HomeAway

Horrible. I did not stay here because this listing was removed by homeaway and it was never communicated to me even though I was confirmed and paid for in full. The property owner booked the same property for the same dates through another site. I spent over an hour on the phone with homeaway plus various emails only to get no where. Homeaway refused to help and would not even refund my money. They said it was all on the property owner to deal with it and issue a refund. RIDICULOUS seeing how the property owner did not even have my money, homeaway holds it until the stay occurs. I was unable to cancel, get a refund or stay here. It was also a time where the city was completely booked up. I ended up having to ask a friend if I could stay at her boyfriends place. Such a nightmare. And now homeaway has the audacity to send me an email asking how I liked my stay? Hah! I give a negative rating to this experience and the homeaway customer service and strongly recommend to everyone to avoid using this service in the future.

This is the rudest and most irresponsible company you could ever possibly do business with. I absolutely understand their cancellation policy under normal circumstances. We are being 100% ripped off by this multi-billion $ company. We are ordinary folks who don't have multi-million $ property on Lake Tahoe - my military family once re-stationed in July will be unable to go back to this property - nor would we - these are greedy people. When we planned our family vacation to come from all over the United States we had no idea cornavirus would paralyze this country. Amid flight cancellations, whole towns and resorts being shut down. Never mind my military son has been confined to base, none of us, including my wife and I(60+ years) can travel now and put our family at risk. This piece of garbage company is now rudely refusing to refund our money for a trip that we are all crying about since as a family we haven't been together for over a year. This was meant to be a celebration of life. HomeAway has turned this into a financial bloodbath to just add to the confinement misery we are all experiencing due to social distancing. They have insurance, we do not. This will not only set us all back
Financially, now we won't even be able to plan a follow up trip when this all clears because they have destroyed our budget. NEVER DO BUSINESS with this shameful company please. Maybe they'll make a few $ on us - everyone of you who doesn't book with them can put them out of business. God bless you in your support!

Horrible customer service if you're a guest and you have a problem. They apparently give no latitude to their customer service reps to resolve unique issues, they just say "sorry, that's our policy". In other words, "sorry, you're screwed". Host didn't respond to any written or phone attempts by me and two HomeAway reps to reach them over the course of three days the week of my travels in order to confirm reservation and get address and check-in instructions for a home I had already paid for in France (traveling from California to Normandy on busiest weekend in probably 10+ years 75th anniversary of D-day)... so had to secure alternative housing on my own so I wouldn't be stuck waiting for HomeAway to find me two horrible hotel rooms on a Friday night during historic celebration in small town. Their policy is "show up, and if there is no one there to let you in, then we'll find you two hotel rooms". Yeah, like that would work under these circumstances (hotel occupancy rates at 95%+ for that weekend). Not to mention I didn't have a proper address to show up to. Host eventually confirmed availability of property about two hours after I booked alternative, non-refundable housing ("you can check in at 5:30 PM on Friday")... this email less than 48 hours before I was supposed to check in. HomeAway says they won't reimburse me for any duplicate costs incurred. Didn't even refund service charge for a property I never got the chance to use. Stick with Airbnb.

Just had a ridiculous experience with these guys. Have been advertising properties on a pay per booking base but their system is definitely not as advanced as other platforms as airbnb, trip advisor or others.

I have been receiving threatening emails from Homeaway that they were going to take my adverts offline because they suspected me of taking bookings outside their system. The reason of the suspicion was that my conversion rate was below average.

When people leave an enquiry and you send a customer a quote the dates get automatically blocked so no other enquiries come in. Also the customer will start receiving annoying payment requests while he never confirmed the booking. (but Someway treats the quote as a definitive booking). The customer then gets irritated (rightfully so) and starts telling me to leave them alone (while the emails are automatically send by Homeway)

The only way to unblock the dates again is by cancelling the booking and that is when Someway thinks that you as a home owner are taking bookings outside their system. The emails I have received were written in a very annoying threatening way, this is no way to treat any customer!

My suspicion is that they are not at all interested in pay per booking adverts but do all of this to change the pay her booking ads into yearly subscriptions. I am sure they will lose lots of homeowners or professionals who advertise more than one property and do not want a ridiculously high fixed cost per year.

They will lose out soon to the much more customer friendly portals as airbnb, trip advisor, wimp etc.

