LiveRez escaped a major technological mishap due to prevention.
A fire at Seattle Fisher Plaza late Thursday night disrupted Internet service for several companies – including one that handles online credit card transactions for hundreds of thousands of businesses. LiveRez.com was one of those businesses.
LiveRez, a complete online vacation rental property management solution, is focused on increasing online bookings.
Due to proactive company owner Mr. Tracy Lotz, business at LiveRez.com has continued without a hiccup.
A manual switch was programmed during the creation of LiveRez.com, which gives the Property Owner the option of handling credit card processing in house. Early Friday morning, when news broke of the fire, the LiveRez.com support staff went to work contacting each of their property managers via telephone, e-mail and Twitter– walking them through the simple step of clicking the manual credit card option, and its business as usual.
“We averted a major disaster,” says Tracy Lotz, Founder and CEO of LiveRez.com. “4th of July weekend is the biggest travel weekend of the summer, and in these economic times, property managers cannot afford a problem on what could be the biggest money maker of the year.”
Lotz averted another disaster on the accounting end.
Other online vacation rental software companies require clients to switch from proven accounting platforms like QuickBooks to their own accounting platforms, which reside online.
Thus, property managers must incorporate their mission critical accounting into online rental software, leaving it vulnerable to events similar to last night’s fire.
Lotz has always held that this was not a great idea because companies like QuickBooks and Peachtree have already perfected this aspect of the business. The LiveRez QuickBooks Integration is one of the many reasons Property Managers choose LiveRez.com.
Microsoft’s new Bing Travel service was also knocked offline by the blaze.
The small electrical fire started in the basement of Fisher Plaza at an electrical vault- the section of the building where city power lines meet the building’s transformers, said Seattle City Light spokesman Scott Thomsen. Thomsen said it appears equipment failure on the part of the customer caused the fire.
