HomeAway

I have been with this company since 2007 with 3 houses currently listed. Yesterday the CEO, with his $6+million salary, has now taken away from me approximately $18,000 per year. We are small companies, with limited funds, but will now be forced to "eat" the new Service Fee (4-10%) they have added to our customers. Hotels will now be taking our customers if we let this "fee" be charged to them. We already pay 2.9%. I will definitely be looking for other ways to find my customers. Good Bye HomeAway and VRBO.

I've been with Homeaway/VRBO since 2004. Over the last few years they have slowly increased fees and reduced service levels and options for homeowners. I have slowly lost control of how my listing is managed and annual fees have doubled.

Anytime I have contacted them I have been met with a generic paste from their manual. Totally pointless and insulting.

The nail in the coffin is the new service fee for each booking. Homeaway, I've had enough and will not be renewing! Interestingly, there was a poll on our rental community website. Of those that used Homeaway, 84% said they would not be renewing!

Booked an apartment in Amsterdam in good faith, paid upfront, etc. Reached out to the apartment owner on the day of arrival as I had not heard anything. Next thing I get is a cancellation of my booking... right before my flight leaves!

Called Home Away who said they cannot do anything about the cancellation and offered to find me a hotel room... which by then, most places were already booked. I booked an apartment because that is what I wanted, not a hotel.

In the end, I ended up paying almost £800 extra to find an available apartment for the weekend. It was too big, but all that was available. Home Away offered nothing in terms of compensation.

They would not even allow me to review the apartment I had booked in order to warn future users of what can happen to them!

The add insult to everything, the 'refunded' my fees they collected... except for £4.98 for some odd reason.

Best to avoid this company and go with something more reliable!

Since HomeAway's acquisition by Expedia this hosting service has grown evermore dysfunctional.

Been a host there for years. At one time they were truly helpful and courteous to their hosts. At this time, I have found them to be progressively less personal, courteous and helpful to me.

Their search engine is a total disaster! Search for Silver Spring and you'll come up with a listings in two other local jurisdictions.

They seem to have no regard for the quality nor content of their hosts' listings...

Beware; proceed, if you're bound to, with extreme caution.

We were looking forward to a hen weekend in the summer of 2018. We paid our deposit only to be told(wrongly)that it had been double booked. There was a long delay in being reimbursed and many stressful emails and telephone calls later, we realised that we were left almost £80 out of pocket due to the euro conversion. We have had no apology for their mistake or any offer of a goodwill gesture of any sort. This is appalling customer service and homeaway can be sure that we will be spreading this message far and wide.

Now that Home Away/VRBO is charging travelers fees (which they make look like the owners are charging), increasing the owner's fees, making everyone use their payment system, they no longer are there for you if you call with a problem. All that matters is that they get their fees. They are putting holds on credit cards when a booking has not even been confirmed, then taking days to release the hold. They have taken away owner phone numbers, to make sure you can only communicate through them. Many homes on their sites are just that. Homes! Owners need to be able to vet travelers staying in their properties.
In short, use some other platform (www.homeescape.com charges no fees) to book your vacation or to list your house.

They now double dip in an effort to generate added revenue... Charging home owners who advertise and again to those who rent, charging a service fee. This has had a dramatic effect on my inquiries which are next to nothing and to date I've had one rental when I normally have rented all my prime weeks by now. I've used VRBO for years with success but if things stay like this I will terminate my subscription.

I would also like to add, VRBO/Homeaway are deleting all negative posts in Facebook, on their sites, wherever they can control communication thus masking the issue that's causing a major problem for both property owners and renters/clients.

Update: It only gets better!... If you don't use their buy it now aka bin process they basically hide your advertisement. Please, don't waste you time advertising with Homeaway, VRBO, etc. They'll take your $$ and leave you with NO inquiries. I'm shocked they haven't been investigated for fraud.

Fair warning about HomeAway. My partner and I were defrauded of $3000 trying to rent a vacation home through HomeAway. Now our multiple attempts, by phone and email, even to secure a form to request the amount they purport to guarantee have been ignored and defied. When you are defrauded through HomeAway, you may look forward to insult in addition to injury: transfer from office to office by phone, each office professing to be unable to help, email replies with the subject line "Oh shucks" and beginning "We are no longer monitoring this email address...". Rent through HomeAway at your own risk. Caveat emptor.

Terrible. During the rental process does not disclose that Owners can put whatever they want in the "rental contract". The rental "contract" is only available AFTER you pay. So they owners can bind you to any terms they want.

Also never disclosed anywhere that requirement to provide Government ID copy directly to the individual owner. For every person staying at the rental. I understand them wanting to know who is staying. BUT without any standards or data protection - you have no idea what owner will do with the information. AND no recourse if they lose or sell your information.

Better to book directly with the owner, and or property website otherwise Homeaway will charge you a "service fee" like 60 plus dollars that don't provide any service and will just direct you to the owner anyway for all your questions
Their guarantees don't mean anything
Watch out for properties that are considered external bookings, which by the way you will never know till your hooked and booked that have extra contracts to sign and make sure you read and understand every term in there. Homeaway will never help you and basically their customer service is useless.
Be careful,

The owners of small vacation rentals have a few places to turn in the market to advertise online. HomeAway VRBO, Expedia-whatever you want to call it knows this and are exporting it to the max. They manipulate the listings and do not deliver what they promise-which is booking inquiries and listings.The subscription costs have gone up, new fees are being pushed onto prospective renters and the service and quality of the online interface have gone down tremendously. Without quality properties such as mine to advertise on their website, they would not be a player in this market. I only wish there was somewhere else to turn.

I used Home Away last year in the Virgin Islands renting a villa. It was great, wonderful experience. I don't know if new management took over this year, but I made reservation and had to cancel.(within a day). They charged $104 service fee that I cant get back unless owner does initiates on website. Owner gave approval but claims he is out of county. Home Away should initiate this refund of THEIR service fee. Why should owner have anything to do with that. I booked another trip but now am afraid I will not get refund if I have to cancel. I was on expedia site when I booked this trip but somehow it re-routed to home away. I will not use them again

I've used HomeAway four times over the past six years and have been very satisfied. But this week, I've experienced nothing but frustration. The first home I tried to book showed my dates were available, but the next day I received an email telling me that my reservation was not confirmed. By the time I called HomeAway later in the day, the owner had pulled the listing from the website. Huh? I tried again with another property showing my dates were available, but first emailed the owner to find out if this was accurate. I received his reply telling me that my dates are available, but that he doesn't take reservations for high season in Florida this far in advance (8 months). Huh? I replied back, offering to adjust my dates and book for 2 calendar months. Haven't heard back from him. Don't really want to work with unreliable owners or websites like HomeAway/VRBO/VacationRentals, but what's the alternative for finding good rentals?