Lay My Hat

I've had a really bad day. OH is currently away. It started off with a 20 tonne truck making a delivery to our house, turning too sharply and sliding sideways in the wet, taking out 24ft of our fencing and coming to rest against our oil tank and completely stuck. Had to get a local farmer with a bigger tractor to pull him out. In the middle of this my mobile pinged with an enquiry text message. I knew instantly in my head that I had availability for the dates, so as soon as I could, I headed back to the house to respond. Once I opened the email and read the enquiry text it said "For some reason it wouldn't let me put in the dates I want, so I've put in these dates instead. Can you quote me for x period" Well the reason the software won't let you enter your dates is because those dates are already booked! There's a clue in there actually. I've noticed that since OD relaunched with their stupid instant quoting calendar, I'm getting this type of enquiry quite often, but never had it before on OD. I had one like this yesterday with Airbnb too. So, what I thought was one bright point in my day turned out to be just another added frustration to my day. I then had to waste more of my time logging in to respond to a nonsense enquiry just to keep my response rate up. Even worse, if you decline too many on Airbnb you get penalised in the rankings for that too! In their drive to increase profits, the listing site techies seem to be intent on making our lives as difficult as possible.

Oh dear Bunny. Hope tomorrow is a better day for you!

Bunny, sorry about your bad day.
Here's a little something to cheer you up (I hope)

Hope your day improved Bunny.

In their drive to increase profits, the listing site techies seem to be intent on making our lives as difficult as possible.

Agree absolutely.

But in the guests' defence I must say the OD calendar is really not clear ....Just try it.

There's a very odd message that comes up sometimes when you're trying to put in your required dates. You've just put your required arrival date and all you want to do is leave a week later. The message says something like "please choose an available departure date" you have no idea what they're on about as your departure date looks to be available. I think it's something to do with minimum stays. No wonder they give up and email you. In fact I'd rather they do that than go look for another property.

Searching for a hol on OD is a bloomin nightmare. So embrace the irritating ones and bung them on your mailing list for future "news and special offers"

I agree that OD's quoting calendar is very confusing for guests. However, the enquiry today was ridiculous because she actually wanted a 13 week period taking her into July. As if.... Didn't it even occur to her that I may not have such a long period available? If I did, I think I would have closed shop by now. My main grumble is that it is actually possible to send an OD enquiry without dates filled in. If they left the dates blank and just enquired in the text then it wouldn't get my hopes raised when I receive a text for available dates. Not that guests know that we receive texts that just show the dates without the message text.

There is an email button on Airbnb, which suggests that you can just email a host, without requesting to book specific dates but when I click on it, it just takes you to a wish list. Software error I guess.

I've currently got guests in from abroad who wanted to extend their stay, but I'm already booked so can't. I'm trying to help them find alternative accommodation and I've found it an absolute nightmare. My biggest problem is that 4 people want a room each or at a push 2 bedrooms with twin beds. It takes ages trying to find out the bed configurations. I'm verging on giving up and telling them to check into a hotel instead. I don't know how any guest manages to book through OD without giving up.

Hoping for a better day tomorrow with no duff enquiries.

annedab wrote:Oh dear Bunny. Hope tomorrow is a better day for you!

Thank you Annedab and Isy! If a nice kitty pic can't cheer me up nothing can!

Oh my. What a bad day. Hope it improves today.Lucky the lorry stopped before it hit the tank!

Bunny do you have a smartphone and if so do you have the Homeaway app? If you have the HA app, it works now for the OD dashboard too. I have a template response which is simply a holding email until I email from within PIMS. As long as you have some signal or wi-fi it's very simple to log in and reply to your inbox enquiry quickly. Then do anything else when it suits. Sorry to hear about the lorry. very annoying!

They have a word in Spanish for these annoyances and annoying people. A puña is a fist or punch. A puñeta is a little punch but has come to mean a big niggle. The person (or website) (or truck) is described as puñatero.
Life is full of puñetas. The banks are the worst or is it Telefonica/Movistar.
I got an enquiry like yours the other day from HL. It was a guy looking for a price for the whole summer. So I sent him a quote at full price. He didn't seem to like my quote but at least it kept my score high.
Anyway it's pronounced poonyeta. I think the English equivalents are frowned on in LMH.
As the Americans say; "Have a nice day!"

Nemo wrote:Bunny do you have a smartphone and if so do you have the Homeaway app? If you have the HA app, it works now for the OD dashboard too. I have a template response which is simply a holding email until I email from within PIMS. As long as you have some signal or wi-fi it's very simple to log in and reply to your inbox enquiry quickly. Then do anything else when it suits. Sorry to hear about the lorry. very annoying!

I do have a smart phone but it's a hand me down from OH. I've just tried to download the app but it says it is not compatible, so I think my phone is too old. Thanks for the advice though.

Bunny wrote:I do have a smart phone but it's a hand me down from OH. I've just tried to download the app but it says it is not compatible, so I think my phone is too old. Thanks for the advice though.

Time to treat yourself then. Remember it's a business expense. 😃

Nemo wrote:

Bunny wrote:I do have a smart phone but it's a hand me down from OH. I've just tried to download the app but it says it is not compatible, so I think my phone is too old. Thanks for the advice though.

Time to treat yourself then. Remember it's a business expense. 😃

Do you need the app? Can't you just go to the website using your Smartphone and log in from there?

tavi wrote:Do you need the app? Can't you just go to the website using your Smartphone and log in from there?

She could, but as a phone screen is very small, that's quite challenging to navigate. The point about the app is it's designed for the phone so it's pared down and easy to use.

Sorry, I meant to reply to this. Yes, my phone screen is very small so it is very frustratingly arduous and time consuming trying to log into the dashboard without the app.