Homeaway booking - cancellation received from guests

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AngloDutch
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Homeaway booking - cancellation received from guests

Post by AngloDutch »

We've just received a cancellation request from guests who booked via Homeaway uk back in September. I have actioned this in the last few minutes and agreed to refund the guest as per the Homeaway policy of 100% refund up to 60 days before arrival (so, the entire deposit already paid - some £2,230).

Although happy that they have cancelled so far ahead, not happy to lose a booking to the value of £6,500 for 40 nights next July and August.

Actually, this is the first time ever that we've had a cancellation through the Homeaway Group and we have no idea how to repay HolidayRentPayment (their payment processors in Ireland) for the deposit that they will now refund back to the guest's Mastercard.

This deposit (just £1,783 after service and transaction fee deducted) was paid into our UK bank account by HolidayRentPayment straightaway in September, as we are on their faster payments scheme.

So, do we actually have to refund HolidayRentPayment, or will they allocate future payments from other guests' bookings to cover this debit on our account with them?

Also, what about the service fee (which was a whopping £392)? I remember reading about Homeaway holding onto this and not returning this to guests. Is this their standard policy?

Anyone with experience of this, please let us know how it works (or should work, yes, it's HolidayRentPayment....)

Thanks!
Jenster
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Post by Jenster »

You should have filled in a direct debit mandate when you set up online payments - if you have, they will just take the payment back from your bank account. If this doesn't happen you will probably need to fill in a mandate now to allow for the refund.

The service fee is supposed to be refunded to the guest and your cc processing fees (and commission if relevant) should also be refunded. I've never known this not to happen but I haven't had many cancellations luckily.

Hope this helps.
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AngloDutch
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Post by AngloDutch »

Jenster, thanks for reminding me about the mandate that we filled in back in 2015, I’d forgotten about that.

The next problem we've got is that HolidayRentPayment will not be able to debit any funds from our UK bank account, as we have since used the guest's entire deposit for renovations (it has been three months since the payment was made after all). HA payments are the only incoming funds on that bank account, as we only use our UK bank account now with HA uk (as that is the only site where we have our rates in Sterling).

Unfortunately, we have only 1 future booking via HA uk at the moment and the balance of that is not due until 13 April. So, at the moment, we'd still owe HolidayRentPayment nearly £1,100 after that future balance payment (coming from other guests in April) is taken into account.

Do you (or anyone else) know how HolidayRentPayment would react if they are unable to collect payment from our UK bank account? Will our payment processing account with them (and/or our listing on HA uk) be affected? Would they allow us to pay them off via future payments? Or, would they start charging heavy fees/interest and threaten us with a collection agency? Does anyone have any experience with dealing with them? We could call them, but from what we’ve heard, you get connected to the Philippines, and after being on hold for half an hour you end the call none the wiser.

We don't really want to have to transfer Euro funds from the Netherlands to our UK bank account to cover this refund, if it's not necessary. But obviously, we don’t want to get into problems with them.

This is turning into a complete nightmare - not only is this the first cancellation through HA, but only the second cancellation we’ve ever had in over thirteen years where we’ve had to refund guests. It was also for one of the largest amounts we’d ever received (or were going to receive!) for a single guest booking as well.

I suppose we might as well switch completely to receiving all payments from guests once they’ve checked in. At least you know then that it’s safe to invest your revenue in renovating you holiday home without your guests just deciding to cancel for no valid reason and expecting a 100% refund of all payments made up till 60 days before arrival (the reason given here was because they have now chosen a different destination, since booking with us three months ago).

Further to this, I have this morning changed our cancellation policy on HA uk to ‘None – The holidaymaker will not get a refund if they cancel their booking at any time after it is accepted.’ We’re not going through this again. As has been said on other threads, it seems that more and more guests expect these days to get a full refund right up to (near) check-in time…courtesy of course of ABB, BC, HA and all the others who are promoting 'free-risk bookings' to guests without any need to take out any kind of holiday insurance..
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Nemo
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Post by Nemo »

My take on it would be that they will take the payment and it will be up to your bank to decide whether to send you overdrawn or refuse the payment with the charges that will incur. Either way will cost you, so I'd get the money in quick into the account if you know they will debit it. Otherwise ring HA and see if there are any alternatives but I really wouldn't be surprised if there isn't. Would they allow a card payment perhaps rather than from a bank?
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AngloDutch
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Post by AngloDutch »

Nemo, thanks for the advice. I also don't want any problems either with my UK bank.
Actually, the more I think about this, the more angry I get. Like so many owners who still receive bookings through HA, we were forced into accepting these ridiculous cancellation policies because we hesitated to implement the (only) more extreme conditions than this (which is no refund at all) in case it dissuaded guests from booking. What is the point of a deposit, if it's 100% refundable for any reason at all, right up to 2 months before arrival!? And what we originally had selected (full refund up to 60 days before arrival date) was the second most extreme cancellation policy offered through HA...


