HomeAway

I had requested to cancel my reservation on the same day is was made because I selected the wrong size property. I corresponded with the owner of the property and asked her not to accept the reservation because of this error. She accepted it anyway, the money was taken from my account and now I have to contact customer service to get my money back. Well guess what they will place you on hold and never pick up, they will tell you their call volume is higher than expected (NO YOU JUST DONT PICK UP THE PHONE). Good luck getting your money back.

Our group had been planning our trip for months and we had finally found what we thought was a great place at a great price. We contacted the owner and paid for our week in full ($865.19) and the deposit in full ($250.00). We booked in November for our trip in March and were extremely excited about the trip. We then received this email in January from the owner:

"Sorry for the confusion on this reservation. The 2017 rates had not been updated at the time it was accepted. During Spring Break the rate is $2500 with a $500 security deposit."

So then lost our booking and also the price that we were told it would be. We were so upset and when we call Homeaway to see what could be done we were told there was nothing that could be done. So now we are stuck scrambling on where we are to stay and we have less than two months to figure it out. So if you are planing a trip with this owner be very careful because it may not be the price you agreed upon and make sure to have a back up plan just in case he changes his mind on the price. I would also recommend using another travel site that will do something for you other than just offering to send you a link to more properties.

Very unsatisfied.

Should be no stars! Long story short we rented a home and my 21 month old son got sick one night on the master bedroom comforter (I'm talking maybe $50 cheap scratchy Quality Inn print type comforter) and It was all clear liquid. It would not fit in washing machine so I cleaned area and left in wash room with a note for the maids. The home was large and great views, but a lot of clutter left behind from other renters, carpets were stained and dust everywhere. We own rental properties so we often overlook small things because sometimes you just don't have a good cleaning crew. However, the wifi was out for 4 days, master tub handles fell off and had to use pliers, rotten food left in fridge and fireplace didn't work. Now we called the homeowner and he was very rude to my husband. After trying to get my husband to fix his router that he couldn't even tell my husband where it was at he finally sent out repairman. We should have made more of an issue of the problems because after we got home I got nasty note from the homeowner calling me a nasty pig and saying he had to have his entire house of carpet steam cleaned. He kept our $1000 deposit. HomeAway did nothing to reprimand him for his disgusting remarks he made to me and they didn't ask him for any proof of damage or cleaning costs. They aided him in stealing our money. They just told me I should have purchased their damage coverage! DO NOT USE HOMEAWAY!

Does the new owners of HomeAway and VRBO think they can gouge travellers and expect them to suck up an extra 10% service fee and give a bunch of crap that their site is secure and the benefits are great. Well expedia (new owner) you can stick it where the sun doesn't shine not only have you lost me as a expedia coustomer but I will never book again on HA or VRBO or sister companies.
SHAME, SHAME, SHAME
CORPORATE GREED FOLKS IN ITS FINEST STAY AWAY

I've been with HomeAway/Owners Direct (now all swallowed up by Expedia) for many years, this feels like the last year. Presently I have over 10 properties advertised there. In the past everyone listed on these websites had paid (quite a lot) to have their properties listed. Therefore most people took care with their ads, good photos, kept it up-to-date etc. Now as well as us subscription (paying) listers they have introduced commission listings. You don't pay for the listing, instead HA deduct a payment from each booking made - potentially this is more money for them. It means in reality there are hundreds of low grade properties with low grade listings (that will also be repeated on AirBnb, Tripadvisor and countless other sites). It also means the good quality listings like mine don't get a look in. HA have introduced "Ranking Metrics" which is ways in which owners can manage their listings to be ranked higher in the search. It's meaningless, its dishonest. My well managed listing is 500th in the search! Behind some absolute rubbish.

I used to belong to Holiday Rentals, a good little site but then they were consumed by Homeaway, a greedy, grabbing American site. It is now so enormous that it virtually does what it wants and takes no notice of us the customers who own gites. There are so many gites in our area of the Dordogne that visibility is a real problem. The only way to be really visible is to pay three times the going fee to belong to the Platinum level. If I paid to use HA's credit card system this would make me even more visible but why should I and may renters pay for something which can easily be done privately by free bank transfer?. Renters beware, the review system isn't very honest. Many of us have really good genuine reviews posted independently by holiday makers, but HA allows some owners to post loads of 'owner submitted reviews'. These rely on the honesty of the owner and some of them are probably bogus... who knows.
If I could advertise with someone else and be sure that I could get the bookings that I do, (we have 12 weeks booked already for next year) I would, but this greedy company has a virtual monopoly of the market. They provide no decent customer service and each time that I have phoned about an issue, they offer platitudes and then have the gall to ask me if I want to pay for their payment system. If you think that Ryanair and O'Leary are devious, then I can assure that HA is worse.

HomeAway, owned by Expedia, is exploiting both homeowners and vacationers by using its market dominance to force costly and unwelcome business practices on both parties. We are homeowners providing vacations at two private properties in Europe and, since HomeAway was bought by Expedia, our vacationers have suffered badly from maladministration by HomeAway, in particular having extra wrong amounts deducted from their bank accounts and at the wrong times, contrary to the agreements into which they entered. It takes HomeAway 7 days to rectify mistakes some of which amount to more than 4500 dollars! This is seriously embarrassing for us as we aim for all our guests to have a great vacation and personally greet them and do everything we can to help them with any personal problems that arise - for example finding a lost wedding ring and returning it to guests from Canada. We have been told by 'customer services' that occasionally Home Away has to re-set its website, resulting in our specified settings being 'lost' and it is our responsibility to keep checking that everything is correct! We also look forward to the day when a decent competitor sets up. In the meantime make sure you never use Expedia for airline or hotel bookings.

I totally agree with all the comments made about HomeAway not accepting negative comments. We had a terrible experience with HomeAway Spain regarding property *******. When we arrived at the property the owner told us they had double booked the place but to take our things up anyway. When we did so we were surprised that there were 4 other houses surrounding the property, we were never told this by the owners and the photo is misleading. We then asked if there were children staying there to which the owner replied yes, and if you don't like children you can take your things and leave seeing as we have this already booked. We were extremely upset and the husband came and moved us to another house. When I made a comment about the difficulty of arriving to the property because it is a country trail more suited to four wheel drives than small cars like mine. The owner replied saying that we had left the place because we didn't like children rather than saying they had double booked the property. I have had to block the owner on Facebook because she is stalking me with unwarranted comments. When I sent a letter to HomeAway regarding this situation they said there was nothing they could do as they do not check the veracity of the comments made so an owner or traveller can write anything and they will accept it, unfortunately they changed my comment but not the owners. I will never use HomeAway again after this experience and I warn others to be careful as well. Another point that must be made is that the property is listed on different HomeAway pages at different prices.