If you Booked and Paid through a 3rd Party Listing Site
Thank you for choosing to stay with us at Breezy or Pleasant Oak Villa. We are delighted that you found us on a third party listing site and chosen to book with us. This page explains details of your payment options for your booking with us.
Summary:
If you submitted a Reservation Request (NOT just made an inquiry) through a 3rd Party Web Site, and entered your Credit Card information in the process and submitted a payment, your Booking Deposit payment will have already been arranged for through that site.
When we accept your Reservation Request through the 3rd Party Site, your credit card will be charged for the Booking Deposit amount you were shown on that site, along with whatever additional fees the site charges. Due to the limitations of these 3rd Party Booking Sites, you may have been charged a different Booking Deposit amount than what you see on our system. This has no impact on your booking, or the amount of your rental charges. Your Booking Deposit will be credited to your account after the booking process is completed.
Upon submitting our own Booking Form (not the booking form on the 3rd party site), you will receive an email acknowledgement from us. The email may contain instructions on how to pay your Booking Deposit.
You do not need to pay a second Booking Deposit. Please ignore the Booking Deposit Payment instructions in that email, as your Booking Deposit will have already been paid through the 3rd Party Site.
Important: Understand the difference between a Booking Deposit and an Account/Security Deposit! They are not the same thing. Please see the explanation following the logos below for details.
Keep in mind that the balances showing as owing for your reservation on a 3rd party website may be incomplete or inaccurate, as they do not maintain complete records of your reservation. You will likely find it simpler to submit your final payment directly to us through your Online Reservations Page. Your Account/Security Deposit must be paid directly through your Online Reservations Page.
Even if you initially requested to book our property through a 3rd Party Website, you are our guest and will receive the best service and information we can provide, directly through this, our own management system. Keep in mind that we do not use 3rd party website management or information systems, and you may receive email from them that does not apply to your reservation. Please email us directly if you have any questions at all.
Thank you.
What is a Booking Deposit and an Account/Security Deposit?
The payment of your rental charges for staying with us consists of two main components; 1) your Rental Charges, and 2) a Refundable Account/Security Deposit.
Your rental charges may usually be paid over one, two or three payments, depending upon the timing of when you book relative to when you stay.
To book and confirm your dates, a payment equal to 20% of the total Rental Charges (including tax) is required. Payment of this amount is needed to hold and confirm your dates. This payment is referred to as a Booking Deposit. The remaining 80% of the total Rental Charges is due eight weeks before your arrival date. This second payment is referred to as your Balance Payment.
If you book less than eight weeks prior to your arrival date, your total Rental Charges will be due all at once, and immediately. In other words, the Rental Charges won’t be split between two payments. In this case, in effect there is no Booking Deposit, you simply pay the total Rental Charges in a single payment.
Whether you book with us directly, or through a third-party rental site like VRBO, your rental charges will be split this way, depending upon how far in advance you book.
Even after you have paid your rental charges, it is possible that an additional third or fourth payment may be necessary, if you add optional extras, such as Pool Heating or BBQ Rental to your booking; or choose to extend your stay if possible, even after you arrive! (Some guests, once they arrive, never truly want to leave! If we don’t have other guests arriving immediately after a departure, we always try to accommodate such requests.)
Third party sites charge our guests an extra amount for booking through them, and it is loosely based on a percentage of our rental fees. By paying for optional extras separately, after booking and directly to us… it keeps the original booking amount through the third party site as low as possible, and thus keeps their additional extra fee as low as possible.
The Security/Account Deposit is a separate amount, paid shortly before you arrive. This amount serves a number of purposes; it provides a security deposit against damages, and it also provides a pre-payment amount which can be used for last minute additions to your stay, such as additional rental items or extending your stay. Once your stay is over, assuming the villa is left in good shape and no additional charges were incurred, the Security/Account Deposit will be refunded in full. The vast majority of these deposits are fully refunded, as changes during a stay are rare.
Please note that in early 2021 we began to process many Security/Account Deposits as Credit Card Authorizations, rather than actual charges which would later need to be refunded. In this case, the amount on your Credit Card account is ‘reserved’ in case we need it later, but not actually charged unless and until we do. If not used, an Authorization automatically expires after a certain period of time has elapsed, usually a month.
Because we don’t store your credit card information, the Authorization must still be processed exactly like a normal credit card payment. So you will receive a reminder to go to your Online Reservations Page and make the payment online at the regular time. When you do, if the card is only Authorized, your receipt will state that it was for an Authorization only.
The handling and processing of Security/Account Deposits is always done directly with us through our own online payment processing system, no matter whether you originally booked your stay directly with us, or through a third party website. This can be confusing for some guests, because some third party websites like VRBO or TripAdvisor DO sometimes charge guests for Security Deposits. We do not use third party Security Deposits because such a deposit provides us with no security when held by a third party who has no responsibility to either ourselves or our guests, plus it can not be used as a Payment on Account for additional charges should the guest desire to add to their reservation during their stay with us.
