Alexander’s Blog – The Making of LetMeGo

We just added two new options that lodging staffs can select to better showcase the features of their lodgings: Hot tub / Whirlpool / Jacuzzi and Solar Water Heater.

If you are a lodging staff member and your lodgings have any of these feature, please add them to your lodging by following these steps:

1. Go to the “My Lodgings” area
2. Click on the “Update Listing Details” link
3. Click on “Eco-Friendly” or “Water Activities” sections and follow the instructions.

If you have questions, please contact us.

Alexander Torrenegra

The lodging industry, and especially, the vacation rental industry, is unfortunately all too familiar with fraud. At LetMeGo, we have developed a system designed to significantly reduce the chance that users of our service will be victimized by this problem.

How Fraud Usually Works

Frauds can be grouped into two basic categories: Non-existent lodgings steal money from travelers, or travelers use fake credit cards or checks to pay for their stays.

How can you, as a traveler, end up booking non-existent lodgings? Here is an example: Joe, a guy in Nigeria, buys a stolen credit card number on the black market. Joe goes to an online vacation rental directory like HomeAway and sets up a fake listing, paying the yearly subscription fee using the stolen credit card number. Joe tells travelers that his lodging is very inexpensive, but can only be booked by prepaying the full stay via money order. You, the traveler, book his lodging and send him a wire transfer or money order, as he requested. Weeks later, HomeAway learns that the credit card transaction was disputed. Or, in an even worse scenario, it’s entirely possible that you could travel to your destination, get in your rental car, and drive to the nice vacation rental you booked inexpensively, only to discover that the address doesn’t exist. By the time you realize you’ve been defrauded, Joe has been living the good life for weeks and, because it would be prohibitively difficult to prosecute him (since he lives in another country), you have lost all of your money.

The second type of fraud, in which lodging owners lose money, is more straightforward: An international traveler arrives and pays with a credit card or check. Everything appears to be normal. Days or weeks later you get a note from the bank telling your that the credit card charges have been disputed because the credit card was stolen, or that the check bounced back. Once again, the money is lost, as it is very difficult to track a person in another country. Which is not to say that tracking fraud within the same country is a picnic, either.

How LetMeGo Addresses the Issue

We address it in several ways. Some of them we can make public, some of which must remain secret in order to retain their potency.

In order to protect the traveler, LetMeGo will only work with lodgings that receive prepayments, when required, via credit or debit cards. In this way, travelers will have the chance to dispute the transaction in the unlikely scenario that the lodging was not real. When this happens, LetMeGo will charge the lodging its commission at the same time than the prepayment is made. That way, LetMeGo increases the chances of finding out if the lodging is not legitimate before the check-in date. Of course, if the booking is cancelled, LetMeGo will automatically credit the commission back to the lodging.

In order to protect the lodgings, LetMeGo will allow them, at their discretion, to require the traveler to prepay the booking in its entirety via credit or debit card. Additionally, lodging staff members will be able to review the profile of any traveler before accepting a booking from him or her. If they wish, they can accept bookings only from travelers with an existing and positive record in LetMeGo.

Your feedback is highly appreciated. If you can think of another ways we can protect both travelers and lodgings, please let us know.

Alexander Torrenegra

Last week, on Monday, the Dev Team of LetMeGo grew by two:

Juan Cruz (@neurobug), a.k.a. †, joins the team as senior developer. † is a veteran of the development team of Voice123. I worked closely with him during the long process of bringing Voice123 into Version 2.0. † has experience in so many areas that I won’t even try to list them all. He will be filling the spot vacated by Lucho Molina, who left our team last month.

As for Sergio Perilla (@fighterguard), his were among the highest scores on the tests we administered to candidates for the LetMeGo Immersion. He joins the team as Junior QA Developer, and he will be in charge of creating and maintaining the automated Selenium user tests of the Merrcury Engine (the software behind LetMeGo).

As is our standard policy, both of these gentlemen must pass a two-month test period before they can formally join the team. I offer them both my best wishes for success. Welcome!

