After the reservation was made and the deposit paid I was set to owe $378 and then when the day came to pay Wyndham claimed I owed $531 and it was an added cleaning fee that homeaway did not list and homeaway's excuse was their systems must not have synced properly. That is an extra $153 they added after everything was booked. Very very disappointed. Will never use them again.
If you modify your quote and payment request for your guest, to set the rent to $. 01, and everything else is listed under the Tax section, this will reduce the service fee to zero. They are not allowed to charge the fee on taxes...
Do not list your property in this place.
They do not even provide contact information or company information on whomever is taking payments. Homeaway is also charging customers VAT, 25% in Norway, however they are not registered for VAT and do not provide owners with proper recites.
The"service fees are horrendous, around more than 20%! For a company refusing to provide contact information. This is not a good situation when payments are not received, customers pay, homeaway does not.
Also there is no way to completely delete listing and private information.
Do not rent. Do not list.
Booked with them but could not get any replies to our questions. So we canceled our trip a few days later. Were told no problem but we would be charged a $150 cancellation fee and our deposit ($1038. 74)would be refunded. We were charged $160 and our refund was for $888.74. Do the math and tell me they are not crooks.
I would give it 0 stars if i could! False advertisement through and through! Pictures of rentals have nothing to do with actual accomodations. When you confrom homeaway - they are not responsible for anything, supposedly you enter into agreement with individual renters. $2000 poorer, never actually stayed at the dump, advertised as "luxury 2 bedroom apartment in Meat Packing district in NY", and cant even sue the company because it no longer exists...
STAY AWAY!
I've come to the conclusion that as long as they make their money, they don't care if the customer is happy or not. Homeowners are allowed to flat out lie about the amenities they claim their property has and then the property owner is allowed to give US a 1 review? We couldn't have been better renters during our week's stay. We left the home better and more well stocked than when we arrived. Be careful of all those glowing reviews because in our experience, it was the opposite. Lies! Homeowner asked for feedback and then was a complete a$$ when we did that. Didn't give a damn that my husband was attacked by a warm of wasps, simply from walking out on the pond's dock. Called us city slickers because he got stung. Actually we are country people. Way too many other issues to get into, but we'll never use Homeaway again. And beware of renting from "Berharnd" aka Martin in Bangor, ME! He's a liar!
Of course homeaway/Expedia is not responding to reviews as they know they should be ashamed of theirselves. They will lose more in bookings/revenue than before. Who came up with that poor business decision. I will be taking my business elsewhere as will at least 10 of my friends that I complained to. Shame shame on you.
On my way on his bed and breakfast.com which is a scam company that takes money for gift cards and then refuses to honor the gift cards and renders them useless there are possible through horrible to deal with and again took $100 for a gift card which is not redeemable it's out and out fraud
Absolutely horrible experience with the 'Book it Now' payment option.
They are reasonably pleasant and efficient in taking your payment, but apparently have no systems in place to actually confirm whether or not the property you want to rent is actually available or not!
They should not be taking payment without this capability, and should immediately remove the 'Book It Now' feature.
We were going to rent a house in Orlando and after a month our plans got changed. We asked the owner for a refund on our deposit which was suppose to be 100% refunded. The owner has not given me my deposit nor has the company did anything to the owner for his actions. I scanned numerous documents to their fraud department in which nothing happened. So I'm out 300 for not even staying in the place. Never use this website! His name is Shlomo Moalam. He is not to be trusted for his word or actions!
HomeAway bought the Australian site where I advertise my vacation rental, but didn't bother to tell me the listing conditions have changed. Now they've launched another Australian vacation rental site in competition! And want me to sign up for that too.
They're customer support is a joke - just an excuse for harvesting customer records, and unless you purchase extras your listing goes to the bottom of the pile.
Anyone using their site enters into an unlawful, unfair customer contract with them that's totally stacked in their favour.
Posts in their customer forum are highly critical but they don't care about providing a service, only leeching as much money from us as they can.
They shouldn't be allowed to stay in business.
Great communication when they take your money. When you show up to a disaster they can't be found!
If you rent from Blake Born you better stop at Betten Chevy and look him in the eyes before you give him money.
He has a good racket going. Don't be his next victim!
He has 3 properties!
I let out 2 properties in the Dordogne, France. I completely agree with all the criticisms leveled by the posts on this page. I was a very satisfied customer of Owners Direct until the US take overs. Now you are forced to comply with HomeAway and their money grabbing system or you get penalised and your property slips so far down the ratings that you get almost no enquiries (apart from the scams).
