Owner's Response: As with most vacation rental property owners, we do have a rental agreement to not only protect us, but our guests. It is not “incredibly lengthy and detailed”, but five pages long and not small print, but a font pitch as large as what you are reading here (or larger) and double spaced paragraphs. It is only good business to put in writing what is expected of each party. While it has undergone some minor revisions over the years, it is the same agreement this guest executed during their first stay. In this instance, the guest damaged two pieces of furniture. We obtained a written repair estimate from the local shop that had originally custom built the furniture and included it with the notification. Yes, we do require a credit card authorization in lieu of a cash damage deposit. This is a common practice in this day. It is why you can’t rent a car or reserve most hotel rooms without one. We once encountered a perspective guest who declined to rent our vacation property as a result of this. They were not agreeable to exposing themselves to such a credit card liability. Our response was it was an issue of mutual trust. Our exposure risk is the replacement cost of our vacation home and the contents thereof. This perspective guest’s limit was the available credit on their card. I queried who had the greatest risk exposure? If they were not agreeable to trusting us with the available credit on their card, we are not agreeable trusting them with our vacation home and it’s contents. We are entering our fifth year offering vacation rental properties (2). In that period of time, this is the third instance where we’ve had to collect damages from a guest’s credit card. In turn, each time we received a poor review as a result. We’ve given thought to making the damage insurance offered by VRBO as mandatory, but this would be unnecessary cost burden upon the vast majority of our guests. Of course, this insurance was and is available directly from VRBO for a guest to purchase as well as other coverages.