Are there any LMHers who are with HA or VR and who have selected 'No refund' under the cancellation policy choices?

And, do you actually refund guests, using your own cancellation terms, by using manual refunds?

If so, where do you communicate this to your potential guests - in the rental contract appended to your HA/VR account or stating your own policy on the listing itself? Or maybe both?
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roxytoo
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Post by roxytoo »

I'm in the no refund camp. Enquiries are non existent now so I probably do pay for that. If paid in full I do have my own policy but guests wont know that unless they book. I have had a couple of people asking what my policy is and I always advise that they should take out their own insurance etc etc. People that have asked haven't booked. I do think its been forced upon us and not good for business where guests can and do just cancel willy nilly. I'm hoping though to get out of the business in the next year or two, I rely now mainly on repeat business
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Nemo
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Post by Nemo »

I selected no refund, but I've only just gone over to commission basis from a subscription, so I'm on a fast and difficult learning curve trying to deal with the monster.

I have uploaded my own rental agreement/ terms and conditions, but I can't see it on my listing so I've no idea at what point it's revealed to the guest! It's definitely in my dashboard though as I can remove it but not view it!

I have just had one last minute booking last week but I suspect the refund policy will put off some people. I simply won't be dictated to by a site if I can possibly help it though! It may be worth me listing it somewhere on the advert though now you draw my attention to it in case it sways anyone.
Jenster
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Post by Jenster »

I have recently changed to no refund, after having suffered several cancellations just days before the two month non refundable window. I do state in my description that I will refund payments (minus an admin fee) as appropriate if I can re-let the week. My feeling is, if someone is put off by that then I probably wouldn't want them anyway. Why should I be their insurance policy against any cancellation?

If you set up your DD in 2015 and haven't used it since I'd check it is still active. I had one a while ago where they couldn't take the refund payment from my account because the DD had been de-activated due to lack of use. It was a real pain as neither the bank nor HA could tell me what the problem was, but the payment kept being refused. Eventually someone at my bank figured out what was going on and re-activated it.
Sunbeam
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Post by Sunbeam »

We opt for the no-refund policy.

It doesn't seem to put people off and seems pretty fair. Otherwise you'd have people booking out the same weeks with different properties and deciding nearer the time which to go for. Specially true for bigger properties where it can be difficult to get everyone in a larger group to agree.

Even if HA can stop a Booker from booking the same period at different properties - HA can't control a different person in the group from booking ('holding') another property for the same period.

Edited as I thought the 'none' cancellation policy meant the Booker got no refund on any money paid. Not sure how HA manage this for a guest who doesn't pay the balance? Is the guest still liable and hounded by HA for payment?
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AngloDutch
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Post by AngloDutch »

Thanks everyone for the input. Really helpful to us.

@Jenster - re the DD. Yes, I think we have the same thing happening. I have just found the Yapstone/HRP DD form I filled out back in 2015. But when I checked all current DDs valid on my UK bank account, there are none. So, it looks like Yapstone will not be able to do the refund after all, even though we have today transferred funds to our UK bank account to cover the reversal. Looks like this is not going to be as easy as I thought it was...

@Sunbeam - I believe that ‘None – The holidaymaker will not get a refund if they cancel their booking at any time after it is accepted’ means that any monies already paid before the cancellation are non-refundable (i.e. just deposit, or deposit and balance payment).
I don't think that guests are liable for the balance payment if they haven't yet paid it, because either it would not yet be due at the moment of cancellation, or it is overdue and the booking should have already been cancelled by the owner.

@Nemo - If you check where HA places your cancellation policy (just above your reviews), you could enter your own cancellation policy under 'Notes' or 'House Rules' and it will then appear right above the HA-selected cancellation policy, so your potential guests shouldn't miss seeing that you are offering an alternative policy.

@roxytoo - we have booked villas in France where the owners insisted that we send them a copy of our travel/cancellation insurance as a prerequisite to book. I thought it a bit over the top at the time, but can understand why they were asking that now.
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AngloDutch
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Post by AngloDutch »

Just want to add that I spent some time trawling through HA uk this morning, looking at a few pages of listings in France and Spain and their owners/property managers' cancellation policy choices.
I was quite surprised with the number of listings showing 'Cancelled bookings will not receive a refund', but as many of you say, it could be that guests are hesitant to book those properties and that is why there are so many still showing summer availability.

As I mentioned, we have now set both our HA uk and VR listings to no refund and will have to see how that affects our bookings.

We are also going to add our cancellation policy in our own rental agreement (which we still have to create), and will place our own cancellation policy near to the HA-generated policy on our listings as well.
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