Hi,
I am not sure if this is the best forum for my question but thought I would start here.
We use Tessitura to take rental fees for strollers, wheelchairs and ETV. We are having an increased issue with guests not returning the rental. Our Guest Services team would like to consider requiring a refundable deposit upon return. Any suggestions to accomplish this task through Tessitura at the time of the purchase? Of course, we could include it in the cost and to a partial refund, the issue there is our cashiers do not have access to complete refunds in the system, the must be done by a supervisor. I should note, we are a cashless venue so using cash for the deposit is not an option.
Thanks for your input.
Hi Mary - here are a couple of musings, hopefully these can start a good conversation! I can think of two general approaches off the top of my head...
Option 1 would be to charge the full amount + deposit up front, and then refund the deposit back upon return. That would require your Guest Services team to have refund permissions enabled, which might be a hard policy to change - however, within the Tessitura Security app it's possible to set refund amount limits based on user groups and payment methods, so you could definitely apply guardrails and not allow the frontline staff to issue a refund greater than the deposit amount. However, the bigger issue I see with this approach is the refund volume - it might set off some alarm bells with your CC processor if refunds are constantly being issued at high volume. Not to mention the staff labor needed to process a deposit refund for every single visitor after they depart.
The other approach I can imagine would be to set yourself up to able to run an additional charge post-visit, only if the rented item isn't returned. I'm thinking of how hotels write up their TOS in such a way that they give themselves the right to process additional charges after a guest checks out, for damage, incidentals, that sort of thing. This would require your TOS and visitor messaging to be airtight, to protect you against any backlash if someone doesn't return a rental and you charge their card a second time - I'm not a lawyer so someone expert should advise on this! You'd also need to figure out how to tokenize and save the card of every visitor during the initial charge, and figure out how that overall lifecycle works (how often do you purge cards after a visit, etc.). But overall, if this approach could be made to work, it's probably less labor for the staff overall, and doesn't result in high refund volume since you're only charging the fee when someone breaks the rules.
I'd suggest posting this question in the Payments & Transactions group forum as well, this sounds right up that group's alley!
Hi Mary,We do something similar but with audition fees. Whenever we have an audition coming up, applicants pay a fee that they then get fully refunded once they complete the audition. We simply build an "audition" event where we collect the funds, and then refund either manually or by using the Event Cancellation Utility. This has worked well for us over the last few seasons, so let me know if you'd like any more details on this.