Lay My Hat

I am in choc. I dont know what to do? I cannot think anymore.

A couple rented our house in Spain for 4 weeks. Everything was done by Abritel. The couple is in our house as of 24 th of september.
I only got a mail about 1 payment out of 2. I did not receive a mail about the second payment by Abritel.

We send Abritel a mail and they just sais " in fact the guest only paid the first payment". He did not pay the second one.

And Abritel sends this couple "a welcome mail", knowing he did not pay???????!!!!!!!!!! This is the limit!!
We did not receive any mail from Abritel that he did not pay!!! This is fraud, this is criminal!!

What to do know? These people in our house have fun now! They only paid 30%. We are not in Spain. A friend takes care of the cleaning and the key.

Real panic now.

Firstly, I do not use Arbritel, so my comments are purely to try and stimulate something of a response for you. I know nothing of their terms and conditions etc etc with owners.

If Abritel have not received the second payment - did they then send the information which allowed your guest to access your property i.e. Address, how to collect keys etc??

I know some of the sites don't forward on the final payment until after the guest has arrived, is this the case??

Usually with a situation like this, it is helpful to break everything down to small steps in the process, along with who is responsible for those steps.
If the answer is Arbritel, then I would be on the phone to them wanting to speak to someone very senior. I would expect them to make up the payment and also pick up any damages that occur.

I know you are very upset, and worried about the sort of person who is now in your property.

Someone is responsible for the situation.

Try and take a deep breath and look at this situation in a logical fashion, perhaps think of it as though it was happening to someone else.

Don't panic Pilou! I wouldn't necessarily expect that your guests are in the wrong or that they won't be bad guests, but Abritel are definitely in the wrong for not requesting the 2nd payment. I recently stayed somewhere that said the balance was due a week before arriving, I completely forgot and they didn't remind me until 3 days into my holiday! I do hope you manage to sort it all out without too much more worry.

I have noticed recently that HA have stopped sending guests automatic reminders when their final payment is due, and have needed to do it myself from the dashboard. This may be the reason for your issue. I would just message the guest from the dashboard, apologising for the mix up and requesting the payment. I'm sure they will be fine about it.

Today we try to contact Abritel again and ask an explanation.
We also received an answer from our guest and he said he paid the total amount and there were no problems.

We will communicate this with Abritel.

Hi Jenster,
I think this is our case. There is no second payment made by the guest.
We cannot see this because we don't receive the money. It is Abritel that should send a standard mail to us telling the second payment is not received.

Our guest said he paid the total amount.
WE CANNOT CHECK THIS!!!!!!! THE MONEY IS SENT TO ABRITEL SO HOW CAN WE CHECK IF OUR GUEST IS TELLING THE TRUTH??????

Nothing heard from Abritel yet. We are waiting!

We did not hear anything yet from Abritel.
On the first payment, Abritel deducted all their fees, so Abritel did not bother about the second payment. They don't care. Knowing that the guest did not pay, the even send a "welcome-mail" to the guest.

The second highest payment was still open and we did what Jenster said.
Via the dashboard we sent a reminder.

Our guest paid and told us he never received a reminder before. This is the first time in 7 years that we need to send a reminder.

This attitude of Abritel is far from professional!

Glad it was sorted. I would check any other final payments that are due - it seems it is now our own responsibility to request them.

I agree it's very poor for HA/Abritel to stop sending reminders without informing anyone.