I made a reservation through Homeaway website that led me to deal directly with the owner through e-mail. The owner informed me that she was getting a trouble to get into her account to approve my request. She told me that a homeaway would help me out and get in touch with me. Then I received an email from Homeaway customer support (*******@bookings-homeaway.co.uk) which gave us the wire details of the payment. I asked for credit card option and they said wire transfer was the only option. Considering that the e-mail came from the customer support, I made the wire transfer. The day after, I got an e-mail from a different Homeaway customer support (*******@homeaway.com) telling me that the listing is a fake and that I should try to reverse payment. It was too late and the $$$$ has left my account. I tried calling their CS and found out that even the customer support e-mail was a fake. In the end, they will only refund me up to $1000 and there was nothing else they can do. How FRUSTRATING!

If you do not want to lose all your money when something unexpected occurs, avoid using HOMEAWAY. Their customer service is awful and way behind that of AIRBNB.
I booked a stay at Temple Bar Luxury Tourist Apartments at Dublin late in 2019 to stay during June 2020. Due to COVID19 all my inbound and outbound flights were cancelled. However, both the Hotel and Homeaway refused to agree on a refund, even partially, of the USD575 I have paid in advanced. The hotel never answered my messages and calls and HOMEAWAY did not have a way to communicate with them. All very strange. I feel cheated.
On the contrary, AIRBNB refunded me 100% of the 3 reservations I've made through them.

Homeaway is simply a place for an owner to post whatever information they want to regarding their property. This information could be totally false, misleading or accurate. There is no way to verify the information. The homeowners can delete any review they do not like so all you read are these glowing reviews. My last experience renting through homeaway.com has left a very bad taste in my mouth. The property was not as described and the owner kept saying the her description was accurate. No one in my party agreed with her. When waiting for my reimbursement she charged me $15 for not emptying the bathroom waste can, $10 for a coffee table not being in its exact original location, $10 for not starting the dishwasher and $25 for excessive dog hair. Nothing was in the contract warning me that I could be nickeled and dimed out of any of my reimbursement. Suggest you first go to a google site that allows you to see the property, close up, from an orbiting satellite. It is at least a chance to see if there is any misleading claims going on. This was property number *******.

I have listed my property in Indonesia. After about 4 months, got a response of one customer wanted to stay at my place. He came and stayed for 3 days and again made another booking to extend for 5 days. When my client stayed during his 4th days, I called customer service and asked why I have not received my payment. He answered just wait for tomorrow. I have waited until one day before my client checked out, still no payment.

Then, I got a letter from *******@homeaway.com that my property is fake. Homeaway blocked my account (cant login) with no explanation. I've called again and she told me to write an email to *******@homeaway.com. Until today no one reply, I still have not receive any payment of almost $800. My account is still blocked. I've talked to my client recently and he said that his credit card already charged by homeaway. 3 days after he cheked out, I received an email that I need to write a review and rate him as my customers. So, Homeaway's system approved that my listing is not a fake one. Because it admitted that I did have a guest in my property (No Fake). But refuse to give my payment.

So, there it is, the list of unsatisfied customers of Homeaway is longer by days. But as you can see in this forum, no one from Homeaway is trying to responds to any of this complaints defending their company.

Sandra Colbourn from homeaway cannot be trusted. They will advertise their homes on VRBO, and provide a price (with taxes and fees) in US Dollars, but then will charge you more in Sterling Pounds.
Contacted scamming Sandra the next day about the pricing discrepancy, and she refused to give a refund.
However, she proposed that I giver her my credit card information, so I can rent it from her - she cannot be trusted, to not give them your money
Homeaway told me to contact the seller, scamming Sandra, but she refuses to refund my money.
*In addition, even though I have a reservation, and she refuses to refund me, SHE RENTED THE PROPERTY to another customer.
Scamming Sandra is getting paid twice for the same property

We rented a listed property over the holidays (12-23-14) for 4 nights. Paid extra for the "Carefree" insurance which is advertised as "Carefree Rental Guarantee (Provided by HomeAway) - Guarantees your payment if the vacation rental is not as advertised..." We had numerous issues with the property (see list below). Complained to the property agent, and to Homeaway. They do not cover "temporary defects" of which non of our issues qualify?!?

My advice is stay away from these guys and definitely do your homework before renting (from the website that begins with V?)and especially paying for insurance that does not cover the real issues.

