looking forward to it, I wonder what yarn they'll spin me to make things even worse.
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AngloDutch
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Post by AngloDutch »

Much appreciate this thread, Debbie, because we had just decided to change our rates to Euros from Sterling on our OD listing (subscription/online booking and payments) and were also therefore going to ask Yapstone to pay out in Euros to a Dutch bank account. Until we read this!

Now, reading your posts we definitely won't be altering anything, as we currently get our money a few days after our guests make their payments. At the moment, OD is for us one of the only sites that we use where it is possible to receive payments before the guests have checked in. So we'll leave it as is for the time being (and just recalculate our rates @ EUR 1.00=GBP1.00) :shock:
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Post by Lets Go To Puglia »

I may follow your lead and recalculate rates on 1 GBP = 1 EUR. I'm nervous about increasing prices, don't want to kill off rentals. I have looked at other similar properties and they do seem to have higher prices than ours
Ciao, Debbie

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AngloDutch
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Post by AngloDutch »

Just to reopen this thread, has anyone else attempted to change currencies on OD/HA, etc. recently?

Many of our mainland European guests get extremely confused when shown amounts in Sterling during the online booking process on our OD listing, and we really think it's time to set rates in Euros.

I take it that online payments still have to be disabled and you must reapply? But if HA has taken over the payment processing by now, maybe the problem has been resolved (no more Yapstone for new applications?)

We really don't want to have any more payments coming in post-arrival date, as we are on subscription with OD and they are the only site now that send us the funds as soon as guests make a payment...
Martha
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Post by Martha »

I just did this. They gave me a specific date to do it by, and said everything would then be smooth. It wasn't and I had to chase up some payments from them, but all seems OK now. The account was offline for a few days so best to arrange it on a Monday so as to be up again for the weekend.

They said that there are no more Yapstone accounts from now, all accounts are being migrated to them and all payments from now on will be post-check-in. I said that I know some people had payment when the guests paid, and they said, yes that's true but everyone will be migrated to the system of payment on arrival, it is absolutely not available to anyone new or changing currencies. So not the news you wanted to hear I'm afraid. Or me!
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Richy
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Post by Richy »

Be warned
If you have payments pending with Yapstone and they switch to Homeaway wallet - There own payment system your bank details may get removed from you account and they have no way of adding them back without a system error.
6 weeks on lots of shouty phone calls unanswered emails. Closed tickets all of my adverts are offlne in the busy period of the year. Simply because they cannot associate my bank account with the HA account. They can't even be bothered to look at my account to see how many properties I have.
A real driver for doing everything possible to be independent. I wouldn't try to change anything payment wise if it's working for you.
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AngloDutch
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Post by AngloDutch »

Martha and Richy - thanks for the updates.

We thought it would be simple because our VR listing (commission listing, and rates in Euros) is also linked via Yapstone but to our Dutch bank account, and we believed that it would just involve connecting our OD listing to the same Euro account bank details that they already hold for us.

But seeing how many owners are reporting that the change doesn't go smoothly, we'll leave our OD listing as is, and will keep explaining to potential guests from the Eurozone that they have landed on a British site and that's why rates are in GBP (we have templates in several languages explaining this, because we get so many questions about why the rates are in GBP...).

Also, the thought of having even more payments coming in after check-in is just not acceptable to us. Like many owners, we use the deposits coming in for bookings to do our yearly renovating in the first 3 months of every year.
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