Terri M.

I have loved using HomeAway/VRBO for years but cant wait for our $1200 subscription to be over in July. I feel like a dupe of Expedia, the new owners of VRBO/HomeAway. Their new service fee of up to 10% puts us at a competitive disadvantage especially for guests we have sourced from elsewhere, in particular in extremely price sensitive rental areas. The great majority of our bookings were through our resort website, and we primarily used HomeAway to offer services that are already earning money for HomeAway - the payment processing/scheduling, the offer of rental insurance in case our guest had a medical emergency, and the mobile app through which HomeAway offers them services. We were already locked into a contract before Expedia came on the scene and they have ruined the experience. They've positioned the fee as a service fee to guests to obscure the fact that we must reduce our rental quotes to win the booking. For our rental home, this is an additional $4000 cost to us annually. We are not a big business and we put a lot of work and heart into making our villa a wonderful destination. This is a huge ripoff from a company we provided with steady income. And to repeat, they actually source few of our guests, so they aren't even delivering a superior service to us in that respect.

Update 2-26-16 - In response to my Better Business Bureau complaint, HomeAway responded to the case that these customers are not sourced through them with this comment: "As this consumer's travelers are using the services of our site to make a payment, we feel it is only right that they pay for those services. Additionally, when travelers complete their booking through the site they become eligible for our Book with Confidence Guarantee, providing protection for several different scenarios and to help travelers feel confident booking on HomeAway, reducing booking hesitation that in turn supports our homeowners."

So, apparently they think that in addition to the payment processing fee already assessed, that they somehow deserve an added 10% on top of that and to give the guest confidence when they already had confidence. The result will simply be that most of my guests will now use different payment processes and we will stop using HomeAway for guests not sourced through them and we will stop giving HomeAway their emails. I took this route already with one guest but they guest still got spammed by HomeAway when I included their email in the calendar. That's the last time.

I wonder if any of you have found a viable alternative. I think HomeEscape.com provides similar services for free and the site says it always will be free because they allow advertising, which is fine with me. They dont have many homes today on their site as they are starting out. I'm planning to add my home - no cost. And that may be my 'go-to' for keeping my guests all together going forward. Has anyone else reading this tried them?

I calculated how much this may be earning for HomeAway and it is shameful. This new fee is $4000 annually for my guests. We book our vacations frequently through HomeAway so have a good sense that this is about average for the homes we've rented. HomeAway has over a million homes. If our customer fees are average then HomeAway will be taking in over $4,000,000,000 - yes, 4 billion dollars. Even if other home make half our bookings, HomeAway earns 2 Billion. Are they trying to make up for the national debt here? They will be adding details on their site to make it clearer to guests that they will be paying this fee to HomeAway and that the owners are not charging it. Is their guarantee worth 4 billion dollars? Or even 2 Billion? Corporate greed gone wild, again. And now I cant use the services I paid for if I book guests through other sources. Lovely.