Your Porter issue - anyone have a valid phone number for support

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Your Porter issue - anyone have a valid phone number for support

Ken Boone
Investor · Greenville, SC · Member since 2015 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes

Recently I started using Your Porter to automate a lot of the process with my rentals.  I have everything working and automated a lot of stuff and have been using it for about 3 weeks.  The main thing I wanted to use this for was the automated messaging of course.  The first most basic thing is the initial guest correspondence that is automated when a booking is received.  This works "most" of the time.  However, I keep having a problem where I see that the initial automated email is not being sent out.  When I looked into the automated messaging activity on Your Porter it shows that that specific message is paused.  This is just happening every now and then.  I have been emailing back and forth with Your Porter and am getting no where on getting this resolved.  No rhyme or reason as to why the initial message is getting put on pause by Your Porter.  It has happened for VRBO bookings and AirBnb bookings.  It has also happened at least once on each of my properties.

So the question is does anyone know of a valid phone number or better contact to be able to talk to anyone at Your Porter?  This emailing customer support back and forth and then a day lapses since they are in a different time zone is really getting frustrating at this point.

Thanks

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  • Luke CarlPro Member
    Rental Property Investor · Tennessee Florida · Member since 2016 · 4k+ posts · 5k+ votes
    5y

    @Ken Boone. YourPorter and Customer Service do not go together. Email is the only option and it’ll take 24 hours to get a canned response. I find if you play around with it long enough you’ll fix your issue. Igms has better customer service.

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  • Ken Boone
    OP
    Investor · Greenville, SC · Member since 2015 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
    5y

    @Luke Carl That is what I am finding out.  I do like the product - just need to get this fixed.

    1Reply
  • Scott K.
    Member since 2020 · 223 posts · 233 votes
    5y

    Welcome to the new dawn of internet companies. No one has phone support anymore. Everything is overseas. I'd suggest smartbnb.io I had a very poor experience with igms support. 

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  • Ken Boone
    OP
    Investor · Greenville, SC · Member since 2015 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
    5y

    Update - I figured out how to get a live person to talk to at Your Porter - schedule a demo.  The demo is a 30 min webex session with a support person.  When I woke up this morning I had an email with a link for me to schedule a demo session on Monday.  However, after all that I got another email at 2am from the support person I was working with and she said that the development team found the problem and has corrected it and I should not see the problem again.  I was thinking it was happening on both VRBO and AirBnb but it was actually only happening VRBO.  I went back through all the times it happened and confirmed this.  Anyway, what they said was that sometimes there was an issues with the guest emails being sent from VRBO with a delay.  When this happened, the automated emails that were supposed to go out were put on pause.  So one of my buddies had his auto booking email set for a 10 min delay and was not seeing this problem whereas mine were set to send out immediately.

    So hopefully it is fixed.  I don't really want to change platforms because I have a lot of automation built on top of what comes out of your porter as well and don't want to have to go through changing all of that and for the most part I like the interface.  The email support is the thing and 24 hours delay due to them not having staff work in the US time zone is the frustrating part.  Fortunately other than this one issue, the other issues have been minor and resolved pretty quickly.

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  • Gerald Pitts
    Lender · Asheville NC · Member since 2016 · 470 posts · 317 votes
    5y

    I'm going through the same thing with Booking day messages not always sending. And sometimes the check in day message sending on the booking day.  I think I'll also take the demo suggestion, @Ken Boone

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  • Ken Boone
    OP
    Investor · Greenville, SC · Member since 2015 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
    5y

    @Gerald Pitts - Hopefully that will work for you.  I have to be honest I pushed them really hard yesterday.  I kept sending emails back to the support person asking her to escalate to the next level multiple times as well as asking to call me.  She finally said she escalated to the development team and I sent back another email asking if I would hear back today.. But you know by 11am here they are finishing there day.  But at least they found the problem last night so I am thinking you just have to get these kinds of problems past the initial customer service folks to get something resolved.