Alexander Torrenegra

One of the new concepts LetMeGo is trying to bring into the lodging industry is “inclusive cost”. Inclusive cost means that the buyer gets to see, by default, the total cost of the service that he/she is buying. In contrast, most online travel agencies today use “non-inclusive pricing”. That is, they first display the base price of the booking, only revealing the added cost of fees and taxes once the customer has made a purchase decision. Here is a USA Today article about this issue. Inclusive cost is common in many other industries. We, at LetMeGo, will try to push it into the lodging market. We think that inclusive cost will help improve the reputation of the industry and facilitate the booking process for travelers.

Here is how it works: when submitting a bid, lodgings will be required to provide only one figure, representing the total cost that the traveler would have to pay. When a traveler books the lodging, the staff can then generate an invoice or receipt for the traveler in which the base price, fees, and taxes are properly itemized, as required by law. By doing this, travelers can better compare different options and lodgings can submit bids much faster. Complex tax laws (see NYC example) are left to be managed by the property management software, as usual.

There is a drawback to this approach, however. As an online lodging agency, LetMeGo is paid a commission for every booking, a standard arrangement enjoyed by many other travel and lodging agencies, as well. Traditionally, the industry has paid commissions on the value of the booking minus the taxes. LetMeGo, however, will only be aware of the total cost of the booking and not the base price, the additional fees, and the taxes. In order to keep things simple, we charge a commission based on the total cost of the booking. Clearly, this means that lodgings will be required to pay a percentage of the taxes in commission, a situation they are not accustomed to.

This problem, fortunately, has a solution. In order to simplify things, and in order to pass savings along to travelers, we have decided to charge one of the lowest commission rates of any online lodging agency: 10%. Since this commission is charged on the total cost, it is equivalent to a commission of between 10% and 13% of the pre-tax price. Other online travel agencies charge a 20% commission (Zonder.com, BedandBreakfast.com) and some regularly earn more than 25% (Expedia, Priceline). Thus, we believe that our low set rate more than compensates lodgings for the tax-inclusive commission approach we employ.

We look forward to working with lodgings that see the benefit of inclusive cost. We may fail, but we will stay true to the KISS principle: Keep it Short and Simple.

As usual, your comments are welcome.

Alexander Torrenegra

Hi!

Torrenegra Labs, the parent company of LetMeGo, uses a common software development methodology across most of its ventures, which we call RRápido. Today, nearly a year after our last release (1.01), we are pleased to present the latest version, 1.1.

Flow chart the RRápido metodology, version 1.1.

This version offers the following improvements:

• In version 1.01, the automated Selenium tests were recorded by the Developer. We have found that in some instances a different person may need to record these tests. To facilitate this, we have added a new role to the methodology, that of “Human Tester”. As before, we still think that one person may play two or more roles simultaneously; however, by creating an independent role for Human Tester, the methodology now supports a full-time QA expert in the team, if needed.
• In version 1.01, the automated Selenium tests for the task at hand were recorded or updated as soon as coding ended. Now, in version 1.1, tasks are assigned to the Product Developer for a quick preliminary review. If everything looks fine, the Product Developer then assigns the tasks to the Human Tester to record or update the automated Selenium tests.
• In version 1.01, there was a step in which the Product Developer would close the ticket for the task if that ticket wasn’t going to be published to the live environment immediately. We have removed that step from version 1.1, as it doesn’t seem to be needed by most teams.

You can learn more about the methodology and download its flowchart here.

Alexander Torrenegra

A few months ago, we began searching for a new, customer-service-focused member of the LetMeGo team. We chose our new team member, Treeny Sanchez, from among 415 applicants, after 19 interviews. She began helping lodging staff members to add their listings to our database two weeks ago.She is a native of Australia, has vast experience in the travel industry, and is already giving us ideas that will help to improve our service. Welcome to the team, Treeny!

How did we find Treeny, then? We posted the job opening on several sites. Some were free, and some charged a fee. I also sent it to a few mailing lists. Here are the results:

Clearly, our best investment was Craigslist. Not only was it the least expensive of the paid placements, but it generated the largest number of qualified applicants, including that of our eventual hire, Treeny.

It’s worth noting that Monster sent us the largest number of applications, by far. However, most of these applications were incomplete–apparently, Monster makes it too easy for people to apply without first reading through the details of the position in question. Eventually, Monster’s flood of incomplete or unqualified applicants became a nuisance, rather than a benefit. Monster, it looks like somebody needs to improve their marketplace’s matching algorithm…

Alexander Torrenegra