Hi Everyone!

It seems that every single day as a vacation rental owner brings on new and different challenges. Let's just say there's never a dull moment in my life!

The other day I received a phone call from a lady who was agitated and very upset. She asked me “Who are you and why did you charge my credit card for $X?” As you can imagine my stomach ended up in my throat. What happened? Who is this lady and why/how did her credit card get charged from my merchant account?

My first fear was oh no! Someone rented last minute and gave me a stolen credit card number and by now had likely come and gone… and guess who would be out the money—me of course! But then I thought, how is this possible? My credit card merchant account requires me to put in the credit card holder's billing address (including zip code), expiration date and naturally credit card number. Everything has to match in order for the card to get processed.

So as soon as I calmed down and the phone caller calmed down, I did a bit of research. I asked her the exact date and transaction amount. I went to my credit card company's gateway and sure enough I did process a credit card for that amount on that day. Next I asked the last 4 digits of her credit card (to be sure we were looking at the same transaction), sure enough, they matched. (Note: I did not at any time give the caller the full credit card number of my renter. I did not want to compromise the security of his credit card info. Nor did I ask for her full credit card number (not that she would have given it to me anyhow). I asked her if she was my renter's name, or related in any way to that renter—nope.

Next I looked up the renter's records and cross referenced the zip code with the caller's zip code. They didn't match. Aha! But this puzzled me because the transaction was approved and increased my thoughts that someone had given me a stolen credit card number.

The next thing I did was look up the dates for the renter whose card I “supposedly” charged. This puzzled me even further. I recall speaking to this renter. He was a really nice, older gentleman (not that older gentlemen aren't capable of scamming, but my gut just didn't feel like he was scamming me.) Then I looked at one more thing that solidified my “gut feelings”—his rental dates. This renter had not stayed in my property yet and as a matter of fact, the payment in question was only a partial payment. The other payment due next month. I thought, "Surely this can't be a scam. If someone were to use a stolen credit card number, they would not use it for rental dates which are months away, and they certainly wouldn't make a partial payment." This set my mind at ease. But still didn't get to the root of the problem.

The caller was insistent; she wanted me to just credit her account. I was not going to credit her account. I felt pretty confident that this was not my mistake. I was sure that her bank had misappropriated the charges to her account instead of to my renter's account. Furthermore, if I credited that charge, would she receive the credit or would my renter? Feeling like I was at a dead end, I told the caller that I would investigate and assured her I would get back with her ASAP.

The next thing I did was call my renter. You could imagine the uneasiness at this phone call. Was I calling him to see if he was a thief? Was I calling to have him prove his innocence? So I gathered my thoughts and decided I would call him with the truth, which typically never fails me. I told my renter of my dilemma. The first thing I asked was if he could verify his credit card number that he had given me. Sure enough the number he gave me was indeed the number I had on file. The next thing I asked him was if he could look to see if the charge was on his credit card statement. He looked it up and no, he had not been charged.

So this perplexed me even more. Why did the charge show up on the wrong person's credit card statement? Furthermore, if I credited the charge, who would get the credit? So the next phone call I made was to my credit card merchant account company. I explained the problem to them. They verified the charges and said that even though the credit card was approved, the address and zip code were not verified (I thought you could not charge a card with out the correct address—apparently I was wrong! The representative explained to me that many cards do require address and/or zip code verification, however not all do.) So the representative then asked me the full credit card number that I charged. I proceeded to tell him the digits one at a time. When I got to the ninth and tenth digits he stopped me. “There's your problem! You transposed the 9th and 10th digits.”

In the end, the entire error was mine! I messed up! I called my renter and the woman whose card had gotten charged by mistake. I credited the one card and then re-charged the renter's card—very carefully typing in each digit. And went to bed that night pulling feathers from my teeth from all the crow I ate that day.

Oh well, no one is perfect.

Happy Renting by Owner!

Christine

If you're interested in hearing Christine speak at one of her upcoming seminars, visit the Seminar Schedule for more information.

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