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Prevent damage to property

Hello,

We are new to booking.com although we put another property in the past on homelidays.

What I was wondering is how to protect ourselves from potential "excessive" damage from customers. We have a 500€ deposit policy but, in case of excessive damage, how can we charge customers? Is there an application for iphone that scans credit cards? Any suggestions?

Thanks! 


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pibomarco 5 years ago

You can not charge more then 500€ for a damage if this is the amount you've set.

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Ivana-b 5 years ago

Hi,

Thanks for getting back to me.

I understand what you are saying. The thing is: if the deposit is too high, it's basically impossible to get people to book. At the same time you could get really unruly guests who could set you back a few thousand euros, especially for a fine property (like ours). No way to get out of this impasse.....?

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pibomarco 5 years ago

Well 500€ is already too high from my point of view. Even 250€.. Did you had a negative experience in the past with guest who damaged your place? What kind of guests do you usually have, drunk students? :)

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Ivana-b 5 years ago

:-)))))

No, not at all

And I'm probably just being overcautious.

But before (a few years ago) I did it with airbnb and homelidays and never had real issues really. But this new place is quite more "upmarket" and the furniture is quite nice so...well...is there a way to scan a guest's credit card on arrival?

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pibomarco 5 years ago

With such policy you will probably receive less bookings. I wouldn't book your place for instance, specially if there are enough other properties in your area.
Perhaps I accidently broke a jar, my card could be debited for hundreds of euros? No thanks, you never know. :)

You can get yourself a POS terminal for your business, then you are able to pre-authorize CC's..
But I think a written policy such is yours is scary enough to prevent getting "unrully" guests. Even a superb guests such as I am :D

In my policy it is written that we colect 50€ damage deposit in cash at the check-in. We never did collect money upfront neither we didn't charge it in the past 10+ years. Well only once because they were smoking inside. But no major accidents happened and we have quite a lot of guests (12 rooms, 4 apartment, 4 bungalows). Small accidental damages are tolerated.