Shanthi,
[quote]
One option would be to give various conditions for refunding deposits…maybe:
Sorry I sort of exagerated there, there’s only 1 time I can remember that I’ve actually forgotten a booking which was one of your guys for a mare that had yet to be retired. I’d meant to retire her and breed her to that stallion but for whatever reason I forgot I’d made the booking and the time had passed. Yes it was my fault I should have made a note which I do all the time but for whatever reason forgot to do at that time. I have come close a few times though with missing bookings with mares that didn’t foal out before a certain date.
I just think it would help cut down on a lot of missed bookings if you got an alert. “Mare has a booking to stallion that expires in 2 weeks”. Especially if you book a mare that is still going to race a little bit more before retiring there is no Breed link on her page until she’s been retired so unless you make a note there’s no way for you to check that she’s got a booking.
We do have alerts for mares who are not bred that show up on our stable page. Also, when you have a stallion booking reserved to your stable in general that booking shows up on every mares breeding page as an option as long as the booking time hasn’t yet past. If I were to go breed a mare and saw I had a general booking to say, “Spock”. I would know that I had reserved that spot and go make sure which mare it was for if I couldn’t use it for the one I was currently breeding. Not that any of this matters since you feel a booking fee would “help”, but just wanted to go into detail there a bit in case those alerts were getting over looked. I never know how a certain page loads on different computers so I never know if some things are visible to everyone.
I’m leaning towards making this optional (similar to requiring approval for your stud). If you think booking fees are great and want to add one as part of your stud fee (not sure if the % would be customisable, but 25% sounds reasonable), great. If you don’t care, that’s cool, too. Likewise for mare owners - if you don’t want to worry about getting refunds and whatnot, don’t patronise studs that use booking fees.
I think that sounds fair. 