Thank you for taking the time to share these links.
My original question is still outstanding though.... who do I invoice at booking.com for my payment processing costs as, just like you, it costs us too. And I imagine you are still making a profit per transaction. It costs us money to accept payment from you! This would not be acceptable in other other walk of life... would you be happy going in to a supermarket and them billing you because you chose to pay by card? Or how about if you returned something you bought via Amazon and Amazon only agreed to give you a refund if you paid a processing fee to credit your card back? You wouldn't accept it so why do you expect that we should?
I'm happy to send our payment processing invoice directly to you in the absence of any support from your Finance colleagues.
Am I right in inferring that this effectively moves us onto a mandatory pre-payment footing? I just want to be clear as we know that many of our guests comment on the fact that we don't demand payment up front and they deem this fairer and choose us over properties that do as a result...
Fluff - it's clear you are trying to be helpful and fair play to you for doing so but there is little point in the original poster following that advice.
Finance department refuse to speak to paying customers (us accommodation owners) and the only humans you can actually engage with are powerless automatons on customer service desks incapable of deviating from scripts and / or making decisions.
And as for taking them to court..... waste of time and money as they have lots and lots of lawyers.
Terrible organisation, abusing a near-monopolistic status that goes unchallenged because money talks.
Hi, could you point me in the direction please of how to turn Smartflex off / withdraw from the programme because I'm being dim and can't find the right options. Thanks in advance
Hi and thanks for your comments. We have lots of French guests who prefer to pay by cheque or cash so what's your point? Not sure if you got the fact that all these fake bookings are coming to try and assuage Smartflex obligations... it actually says something like "our obligations to meet the smartflex requirements to find replacement bookings are now fulfilled" in the booking email we get from Booking.con. So they are very clearly linked, no?
You haven't addressed the fake bookings being made... just insinuated that it's our fault for some reason?
And many guests do give their full card details, it's just that with the Smartflex system, Booking.con does not share the CCV numbers so we couldn't take a payment anyway :-(
Have exactly the same issue and, unfortunately, the exact same success rate with Booking.con that you experienced..... we're guessing that this is part of a wider play by them to force a new process (probably paid for) on accommodation owners down the line.
BTW, how did you opt out of the Smartflex service please as I'm trying to find the steps right now and am clearly missing something!
Of course ;-) But card processing fees add 2-3 euros per night and boom, we move down to the bottom of the table in any local price-sorted listing :-(
Unfortunately, cash is still hugely important in an economy (France) where tax rates are set with an expectation of around 35-40% of people's income being generated that way ie; not likely to be declared. Thanks to COVID and the huge increase in technology-based payment, we now generate 20% more revenue but keep less than 80% of what we used to because of this very situation. Being poorer for more work doesn't feel like progress...
Thank you for taking the time to share these links.
My original question is still outstanding though.... who do I invoice at booking.com for my payment processing costs as, just like you, it costs us too. And I imagine you are still making a profit per transaction. It costs us money to accept payment from you! This would not be acceptable in other other walk of life... would you be happy going in to a supermarket and them billing you because you chose to pay by card? Or how about if you returned something you bought via Amazon and Amazon only agreed to give you a refund if you paid a processing fee to credit your card back? You wouldn't accept it so why do you expect that we should?
I'm happy to send our payment processing invoice directly to you in the absence of any support from your Finance colleagues.
Regards
Kevin
Thanks for the tips BrookAve.
Am I right in inferring that this effectively moves us onto a mandatory pre-payment footing? I just want to be clear as we know that many of our guests comment on the fact that we don't demand payment up front and they deem this fairer and choose us over properties that do as a result...
Thanks for your thoughts :-)
UF
Fluff - it's clear you are trying to be helpful and fair play to you for doing so but there is little point in the original poster following that advice.
Finance department refuse to speak to paying customers (us accommodation owners) and the only humans you can actually engage with are powerless automatons on customer service desks incapable of deviating from scripts and / or making decisions.
And as for taking them to court..... waste of time and money as they have lots and lots of lawyers.
Terrible organisation, abusing a near-monopolistic status that goes unchallenged because money talks.
Thanks very much both :-)
Hi, could you point me in the direction please of how to turn Smartflex off / withdraw from the programme because I'm being dim and can't find the right options. Thanks in advance
Kevin
Hi and thanks for your comments. We have lots of French guests who prefer to pay by cheque or cash so what's your point? Not sure if you got the fact that all these fake bookings are coming to try and assuage Smartflex obligations... it actually says something like "our obligations to meet the smartflex requirements to find replacement bookings are now fulfilled" in the booking email we get from Booking.con. So they are very clearly linked, no?
You haven't addressed the fake bookings being made... just insinuated that it's our fault for some reason?
And many guests do give their full card details, it's just that with the Smartflex system, Booking.con does not share the CCV numbers so we couldn't take a payment anyway :-(
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.
Have exactly the same issue and, unfortunately, the exact same success rate with Booking.con that you experienced..... we're guessing that this is part of a wider play by them to force a new process (probably paid for) on accommodation owners down the line.
BTW, how did you opt out of the Smartflex service please as I'm trying to find the steps right now and am clearly missing something!
Thanks and have a great weekend
Kevin
Of course ;-) But card processing fees add 2-3 euros per night and boom, we move down to the bottom of the table in any local price-sorted listing :-(
Unfortunately, cash is still hugely important in an economy (France) where tax rates are set with an expectation of around 35-40% of people's income being generated that way ie; not likely to be declared. Thanks to COVID and the huge increase in technology-based payment, we now generate 20% more revenue but keep less than 80% of what we used to because of this very situation. Being poorer for more work doesn't feel like progress...