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  • Ken Boone
    OP
    Investor · Greenville, SC · Member since 2015 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
    5y

    Update - My issue is not fixed as it happened again.  Basically kicked the issue back to Your Porter but what they initially identified as the problem was a delay in receiving the email address from VRBO.  When the delay occurs the message gets paused.  Again, it was happening with every VRBO booking - about 1 in 7 maybe.  So I changed my automated messages for the bookings to occur on a 5 min delay to hopefully circumvent their bug.

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  • Gerald Pitts
    Lender · Asheville NC · Member since 2016 · 470 posts · 317 votes
    5y

    Shout out to @Ken Boone for the demo suggestion.  That did get me on a video call with a person and was really helpful.  She actually suggested the demo after 2 or 3 email back and forths.   Will update as to whether any changes she made regarding my jacked up auto messaging will work.  :)

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  • Ken Boone
    OP
    Investor · Greenville, SC · Member since 2015 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
    5y

    @Gerald Pitts Man thats great to hear!  Hopefully they will get you fixed.  I have had zero problems with auto messaging airbnb guests but VRBO where the problem is from time to time.  They told me they fixed my issue but did not, but I recommend putting in a 5 min delay on your auto messaging to avoid the problem I was running into.  I have another buddy who has been running YP for awhile now and never saw the issue I had.  When I talked to him about I found out he had a delay on his from the start - don't know why but he did. 

    1Reply
  • Gerald Pitts
    Lender · Asheville NC · Member since 2016 · 470 posts · 317 votes
    5y
    Originally posted by @Ken Boone:

    @Gerald Pitts Man thats great to hear!  Hopefully they will get you fixed.  I have had zero problems with auto messaging airbnb guests but VRBO where the problem is from time to time.  They told me they fixed my issue but did not, but I recommend putting in a 5 min delay on your auto messaging to avoid the problem I was running into.  I have another buddy who has been running YP for awhile now and never saw the issue I had.  When I talked to him about I found out he had a delay on his from the start - don't know why but he did.  

    Good to know! Will try delay as well. 

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  • John Hopper
    Member since 2021 · 1 post · 0 votes
    5y

    Hello, im having the same problem with autmated messages on your porter saying "paused"

    I listed a property on VRBO July 1, 2021 and about 2 weeks ago I also listed the property on AIRBNB. I signed up to use YOURPORTER to help coordinate the calendars and automate messaging to guests. As many of you know yourporter has zero customer service and right now i cannot get anyone with yourporter to even do a demo with me. I have linked my airbnb and vrbo accounts to your porter, but I am having all kinds of trouble getting yourporter to send my autmated messages out to guests. It appears that the email address and phone numbers of the guests are not being sent to yourporter from airbnb or vrbo. When I look in my automated messaging for the particular booking it says "PAUSED". I know this can happen sometimes when these auto messages I have created with yourporter are selected to go out immediatley, however when i setup the automessages for the first time I selected that the confirmation booking email be sent 15 minutes later after yourporter received info on the booking from vrbo or airbnb and I setup the Welcome email to go out 3 days before a guest check in day. BUt, unfortunately, every single automated message is showing paused. WHen i try and send the message out manually it pops up a bock and says "no email information for guest, please enter an email address". What am i missing here? I was under the impression vrbo and airbnb would send all the guest information including email and phone number so that the yourporter software can send autmated messages to guests. what am I doing wrong here? Would airbnb and VRBO be blocking or masking the guest email address? I know many users of yourporter are using this automated messaging and its working fabulously but i cannot seem to remedy this. Help would be much appreciated!! thank you in advance!

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  • Ken Boone
    OP
    Investor · Greenville, SC · Member since 2015 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
    5y

    So unfortunately you are stuck in a hole.  Your only real option is to send in an email support request and describe the problem in great detail.  They may just need to do a reset on your connection.  I think you are having a different problem, since in my case it only happened on the VRBO side and even when they said it fixed it - it did not.  But I said my delay for 10 mins and I haven't had the problem since.  Unfortunately they are in a different time zone as well so you need to work them first thing in the morning because come 11am you will not get a response until the next day.  Sorry you are having these issues.

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