Detailed explanation and background:
Below are further details about the current situation with 3rd Party Listing Sites where you may find our properties listed and advertised for rent. These sites are essentially advertising venues for us, and we do not manage or administer bookings through them, as explained below.
Unfortunately, this can admittedly be confusing for our guests at first, however we truly believe that knowledge and awareness are a good thing, and it is best for our guests to understand what happens when they use 3rd Party listing sites for booking a vacation rental.
If you submitted a Reservation Request or Booking through a third-party web site such as VRBO, TripAdvisor or KidandCoe, and provided them with a Credit Card Payment, your Booking Deposit will have already been arranged for, and paid through that site. You most likely do not need to submit a second payment!
If you are not sure if the request for a Booking Deposit to be paid in the email you just received applies to you or not:
If you DID NOT enter your credit card information on another website (even if you first found us through that website), you most likely need to pay your Booking Deposit directly to us following the instructions in the email you were sent.
If you DID enter your credit card information on the outside listing site, you likely submitted a Reservation Request or Instant Booking Request (not just an inquiry) and have already made arrangements for payment of your Booking Deposit. You do not need to submit a payment again.
Please do read through the information below and in the email you received so that you are familiar with our processes.
We maintain a complete online management reservation system for ourselves and our guests (through our supplier called MyVRZone). This allows us to provide our guests with the highest level of service, simplifies management of our properties, and keeps both ours and your information secure.
Because we receive bookings from a number of sources, including those guests who book directly with us, we maintain this single system to service our guests and prevent double bookings. Our system feeds our availability calendar data automatically to other vacation rental web sites where our properties appear, so our availability is instantly updated on those sites whenever a new booking comes in.
By completing our own Booking Form, your information is saved in our system, in addition to the site where you first found us. Unfortunately, this can lead to some confusion for our guests, as the third-party site will continue to act like they are your only point of contact with us, and send you emails about your reservation claiming to be from us. They will even sign our names to emails they automatically send out without our knowledge!
When it comes to the details of your reservation with us, from this point going forward, you can safely ignore practically everything the third-party site sends you, as they will not have up-to-date information about your reservation. For example, if you selected optional items when you completed our booking form, the third-party site will be unaware of them, and the amounts they show for your booking along with any balances due will not reflect your final selections.
Third-party sites usually charge our guests fees when they book through them, over and above what we charge to rent our properties. To help justify these fees, third-party sites often offer ‘guarantees’ on payments made which in practical terms are really of no benefit to the guest. Guests are fully protected when they pay for a reservation by credit card, and in most cases, third-party websites rely on these protections to ‘service’ their own guarantees of protection.
In other words, many times when guests call on a third-party website for help with a booking or payment problem they have encountered with an owner (never us, because we don’t cause our guests problems!) the site will simply tell the guest to contact their credit card company for assistance!
Third-party website fees are usually based on a percentage of the rental rates we charge, so we prefer to keep any additional items a guest may want to add to their reservation completely off those sites. This keeps the extra fees our guests pay these sites to a minimum. In addition, the software on these sites for making bookings often don’t have the ability to offer optional items, making them impractical.
The point of all of this is that now that you have submitted your first payment to us, you may safely and securely submit all future payments to us directly through your Online Reservations Page, referred to in the email you were sent. There is always a link in the emails we send you to reach your Online Reservations Page.
If you prefer to continue to submit payments through the third-party site where you found us, you may do so, however be aware that this does introduce delays in processing your payments and crediting your account with us.
Do not be concerned about submitting payments directly to us, or that this somehow increases any risk you may be taking with your vacation rental booking. It certainly does not, and your payments to us are fully protected by your Credit Card issuing bank. We have been in business for over a decade, and have a long and established track record of providing quality service in a safe and secure manner.
(If you ever encounter a vacation rental manager who pressures you to send payments via email transfer, bank transfer, Western Union, cashier’s check or some other unrecoverable payment method, you should be very cautious in dealing with them.)
You may see third-party websites advising you to submit payments only through their systems, but this is simply because they make money off of vacation rental owners and guests by processing payments, and they want to keep their revenues as high as possible. From a marketing point of view, these sites also want to keep guests as ‘their’ customers, in order to ensure continued revenue through guest service (booking) fees.
If a guest of ours insists on submitting their balance payment through the third-party site where they originally found us, they certainly may do so. They should be prepared to also submit any necessary additional payments (usually for added optional items, such as pool heating) directly to us afterwards.
As of September 1, 2018 Payment of all Account (Security) Deposits must be made directly through your Online Reservations page on our system in order to ensure it is processed promptly before your arrival, and to make it easier for us to refund to you after your stay is complete. (This also avoids recent problems with account deposits that have been happening on third party sites.)
If you have any questions about any of this at all, please do not hesitate to reach out to us by phone or email.
For a detailed explanation of the booking and rental process, see this page here.