How to take damage deposits
I have been managing my property on AirBnB for about a year now and it's been great. When I first started I thought I would also advertise on Booking.Com but since I never did the address verification I had no bookings. I decided to sent the code in and now I have bookings!
I am using payments by BDC but I need a way to ask for damages deposit and while there are tons of pots on the board talking about it, there does not seem to be a clear conclusion. I can't collect cash sinc I am not always there at the apartment when guests arrive and depart.
I am now thinking of asking for money via Paypal and when they leave and all is well, just refunding them. It should be okay but annoyingly if I say I ask for a $500 deposit, then I am going to out the payment charge of something like 2.2% of the deposit which will be my cost of acceptance of the payment (unless the sender sends me the money from his bank account). I guess I put that to cost of doing business and/or increase my cleaning charge to take care of it?
What do other hosts think?
Hi
So the way I look at it is either factor in a rate increase or ask for a reasonable deposit.
Most methods cost someone a fee.
I say reasonable deposit due to what I've seen some on here give as examples, I thought they were extortionate. Imo.
Other way to think of it depends on do you already collect others fees in person or locally on arrival?
I use Revolut for many things I including paying my cleaner.
In theory you could share your Revolut banking referral link with a new guest, they then prepaid the fees and deposit. Then you do refund to send back the deposit .
It's similar idea to SEPA IBAN transfer ,and a very nice UI.
Guest can topup their Revokut balance directly from their existing bank instantly using their phone Google pay or apple pay etc... or by SEPA IBAN Transfer.
Virtual Terminal via payment provider, method.
Payrexx.com with STRIPE. Or sumup.com
They can provide the VC method as a secondary service, which allows you to email a dynamic link with a preset amount, then guest picks the method they want from 12 possible sources including paypal.
Kind regards
I can certainly accept payments via credit card using say Paypal and my personalised payment address. But when I go to the payments page and add I require a damages deposit it says I can only do it via cash. I guess I could email the Paypal link to the customer and ask for a deposit but there is no way to enforce that. And I thought I did read on the board that you can actually cancel a reservation if the damages deposit is not paid but cannot now find that section.
How is it normally done?
Hi
In that case you can simply create / update your first auto message temple, i.e. new booking it is the first message they receive.
In first or immediate section state something like:
Like you mentioned there will be no way to enforce this other than no compliance and you then cancel the booking.
It has already been posted on here by many this is a terrible way to do it as you are depending on the honesty and compliance of a guest to do what you want.
The ideal solution of course is some sort of smart phone app like Revolut bank app that lets you quickly cancel and refund the transaction.
There are others like TransferWise which I think has low fees or none on transfers.
Some like PayPal are actually still going to charge you a fee so even if you refund its actually costing you money .
I did try sending money to myself over Paypal (from one of my other accounts funded by a credit card) and then immediately refunded it. It seems on the surface that Paypal also refunded me the fees but it could be because the refund took place only a few minutes after the payment.
I have created an account on Payrexx (as suggested on another forum) and it allows me to create a payment link. I just need to work out how to automatically send that when a person books the place
Dear Laurence thank you for posting in the community!
Booking.com cannot collect damage deposit payments from guests on your behalf. Instead, you need to arrange this directly with guests according to your house rules.
Since you’re a new partner and your property has not been verified you’ll need to request damage deposit payment directly from guests at check-in.
Kind regards
If all the other platforms can, whats BDCs excuse? It makes ZERO sense.
Hi guest, I know we are in a pandemic and you want contactless check-in / check-out but I have to drive hours each way to make you feel uncomfortable about interacting per COVID and collect cash from you on arrival and upon check-out. WTH BDC, this is insane.
Thanks for that. I presume I can send a link to a payment page to ask for the Damages Deposit. I know I am a new partner but I am not sure what it means my property is not verified since I am sure I received a verification letter by mail and I entered the code into my property record
Hi
Yes that's one of the features I know of on payrexx.com.
as for the verify code ,after you enter it to activate, make sure you have all your ducks in a row, with all setup and availability done, before you enable the Go Live.
I believe the Go Live is on the default home page of the extranet upon logging on.