Prepay for a vacation rental on Paypal- pros and cons....

mouse10031978 · February 2012

We are going to Italy this summer and have found THE most awesome place to stay in Rome on www.vrbo.com. It has stellar reviews and the best view. We definitely want to stay there and have already put down a deposit. The owners have been in very good communication with us and very helpful.

They (like many other apartments and B &B's) want to be paid in cash so they do not have to handle credit card transaction fees. This I totally understand. Most of the other places are allowing us to pay in Traveler's Checks so we don't have to be continually be taking out TONS of cash daily at the ATM just to pay for lodging. However, the owners of the place are not keen on Traveler's Checks either due to the fees to cash them in??

So we have two options- pay in cash at check out or pay by Paypal a few days prior to check in. What would you do? The Paypal things is tempting just so we don't have to worry about it and due to the great reviews, I doubt there will be an issue. Because the Paypal is linked to our credit card, will we be protected in case anything goes wrong with our stay or reservation?

TotZiens · February 2012

We traveled all over Europe staying in vrbo apartments and always paid half up front the in cash when checking into the apartment. It was never a problem with being ripped off. I would go ahead and do PayPal.

sunshine_day_dreams · February 2012

Unless it's an ungodly amount of money or there's some other reason you don't want to use cash (CC rewards or whatever) I'd do cash. We have also traveled all over Europe using home away and vrbo with no problems, so I think you'd probably be okay paying up front. We always use cash, though. For us, we recognize that we get great deals on amazing places when we travel because of these people renting their places, so I like to return the favor by paying in cash to lessen the costs for them (so the costs stay lower for other travelers like us).

mouse10031978 · February 2012

I guess my concern is since we will be staying two weeks in Italy and at 5 different locations, that we will be going to the ATM daily to get out several hundreds of dollars almost daily between lodging costs (several are cash only B & B's), food, daily expenses etc... This makes me nervous for a couple of reasons...no protection in case anything goes wrong with the stay, carrying around hundreds of dollars in a foreign country, and daily ATM limits. Should I be worried about these things?

hz80408 · February 2012

I would do the prepay via Paypal. We're renting apts in Amsterdam, Paris and Barcelona. We don't want to mess with having to go to the ATM all the time. For our first apt, we'll just bring the cash with us but for the later two, we're completing payment online via Paypal a week before checkin

Prepay for a vacation rental on Paypal- pros and cons....

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