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Flipping Book Widget

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After several weeks of back and forth and many redesigns, we are within days of relaunching the owner administration area! It is a huge improvement in navigation and support. The owners will be happy. My designer and developer have put in a lot of hours trying to make me happy. The owners administration area will now truly be a control panel using modal windows, advances css menuing and design, web 2.0 type design and a tabbed interface. Personally, I don’t think there is a better interface on the market.

In terms of traffic, it’s been a long hard fought battle and we have a long way to go. Total page views for 2006 were 433,552. That was not so good, but for a young site, it wasn’t too bad. So far in 2007 we’ve had over 2,000,000 page views and it’s only early November! We should get close to the 2.5 million mark.

About five years ago, I signed up with a reseller to accept credit cards for my vacation rentals. I was new and at that time merchant account providers still weren’t real up to speed on the whole notion of accepting credit cards over the Internet. Anyways, I signed up, paid the account setup fees and soon I was accepting credit cards over the phone using authorize.net.

The merchant account provider was First American Payment Systems. They charged me a variety of monthly fees including batch header fees, statement fees, monthly minimum fees, per transaction fees and a 2.75 - 3.00 discount rate.. Additionally they took the discount rate first and then deposited the remainder.

This was all fine until earlier this year when I happened upon another merchant account provider (e-onlinedata)offering a great deal:

* NO Application Fees
* NO Annual Fees
* NO Address Verification (AVS) Fees
* NO Leasing
* NO Termination Penalties
* NO Batch Header Fees
* 2.29% VISA/MasterCard Qualified Discount Rate
* $0.30 per Transaction
* $10.00 Monthly Service Fee (includes Monthly Statement)
* $25.00 Monthly Processing Minimum
* Toll Free 24/7 Tech Support and daily Customer Service Support

I happened to be in the market for another merchant account for VacationRentalDirect.com and thought I would give it a shot. The staff at e-onlinedata was great to work with and the account was setup in a matter of 1-2 days. The monthly fees were substantially lower, there were no application fees, the discount rate was over a 1/2 percentage point lower, which if you accept CC’s totaling $250,000 per year, that’s a $1250 savings!
And they deposited the full charge and then took the discount fee at the end of the month. That was nice for accounting purposes.

After a few months, I decided to drop First American Payment Systems, even though I could have called and asked for an account review, there is no way they would match the deal above. Lo and behold, after five years, this company pulls out a little gem out of their hat. It turns out that when I signed up, in the fine print, they had buried that my contract term was for one year with an automatic renewal each year. If I cancel early, there is $250 account cancellation fee!!

Who does that? Who treats their customers like that these days? My account expire on 2/3/2008. Even though I would have saved $40.00 by not canceling immediately and instead just cancel the auto renewal, I wanted nothing to do with a company that disrespects their customers like that. I faxed them a letter telling that I would tell as many people as possible about their activities and to cancel my account immediately. We’ll see if they go ahead and charge me the $250.00. I suspect they will.

So pay close attention to your merchant account agreement, make sure your contract is an at-will contract with no termination fee!!

If you are interested in establishing a merchant account with the provider I chose, I am confidant you won’t find a better deal, anywhere:

New Design

Today we bang rolling out our new template designs. These new templates are a much needed upgrade to improve our search engine rankings as well as to improve the overall look and feel of the site. Not all of the templates have been updated yet, but the most important ones are complete.

Searchable Google Maps

In the next coupe days we will be launching a new application which will allow all site visitors to search for vacation rentals using a Google Map. It will be a great and easy way to visually see where all of the vacation rentals listed on VacationRentalDirect.com are located. We have a couple of tweaks to complete, but we should launch this new functionality by Tuesday or Wednesday of this week.

All property owners with listings on VacationRentalDirect.com will need to make sure they have a valid Google Maps address attached to their listing, otherwise your listing will not appear on the Google Map and you will be losing out on a significant amount of business!

and here is one where all the vacation rentals listed in Florida are listed:

Offiver in Iraq Scam - Justine Vincler
Name: Justine Vincler Email: j01vincler@gmail.com Phone: Start Date: // End Date: // Number of Adults: Comments: Aloha, My Name is Justin Vincler (Petty Officer) of United States marine currently in Iraq, battalion of Kane’ohe-based Marines. It`s in respect of your vacation listing,I am planning a surprise vacation gift package for my Godson and his newly wedded wife alone with treat while currently on an active duty,please check availability and get back to me immediately,the scheduled date will be 1st thru 22nd Sept. 2007,(22 Days)if this has already been booked please advice on the nearest date you have available,include cost for the period, Security Deposit, Cleaning fees, Tax and any order major services to be rendered,for the couple alone,no pets,they don’t smoke either.l will need to conclude this booking early enough for them to avoid any inconvenience during there stay. Mahola

Beware Wgen Renting in Manhattan!
We received some recent reports of fraudulent activity for a couple properties in the Manhattan area of New York! Please be careful. We’ve removed a couple of the properties that were causing the problems, but there may be more. Ask the property owner many questions both via phone and email. If they are pushy about demanding that you send them a cashiers check for the deposit, step away from the transaction!

Tahoe City, California, 4 BD / 3 BA / Sleeps: 10 —- The perfect mix of Tahoe charm and luxury

Jul 1, 2007 - Sep 1, 2007 July 1 - September 1 four night minimum available.

Fraud from this email address: NWLF1122@aol.com
A person with the e-mail NWLF1122@aol.com has been contacting me and telling me that the check is in the mail. I charged only $400.00 but his check is for $3000.00. I told him that it is not available and that I am contacting the authorities, but he keeps e-mailing me. I have copies of all his e-mail. Please look into this person, his name is Gerry. Sometimes the messages say that they come from Italy or Central America. I want no part of a scam.

Buying an Investment Property on the California Gold Coast
Christine talks with realtor, Meredith McKenzie about the California Gold Coast vacation home market. For transcripts of the podcasts, as well as, tips and advice for second home owners, visit ownercommunity.homeaway.com. Have a question for Christine? Leave a message at (512)493-4340 and she’ll answer your question on the air.