Today I discovered that you also lose between 2% and 4.7% in an invisible "transaction charge" if you allow your customer to pay by credit card, which you are coerced to do to if you want to keep your rating position. Total ripoff.
My last 2 bookings have been very confused by the booking process, and time and goodwill has been wasted trying to sort it out.
It's a greedy business model, and I hope people migrate away from it. I will be checking out alternative sites - any recommendations appreciated.
Had a pleasant stay in the Asheville area at a VRBO rental, my first experience.
Contract said the $300 damage deposit would be returned within 15 days if all okay.
Well, the property manager gave the okay for the refund the day we left, but it's 45 days later and no refund!
They said there was some glitch with returning it to our account and asked for bank accounts, routing numbers, yada yada. I told them I would be more comfortable with a check. So after a month they say they can send a check out in 6- 8 weeks!
So much for making things right. Are they holding customers' $ to make $ themselves?
I will never rent from VRBO or use Expedia reservations again. Pathetic!
Don't use Homeaway.com for any vacation rentals. They screwed me big time on a rental during the hurricane evacuation. No check in instruction ever sent no one will answer phone. Was ripped off for over $900. Please pass this on. As well as the homeowner Aleksandar Stamatovich his phone number is *******338. You won't return my calls or help in anyway with a refund.
You have chosen to damage thousands of business people. You could have charged your clients more and let them decide how to deal with it. Instead you decided to charge your clients customers. You are even charging the end user additional for cleaning fees.
When did you become an owner of my properties? Do you share my expenses? Charging my customers and the bad publicity you are now generating will hurt my bookings - are you responsible for the decreased rentals?
It won't surprise me when I see a class action lawsuit filed against this company. It has resulted in countless losses to renters and is set up to generate its revenue through support of the owners, many of which are immoral. I lost half of my payment when the owner cancelled on me 2 weeks before arrival because that's what the cancellation policy stated. So I lost money becuase they wanted to cancel. And to leave a review? You have to be invited. So any negative reviews are withheld from most posted property advertisements. I wouldn't recommend this site to anyone, STAY AWAY.
I/m getting charged for Homeaways mistake. All i wanted is to offer an additional discount to my guests. All other platforms enable easy changes. Customer service agent led me through the process on Livechat (and left a paper trail). I followed his instructions to the letter.
I ended up being charged twice (for the initial quote and again for the new quote).
Tried to fix the issue. Chat line broke. The next few days no-one would answer my chat attempts- At least 10 attempts. "you are now chatting live with an agent"... "Agent shut down this chat."
Finally, I was able to get an agent on the phone.
Yes, I see. You are correct, but there is nothing we can do!?
Unacceptable! Unprofessional!
Number *******.
My husband and I decided to get away for a month. After staying at this beautiful townhome in Melbourne beach, we wished we had booked for two months. It was perfect. The beach was literally out the back sliding glass door.
Exceptionally clean. The kitchen was well stocked with dishes, glasses etc. New granite counter tops. Beautiful ceramic floor down stairs with wall to wall brand new carpet up strairs. The bedrooms (3 of them) were elegantly furnished. Newly renovated bathrooms. The Master bedroom was right out of some dream vacation magazine. On the second floor with a balcony over looking the ocean. Listening to the waves every night.
The place was away from traffic, which we really loved, but also in walking or bike riding distance to great places to eat. It was just a great vacation place.
If I could give no stars, I would.
Stay away from this company - they will shamelessly rip you off if they can. They were instructed to take my listing down, but went merrily along charging my credit card nearly $1400/year. When I finally discovered it, they will only return the last charge (hoping, I'll believe it when I see it). No problem doing unauthorized charges.
Moreover, spent over 3 hours today, 90% on hold or listing to music to try to rectify this, and 5 out of 6 personnel couldn't even find the fact that they were illegally charging me. When I finally asked to speak to a supervisor, she had the incredible nerve to tell me she definitely saw my point that I shouldn't pay for services that were cancelled, but their 'policy' is they don't reimburse.
Bottom line, horrible service, maintain two sites (VRBO/Homeaway) to gauge you out of double the amount of payment, (though they own both web sites).
Overview
HomeAway has a rating of 1.1 stars from 1,751 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchases. Reviewers dissatisfied with HomeAway most frequently mention customer service, credit card and property owner. HomeAway ranks 152nd among Vacation Rentals sites.
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- Sitejabber’s sole mission is to increase online transparency for buyers and businesses
- Sitejabber has helped over 200M buyers make better purchasing decisions online
- Suspicious reviews are flagged by our algorithms, moderators, and community members