Help & Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

It couldn't be simpler! Just fill out the inquiry form on the owners property detail page! Usually owners will have their phone number available to you as well but we recommend you fill out the inquiry form because it creates a record of your initial correspondence with the vacation rental owner.

If you are the victim of, or suspect fraud or abuse from a listing found on Vacation Rentals AD please contact us right away!

You can view vacation rentals 4 different ways:

• Enter the city, state, or vacation property ID in the rental search box at the top of the page
• Click on the vacation home rentals map to navigate to the state you want to find a rental in
• Browse our list of states and countries from the front page to find the vacation rental you are looking to rent
• Try clicking on the picture of a featured Vacation rental home, villa, condo or apartment

From there you will be taken to our vacation rental listing search. You have a number of options to use to sort listings by the criteria you need and you can also navigate to any vacation rental region.

We reserve the right to remove or not remove a listing based on the legitimacy and severity of the complaint. If you have a complaint about a property please contact us.

Although scams are uncommon in the vacation rentals business, we suggest you protect yourself by taking a few precautions. Some vacation rental sites give you a free trail or free vacation rentals listings, but more often than not this means there is no paper trail from money exchanging hands. We investigate suspicious listings on Vacation Rentals AD and remove listings that violate our policies. You should request references, get a vacation rental contract before your stay. If you are suspicious, we recommenced avoiding the transaction altogether!

This is the result of a cookie being placed on your computer temporarily that makes it easy for you to fill out inquiries on more than one property! Consider it a convenience!

Our listings have all been screened for accuracy by real human beings! Each listing is associated with a paying user which minimizes the chances of fake listings. But, the service we provide for is comparable to newspaper or magazine advertising, and we suggest that you get a few references before you send any money.

For a fee, we can edit or update your listings depending on the changes needed. You can do all of these modification yourself and we recommend that you do by going to your Owner dashboard and editing your property from there. We do offer FREE support by phone to point you in the right direction.

We cache most of our pages so it might take a minute or two for your changes to appear.

It's really easy! Simply put the Property ID in the search box at the top of the page and hit the search button or the enter key.

Yes! Simply go to your Vacation Rentals dashboard, click "edit account", and you will see a box to enter your new user name!

Yes. Simply go to your Vacation Rentals dashboard, click "edit account", and you will see a box to enter your new user name! This will become your new "master email address".

No problem. By default each property is linked to your master account contact info. But in the Owner Dashboard you can click "edit contact info" to change it.

In some cases we will do this, please contact us for more information.

No problem. By default each property is linked to your master account contact info. But in the Owner Dashboard you can click "edit contact info" to change it.

Yes, you can change your vacation rental any time you wish! You paid for it, so you are in control! You can change almost everything from the owner dashboard. You can publish/un publish your property from search results, edit photos, change description and listing title, edit rates, add a special offer and more!

Yes, you can delete your Vacation Rental. Simply click delete on the listing you want removed. If you accidentally delete your listing we should be able to help you restore it! Please contact us right away if this happens.

Use descriptive keywords that people are going to search for. For example, if you have a vacation rental condo in Hilton Head, don't put "LOOK HERE GREAT PLACE". Type in "Beautiful 2BR Hilton Head Condo Close to Disney World". This will generally get you much better results and it helps your listing rank higher in search engines which helps to get you more inquiries!

Please make sure your browser has "cookies" enabled. This is a requirement. We can create your account for you if you are still having difficulties!

In order to keep the quality level high on our site, we request that you follow the following guidelines while placing a vacation rental ad on our web site:

• No URL's(web sites) in your listing text please!
• Please exclude personal contact info from your listing description, it will be displayed on the page, if you post email addresses they will be targeted by spammers looking to harvest email accounts.
• Only one property per listing is allowed! No exceptions.
• Your listing must be in the correct or nearest region to your physical location! Don't waste peoples time putting your listing in the wrong city. ex. do not put West Miami (Kendall) vacation rentals in the South Beach vacation rentals section.
• Your listing must be accurate!
• Your actual rates should not deviate wildly from your posted rates! People expect to pay the price they see on the web site. Excessive complaints and rate manipulation will not be tolerated!
• Write your own text, DO NOT COPY. For a small fee, we can help you write your listing description.
• We will review new users and listings periodically to check for misleading information and accuracy!
• We reserve the right to terminate your listing if we feel it is in violation of the integrity of our Vacation Rentals AD guidelines.

Yes, you can delete your Vacation Rental. Simply click delete on the listing you want removed. If you accidentally delete your listing we should be able to help you restore it! Please contact us right away if this happens.

A special offer promotion you offer to all potential guests when advertising your home. You can choose when to start your promotion and when to end it. This can be anything from $100 off a week, or a flat rate for 3 day. Be aggressive and you will get more inquiries!

Because it's FREE! People who fill out their special offer will stand out from the rest of the vacation rental listings. They get a special icon in our search and a banner on the listing show the details of this special offer. People who fill this out will get better inquiries, especially if they are offering crazy deals! Think about it, which property would you choose?

Glad you asked, from your owner dashboard, click "Edit Special Offer". You can fill in the details of your offer and the dates it is good for, and the dates the promotion will be advertised on our site.

You can have one special offer per property at any given time. We only want to see your best deal.

As long as your listing is active on VacationRentalsAd.com

You can set this to as early as you wish, but the people who get the most bookings and inquiries are the ones who update this regularly!

The rental dates are when guest stay at your property. Advertise dates are dates the special offer is displayed on your listing and highlighted in our search results.

