j P.

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.