Views on Safe Payments by Guests

[croatian_villa]

2012 and we have finally decided to start renting our holiday house out in Croatia after 4 years or renovations. On day 1 marketing day we have 4 enquiries for bookings so Im beginning to kick myself for not doing this earlier.

I have some concerns however regarding payments. It appears that a majority take Paypal as payment from their guests. You probably know that when paying by paypal the buyer has a certain security in that they can get a refund up to 45 days after their initial payment. Paypal also tend to side with the buyer not the seller.

What I want to ask is how many of you trust paypal as a method of payment for your holiday houses? And how many have had bad experiences and fraud/people doing chargebacks on their holidays etc.

I was thinking of only accepting Bank Transfers but at the same time I think this will reduce the amount of potential rentals.

[ccazes]

I offer both methods of payment and on the whole most wish to pay by bank transfer within the euro zone and even beyond. Most of my clients have done a minimum of research and find that the charges are less for a bank transfer. (I specify that the Paypal comm is payable by the client).

A few want to pay by card, I am not sure if it's for money management reasons or for the supposed guarantees attached to a CC payment. I am not 100% sure that this guarantee stretches to services such as villa rental as apposed to concrete delivery of an object. Maybe other LMH's can be more specific. I think that my property is described as such and for a CC claim to work they would have to show that what was offered was not as described. I have never accepted a last minute Paypal payment, all payments are at least 8 weeks in advance.

I chose to add Paypal payment because a minority of enquiries made it clear that they would only book if they could pay by credit card. For the moment I have not encountered any problems but just following LMH I know that some have encountered pitfalls in the system so I suppose that it pays to be informed a maximum to avoid problems along the way.

[Wendy@NorthIdaho]

I don't do PayPal but do accept credit cards. In three years of renting I have had no problems or charge backs (may it continue!) But many would not rent in the US without the option of using cc's ... For us a bank transfer costs $45 to do, so I really don't want to do that myself and it's really not an option in the US as most are not familiar with it here.

I hope you get lots of bookings!
Wendy

[croatian_villa]

Thank you for the advice. I was thinking to allow credit card but to charge the client an additional 3% for the processing charges.

Can I ask how you process your credit cards. Can anyone recommend a reasonable company.

I was looking at possibly using Google Checkout as Credit Card Merchant accounts look fairly expensive considering I am only renting out one villa.

The problem with WorldPay etc are that there are high monthly costs for the service whether we process cards or not. We would rather pay a slightly higher commission rate and not have a monthly credit card processing fee.

[Margaret]

We did it direct through our bank but your country may have a different system. You need to check whether it is worth waiting until Croatia joins the EU too.

[croatian_villa]

We will actually be processing via our UK Bank account as we live in the United Kingdom. We will take all payments both Euros and Pounds into UK Bank accounts.

I will speak to the bank to see if they offer this facility.

[Margaret]

In the UK, we use Barclays Merchant Services.

[LaVilleauTady]

We have used PayPal for years and the vast majority of our USA, Canadian, & Australian guests use it. Never had a problem.

Charge-backs are a potential issue with any credit card, not just PayPal.

We had a dispute with an eBay purchaser who paid with PayPal when they never bothered to turn up but expected a refund. They lodged a dispute/claim and the money was reversed and held by PayPal pending their decision - they found in our favour and we got the money.