Isle of Wight Vacations

Unfortunately, there's little or nothing we can do about nonsense, rude or false reviews. We're all going to get them one day, because that's what some people do. Some people will buy 2 lottery tickets, win the jackpot, then complain that the second ticket won nothing.

If you can't turn a review into a marketing opportunity, ignore it. It'll soon get buried by good reviews. The occasional bad review tends to stand out as "grumpy customer" rather than "poor accommodation and poor service".

I just had a "Message from Booking.com" .... looked at it on Pulse and we can't reply to it either .... so no way whatsoever to message BDC from Pulse ...

In More, there is Help and in there, if you scroll down a vey long way, there is Feedback, Technical Support and contacting us. Click on that and it opens 2 options. Click either one and scroll down to an FAQ for How do I contact Booking.com. Click on that then scroll down to Send a note. It says you can send a message from your Extranet Inbox (which, if you're in the app, you can't do), or "send a note via the Pulse app under the 'More' tab" .... which takes us back to the beginning ......... round and round in circles ....

If you have used Payments by Booking.com and have set it to Non-refundable, then you get the money whether they show up or not

If you have not done this, you lose.

As above, Booking.com do not collect the damage deposit for you. You will need to have given him your bank details for him to pay the damage deposit. Are those your bank details shown in the photos? Is there a record in your bank account of his payment?

As pibomarco says, if you didn't send them your bank details, they haven't paid it, so nothing to return to them.

pibomarco - Oh yes, it's never easy to actually claim against a damage deposit and guests always have an option to dispute it.

We see the main purpose of a damage deposit as encouraging the guests to take a bit more care of the property. It works. They normally leave properties clean and tidy.

A few days ago, guests were cooking dinner and it "exploded" up the wall. They cleaned up but unfortunately took a bit of paint off the wall. They were very apologetic. It was only a bit of paint, took us 5 minutes to paint over it, so not the slightest bit worried. We accept that accidents happen. Of course, they get their damage deposit back and we get a maximum score review - that review is worth much more in future bookings than a few pounds to repair or replace something.

AirBnB make it easy for us to protect our properties and our future guests by collecting (or reserving the funds for) a damage deposit for us. BDC refuse to do this because (in their words), they don't trust hosts.

Hi James, Sorry to hear that - we had the same problem with BDC customers earlier this year.

BDC do not collect a damage deposit on our behalf, even when using Payments by Booking.com. We have to collect it ourselves via cash or bank transfer etc. BDC don't make it very clear that they don't collect it themselves - when you use Payments by Booking.com, it says that payment is collected by bank transfer, and it says the same for the damage deposit, so at first, I was under the impression that BDC collected this for us in the same way that other OTAs do. It was only later that I found out otherwise .....

BDC say they will not take damage deposits for hosts because they don't trust us .... those are the words of BDC .... they treat us like criminals for wanting to protect our properties and future guests.

If you have not taken a damage deposit manually, then it probably hasn't been paid and you can't recover anything.

BDC advised me (after having the same issue as you) to use the "Report guest misconduct" button. You can find this by finding the reservation and opening it, and the button is on the right hand side.

BDC have also advised me that although some of our listings show damage deposit is collected in cash on arrival and others say bank transfer, we can collect all of them by bank transfer. They advised that we set up an automatic message which is sent when guests complete the booking - the message includes instructions and bank details for guests to pay their damage deposit. If guests don't pay it, we firstly have to report them as non-payers to BDC, who will then phone the guest to get them to pay.

This solution only helps a bit, but also highlights another issue with BDC - guests don't read messages in their inbox. So, BDC advised that we change the Fine Print from Property > View your descriptions and then scroll down to The Fine Print and click "Can't find what you're looking for" or "Request a change". You then send the wording you want and they edit it and add it to The Fine Print. This is then displayed on the booking confirmation page which they often print out and bring with them. The booking confirmation page includes directions and other information.

Getting this far with BDC has been very painful .... they could make it so much easier by simply authorising the guest's card at the time of booking in the same way as other OTAs .... but as above, BDC are very clear, they don't trust us .....