Issues: In the listing elevator (owner advised us not to use it.
In the listing - 4 TV's ( only 1 worked)
In the listing - outdoor grille ( rusted + corroded = no food cooked here!)
In the owner's email "everything is in great working condition:
What we found:
Horrible pet odor, hair, dog poop on upper deck (they advertised no pets allowed...?
Window in shower jammed open.
Numerous slats missing from vertical blinds in master bedroom (privacy issue)
Screen door jammed and torn screen
Smoke detector unit removed from base in master bedroom
Linens - pillows, comfortor = horrible stink
Utensils dirty - not a big deal in itself, but when you pay a $200 cleaning fee, what you get should be clean...
We have not yet posted feedback on the property website... stay tuned

If you are a homeowner, Home Away says you can set cancellation policies. But this is just rubbish. If someone cancels, HomeAway will tell you the contract is between you and the renter. If the renter contacts their credit card company, the credit card company will almost always rule in favor of the card holder. Then HomeAway employees in it's subsidiary Vacation Rental Payments will harangue you the homeowner to pay the chargeback. I recently lost nearly $1700 in a chargeback and I lost the ability to rent to someone else since the renter cancelled at the last minute. I had a signed, written contract stating clearly NO CANCELLATION REFUND, and I still lost. The folks at HomeAway are unscrupulous thugs. Stay away from them at all costs if you are a vacation homeowner.

I recently delisted my home from homeaway.com. They fail in an epic way to resolve any issues. Nothing but passed off accountability and responses read out of a manual. I recently had a guest damage my apartment and HomeAway couldn't care less or offer any assistance to help. I was referred to a third party insurer who took over 30 days to even look at my case. Result, they won't honor my insurance claim (even with photo proof) and I'm left with a damaged property. Then when I had a guest dispute their credit card for paying for their stay HomeAway again stepped aside and referred me to another third party that took the money back 30 days after the services were rendered. I again provided all the proof of a confirmed reservation and correspondence. If you are to rent your home for short term, do not use HomeAway or vrbo.com to do so. Stick with Airbnb or bookings.com or if you're desperate, good ole Craigslist. If you use HomeAway, you will lose in some way early or later on. Please beware.

I am very disappointed with this company!

Property *******

We rented this flat via the HomeAway site. It was a total fraud and HomeAway has not been at all helpful and they still allow the owner to advertise on this site.
The photographs that were sent me were a compilation of photos of a variety of apt and villas rented by this agent.
The apartment was not clean and light bulbs were out in the master shower room.
The door to the shower room was broken.
The stove/hob was broken.
The kitchen was not as advertised, fully equipped. It did not have a cooker or a kettle or a coffee maker. The BBQ was dangerous and broken.
There were no sea views as advertised and the private beach access did not exist.
Most importantly, the master bedroom external door was broken and would not lock.
The handy men who arrived to look at the glass door did not have tools nor the parts required to make the door secure. Neither man was interested in looking at the hob as they were not electricians. Nothing further could be done until Monday. We arrived on a Friday and our flight home was on Weds.
I told Clara, one of Julio's employees, that we would be leaving and moving into a hotel as we could not stay in a flat that was not secure. She indicated that she understood.

In terms of unauthorised payments on my card there were three. Two for 235 Euros and a further for 200 euros but I would like a full refund as the property was not as advertised at all.

I have forwarded HomeAway the emails where Mr Terry and Julio have agreed to transfer funds into my account, and request my details but as of today no monies have arrived.

Now Homeaway, Owners Direct, Flip key, and VRBO are all the same company and they are one of the main advertisers on Trip Advisor, they now dominate in all web searches. What renters who book through them need to realise (and they don't make that clear) is that they do not guarantee the quality of the accommodation or intervene if there is an issue, all they are doing is guaranteeing they will refund your money if the place doesn't exist. There are other ways of doing that... ask the owners, they should not be offended! For doing this Homeaway etc. charge the renters and the owners of the property a hefty fee, they take up to 20% for doing nothing! The trouble is if as an owner you choose to go the old route and pay an annual fee to advertise on their sites, you are pushed to the bottom of the list, not promoted and are wasting your money since all the do is give propriety to those they get a % fee for. Also be aware sometimes a different fee is charged depending if you ask for a quote rather than ask to book... make a booking request and you are likely to be charged more. The company refuses to explain to us as owners why! They are not in the slightest bit interested in the owners nor renters once they get their fee. Most people who own a rental property are honest, so if you see somewhere you think you would want to rent and if it is "Pay on line" then I would recommend googling the place, type of home etc. to see if you can find the same property on an alternative site that doesn't charge the fee or even if you can find the owners own website - that way your holiday will be cheaper..