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Prepayment Not Available Yet
Hello
I'm new to booking.com at the moment we deal with the local market and take a 50% deposit for bookings.
We don't have facilities to take credit cards right now.
Booking.com doesn't allow me to ask for prepayments yet by bank transfer or other means (its greyed out in the extranet) I guess because we are new hosts to them. When does this become an option for us?
I am frightened of no shows we are a small business with 5 apartments, Our first booking is coming up and despite numerous messages this guest hasn't replied once to us yet?
Would I be penalised for cancelling this booking as despite 7 messages from me no response from the guest at all?
Many thanks for any advice.
Joanna
This is a massive failing of Booking.com (BDC). Even long term "partners"(sic) who open another property go through the same idiotic qualifying period, which is not actually defined but based on variables.
This lead to us to removing one property from BDC, totally unacceptable especially when BDC is by far the greatest source of false bookings.
If you cancel the reservation, yes, you will be penalised. Another possibility is to request credit card details for all of your bookings. No, wait, I know you can't process them, bare with me!
With that set up, when a guest ignores all requests for payment by transfer you can then use the invalid credit card feature to cancel the booking and release your room(s) without penalty.
You will also need to make it clear on your listing that you will expect payment by transfer in advance.
Thank you very much for your response fluff.
I think I will try the credit card option you suggested with the option to use that as a reason to cancel the booking if prepayment doesn't come through. Really appreciate your honest feedback.
We are keen to try and make this work for us but I can see some pretty big drawbacks already.
Joanna
Hi Fluff
Do you happen to know how soon after booking that I would be able to say that the credit card was invalid?
Say for example I gave someone 7 days to make a bank transfer then I would want to remove the booking immediately if they didn't pay.
Would this be possible within the suggestion you outlined?
Many thanks
Joanna