HomeAway

Looking to book a beautiful venue for my wedding and my payment kept getting declined! Thinking it was just a security issue through my bank, I called them and they said everything was fine on their end. I just used a different card but I still had the same issue! Upon calling their customer service rather than putting in my information like my name, number, and email address in case we got disconnected. Every time I was transferred to somebody new (which was every 15 minutes) I had to repeat it a number of times because they could barely speak English! I stayed on the phone with them for nearly 2 hours, got hung up on once, yelled at, and by the end of this fiasco was told "my request could not be processed and there was nothing further they could do." I am hoping I can just place my reservation through the owners directly because reading some of these terrible reviews I would hate knowing they got 20% of my deposit regardless after how I was treated!

They collect sensitive personal information including credit card details, and then send an email that the paid reservation was not confirmed. No reason, no explanation and automatically generated by the system. Customers Service in Manila and no responsible people is ever available. After telling that my reservation was not confirmed, the price of that particular booking went up 150%. Not recommended. I gave them 1 of 5 because I had no option to give zero or numbers with minus. A band of scammers and crooks!

I have been a rental property owner advertising with HomeAway and VRBO for many many years. Now they are charging my guests, most of whom are repeat renters, a very high fee just to book my cabin. Mind you I pay them $499 annually. Now they're charging my guess as much as 10% for bookings. Their service is terrible, plan to wait on hold at least 10 minutes and many times much longer. Their customer service people are not empowered to help. So what are my guests getting for that ridiculous fees? I don't know but it's not right. Greedy!

As an owner of two properties on VRBO (aka Home Away), we are enraged by their recent policy to start charging our guests a commission, without adding any benefits to them or the owners. They continue to charge us an annual fee, which is what we used to pay for the website service. With Air bnb, we receive homeowner protection, but no discernable benefit from homeaway. They claim that the additional service we get is more advertising. We have not noticed any difference in increased inquiries, but have noticed a deterioration of service via longer wait times to speak to a technician. We would love to see a company continue the old policy of VRBO (annual fee and no fees) and there will be a mass exodus to this new company.

In the past, Homeaway was a great place for homeowners to advertise their properties. Now, all Homeaway cares about is expanding and making a lot more money. They have just started blocking the emails and phone #'s of guests and homeowners/property managers. The information is not available until someone actually reserves the property by paying through them. This allows for NO screening of future clients. We used to talk to each one before accepting a reservation. Now, we can't. This is horrible!

Since Home Away took over Owners' Direct, the service has declined rapidly. The reviews from people booking are damning. From an owner's perspective, I can see no reason for HA to keep the deposit, which clients pay to secure a stay in an apartment/villa, for months before transferring it to the owner's bank account - other than pure greed of course to maximise the interest on their money. Surely the deposit is the owner's. It was when the company was Owners' Direct. Also, clients are complaining to me about the email system. They want to be able to contact the owner directly rather than through this third party system that does not actually work well. Although I have a villa listed with HA, I would recommend that clients look elsewhere as this is not a company I want to do business with any more. I'll be taking my villa off the list when my current subscription ends and will take great pleasure in explaining why I am withdrawing. Try AirBnB instead!

I booked an apartment in Cape Town for Christmas period back in July. Money was taken from credit card immediately. When we arrived in CT, there was neither an apartment nor an owner to talk to. I still don't know what happened. We spent hours on the street with 2 kids and more than 500 for phone calls to the support line. With no outcome. Fake rents seem to be the new business model. Everyday they require new documents to be sent. Although they did not deliver anything and they know... stay away from HomeAway.

I have been listing my property on Homeaway since 2009 and been through all the ups and downs of their system and business model changes. Right now customer service is the worst I've experienced. They can't explain to me their ranking metrics or what they are doing and they have control of everything. Unbelievably frustrating. Unfortunately they have so much market share that owners are stuck with them. There is a huge opportunity for a competitor to overtake them - I certainly hope a company steps up.

I paid to list my house on vrbo for over ten years, and it brought me numerous inquiries and bookings. But since HomeAway has taken them over and instituted all their recent changes, my rate of inquiries has crashed. Now they are trying to force home owners to take bookings through their site, so that they can take a hefty commission. And they are also charging renters a hefty fee on top of the owner's rate, so that vacation rentals are becoming more expensive, thus less desirable. I would advise all potential renters to avoid HomeAway and vrbo, and to search for owners' private sites. There you will be able to actually rent a "vacation rental by owner" which ironically enough is what vrbo used to stand for.

So hear this, my son was taken to the ER by ambulance 6 hours prior to us leaving for this trip an 8 hour drive, he was admitted to the hospital, and could not travel for several weeks, called homeaway lines were down imagine that, called homeowner and was told, Im sorry but no $$ will be returned. They even keep the cleaning fee of $500.00 and no one stayed at the property. Cancellation Policy bull$#*! my son is disabled we picked a handicap accessible home for him please please I do not want another family to have to deal with this we disputed charges but of course home way and the property owner keep blaming each other we have been disputing for 5 months, homeowners on the site are desperate, why else would they keep a disabled persons money, all we wanted was the cleaning fees and taxes returned. Stay away from home away,!, if they will cheat a disabled person and get away with it they will do anything. Buyer beware.

I rented a apartment in Maui for family of 4. There was only one small air conditioner inside the bed room and that was not providing enough cooling. There err bugs and cockroaches in the apartment. Called customer service for customer satisfaction guarantee. She was very rude and did not do anything. This company is scam. With all there added cost overall cost to rent exceeds normal hotels rates. Based on my experience, I will not recommend using this company again.

Homeaway has over a million properties on their books so millions of people have used their website. This site currently has 230 reviews. As a percentage of holidays booked, that's minute, not even. 0001%. Add to that the fact that most people are quick to leave bad reviews and slow to read good ones... well, I think that speaks volumes. It's a shame that a good, successful company could potentially be brought down by this misinformation.