As soon as you save it, and if the deal advertise date starts today or earlier! Deals that are told to advertise in the future will not show up until the selected date. This is why we suggest always running a current deal!

A premium package includes our featured listing package add-on for a discounted price. They are generally the best value!

Yes, just to to your Owner dashboard, click "make a payment/upgrade listing". In the payment center screen you will see a package for featured listings. You can buy the featured package in different increments of time. ex. when you buy a 6 months featured package for a listing that has 12 months of remaining time, you will be entitled to the benefits of this package for six months starting from the date of purchase.

Sorry but no! Please select the package that suits your needs at the time of purchase. If you are worried about buying too much please pick a small package (6 months Standard). You can always add more time or add-ons later.

Please go to the payment center and select a new package for your listing. Any time you buy will be added to your account. If you upgrade to a premium membership you will start to receive the featured listings immediately.

As in all things in life, transactions sometimes get messed up. If you have experienced an error in payment or in our system, please contact us and we will gladly work with you to resolve it! We are not in business to rip you off, and sincerely apologize for any errors/processing delays you may experience. Sometimes, delays are out of our control (Pay Pal fraud checks), and in those cases we will work with you to make sure your service is not compromised!

Being property managers ourselves, we humbly encourage you to buy your listings all at once. Just add each listing, and then from your dashboard click "Make a payment". You will then be directed to our payment center and your multiple listings discount will automatically be applied! 2-3 listings get 10% off listing price, 4-8 gets %20 off regular listing price, and 9 or more listings get 30% off regular price!! This includes premium packages.

No, you must purchase all the listings at the same time to receive a discount.

Properties for the front page are rotated evenly amongst all current listings that have paid for Premium packages or a featured add-on.

• Your listing will be shown on the state page (ex. http://vacationrentalsad.com/vacation-rental/regions/10/florida )rotated evenly amongst other paid featured listings.
• Your listing will be shown on the region page (ex. http://vacationrentalsad.com/vacation-rental/cities/30/gulf-coast-south-southwest-florida )rotated evenly amongst other paid featured listings.
• Your listing will be shown on the top of the relevant search page (ex. if your listing is in Lake Tahoe, your listing will appear near the top of the Lake Tahoe rental search page)

Yes of course! Not only that but the words you put in your listing title will be added to the url. ex. your property id is 123456789, your url will be ("http://vacationrentalsad.com/vacation-rentals/123456789/your_listing_title"). This helps search engines find your property more effectively. If you listing title had the word "Nice 2BR Breckenridge Ski Cabin", your url would be ("http://vacationrentalsad.com/vacation-rentals/123456789/nice_2br_breckenridge_ski_cabin").

Please note, if you change your listing title, your old links will still work! This is because as long as you have your property id in the url ("http://vacationrentalsad.com/vacation-rentals/123456789/"), you can always access your page. We recommend you link to the longer version of the url with the key words that google loves!

Only Premium Packages can do this! Why, well Google penalizes sites that have too many outgoing links! We want to make sure our site comes up at the top of search engines. For this reason we must limit the links we give out. We are always willing to do a reciprocal link exchange with you properties web site. Please fill out this form!

Your listing will be disabled until you make a payment. After your listing is paid it will be automatically enabled. If you wish to disable your listing you may go to your owner dashboard and click "disable listing". This will not pause your subscription period! To enable your listing just click "enable listing" from your dashboard. The only way to enable an expired listing is to make a payment.

If the message is returned undelivered, 99% of the time that means someone put in the wrong email address in the inquiry form. The most common reason for this is that the renter made a typing mistake. Check to see if they misspelled gmail as gmil for example. Usually a renter will also include a phone number to contact them. We do not screen your leads beyond normal span controls so there will be a bad one every so often. This is the reality of any business. We don't have access to anymore information then you do when this happens as we are limited by the end users input.

Another suggestion is to send yourself an inquiry from you listings detail page. If you are getting inquiries from us into your own email box the problem is likely a bad email address. A smart property owner will test their inquiries in this way every so often.

Many listings are quite similar, but we are not interested in duplicate content on our site. If you suspect your listing has been copied , please contact us and we will investigate!

You don't have to put rates on your listing at all, but you should. Here's why:

• If you put no rates, rates box shows "Contact Owner"
• Putting in no rates doesn't make your listing show up as a lower price in search results
• Owners who don't put rates get far fewer inquiries and phone calls!! Trust us we track these things
• Showing accurate rates up front reduces customer confusion and builds trust with vacationers

Your photo's in slot 1 and slot 2 will show up in a search/browse page. If you only have one photo (and you really should have more) only photo one will show up. On your listings detail page you photos will show up in the slots you select from the photo upload form. You must upload the photo you want to be in slot X the corresponding part of the upload form. You can upload up to 12 photos at one time.

You must first upload and save your photos. Then from your Owner Dashboard, go back to "Edit photos" and double click underneath the photo you wish to edit. Changes are saved immediately and no further saving is required!

Please try and keep your images under 1MB (megabyte). When you upload them we process them into several small photos and add our watermarks/compression. This ensures that irregularly sized photos and photos that are too large are optimized for the end user experience. If you need help cropping your images, try downloading Picasa from google for a great free photo editor.

If you experience an error uploading your listing, it could be caused by any number of factors. Please check your owner dashboard to see if your listing was saved. If it was usually you can just edit the sections you need to edit. If your listing does not show up then we recommend you try and upload your listing again. If you still have problems, please contact us for assistance.