HomeAway UKReviews 62

Will never use again. Owner was slow to give refund and all they did was send him a couple of emails saying he had 48 hours to do the refund or his listing would be removed. He didn't and his listing was not removed. HomeAway then suggested I contact my credit card company and try to get a refund off them first, and then (if they wouldn't) come back to them with a letter from the bank saying why, along with copies of passport, credit card statements etc. Ridiculous customer service. 6 months later the owner finally resolved his problem with giving the refund and I got it sorted. Incidentally, the reason he couldn't give the refund was that the wrong amount was on the online form sent to him by HomeAway and it couldn't be amended. Despite numerous phone calls and emails to them, they didn't seem to grasp the problem until the very end. Not the owner's fault at all, in fact his patience was amazing.
There are a few booking companies to choose from, often for the same property, and I would definitely recommend using one of the others.

We rented an apartment from Etienne Feru in Annecy and was accused of having spilled oil on his floor. We clearly objected to this false accusation as the stain was present when we took over the apartment. We objected to any deductions being made from our deposit three times to Homeaway - we heard nothing and they paid the owner EUR 150 from our deposit! Ever since I have tried to reclaim my money w/o any luck. Yesterday I was informed the owner had provided 'sufficient evidence' of us having damaged his floor. I politely asked to see the socalled sufficient evidence as I was curious to see how the owner would prove an impossible thing. Guess what? Homeaway informed me I could not get access to this evidence!
I can only urge everybody to stay away from Homeaway and in particular to Mr. Etienne Feru from Annecy. What a fraudulent pack of cheats.

I booked a holiday with this company and the apartment that I had booked was not the one one that cane up on my booking.
I contacted them immediately and they said that I was within the 50% cancellation period and would have to contact owner.
I stated that it was their error and they should sort it but got no comeback.
I spoke to the owner who was very sympathetic and agreed to wave the booking as long as she was not blacklisted by Homeaway.
She has agreed to pay me back but Homeaway have kept their fee.
This is just a site that creates stress for its customers and wears you down when you
Try and get it back.It makes me sick to the stomach just thinking about it.

Dont use this company. I hadnt checked the reviews, as we were more concerned with the reviews of the actual cottage, (which were glowing) HUGE mistake. They have effectively taken payment twice, (nearly £4000), so direct debits etc are now being refused and we are being charged for something which is not our error. Customer services were very hard to understand and get my point across to, which has made the process of resolution harder. Still trying to sort it out. PLEASE DO NOT BOOOK WITH THEM!

Disastrous Experience just like the other hundreds of good people who have made similar complaints with TrustPilot and/or Sitejabber.

I booked the apartment on Homeaway website. I was charged with the first payment. Subsequent to my booking I had to make a cancellation due to the original apartment booked not being available from the property owner. I eventually managed to obtain a partial refund from the property owner - without the processing and service fee charged by HomeAway. Homeaway told me that the owner had my money. The owner showed me a photo as a proof that they only got part of the payment.

I was subsequently forced by HomeAway to contact my bank to request they refund me the amount as a means of deferred responsibility. After a very lengthy process of my bank refusing to refund me the amount, I then submitted a refund request to HomeAway with my bank denial to reimburse letter. HomeAway then sent me service fee charge amount but not the processing fee amount. I'm still have to go through this extremely lengthy and painful back and forth correspondence to obtain a refund for an unauthorised payment made almost five months ago. HomeAway is simply the WORST GARBAGE SCUM OF THE EARTH COMPANY THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN! THEY ARE ABSOLUTE THIEVES! DO NOT BOOK with this scam company or else you will regret it! I regret not reading all the negative reviews from customers first before booking with this website.

My advice to anyone looking at booking on homeaway is to google the property name or address. I have found a lot of the places have their own website or are listed elsewhere. They don't have the huge homeaway fees and you are able to contact the owners directly, much cheaper and faster confirmation. Talking to the owner directly is the best way of finding out what you need to know, plus usually they are willing to negotiate. Homeaway is a rip off.

Stay away from this website. I wish I had read the reviews before using. Having been promised a 100%cancellation refund it has taken me a month of going round in circles and finally getting another home owner to tell me how to tell my owner what to get some of my money back. It was not -all of it but I have had enough and cant be bothered to fight anymore. I would give zero if it was possible. Expect no back up from the company whatsoever

I own 3 flats which have been rented through holiday rentald and homelidays for years. Last year i renew the contract paying my annual fee to be visible on one appartment. I chose the pay per booking on the other two cause they worked less. 3 month later the company started applying a new 10 percent tax to the renter also of the one that was on a annual based fee. I protested cause it was a scam but they told me that it wasn t me but the guests paying... umbelievable. I decided to reniew this year on a pay per booking base but they refused. They want money from me and the guests too, since my booking have gone down 80 percent. I have 57 wonderful reviews, i am a good, loyal and safe client... it doesn t matter to them. They are just trying to rip off as much as possible

If you are one of the thousands who have suffered at the hands of HomeAway UK, please join our campaign to get their activities regulated in some way. There's a Facebook page "Stop Homeaway UK" or you'll find our contact details by searching for "Villa Verde Nea Makri"
Original review follows -
If you're dissatisfied with this company, please send details of your experiences to the BBC Watchdog programme, the Mail Onlines Money page, Citizens Advice, the Government (CMA) enquiry into hotel booking websites, and/or your MP. Sorry, but Im not allowed to provide links to make the process easier. Hopefully, enough individual complaints will persuade someone to act.

If youre in the 95% plus of people unhappy with their services then please join our efforts on Facebook. Together we might be able to force them to change their ways, perhaps by getting a crusading newspaper or television programme to take an interest, or perhaps by persuading the current Government inquiry into online hotel booking sites to include HomeAway UK in its investigations.

This company even lies to the Court to avoid liability! To boost our retirement income my wife and I rent out four studio apartments in our home in Greece to tourists. HomeAway UK promised us increased business if we switched to them when their parent company closed their former sister company Homelidays UK. After much persuasion we finally agreed to switch and they proceeded to deliver less business. I proposed many ways in which they could fulfil their promises. They did absolutely nothing before removing us completely from their site after I posted a bad review on this site. The very valuable 30 or so excellent guest reviews that we had collected immediately disappeared. What a way to treat customers who had remained loyal to the HomeAway Group for more than five years!

That was the last straw for me after their false promises and total lack of flexibility so I took them to Court. They have their own internal legal staff but they chose to also employ a firm of external lawyers, presumably costing them far more than the value of my small claim. I lost the case. Why? At least partly because their evidence was littered with untruthful and misleading statements. In my evidence I proved them wrong. They then repeated some of their distortions and in a paper hearing, with neither party present, a lazy Deputy District Judge took the easy way out.

I had very strong grounds to appeal the judgment. I also had strong grounds to sue them for two libellous statements that they made in their evidence. What I did not have were the funds to risk having to pay their costs if I came up against another judge who could not be bothered to look at the full picture.

You will read in their responses to many reviews on this site that they claim to be nothing more than a platform for users to view properties and make bookings on, to quote from the Judges findings in the Court case. Does such a company really need terms and conditions comprising ten pages of very small print? If the law allows them to thereby deny responsibility for absolutely every eventuality then surely the law needs to be changed.

I have asked them again to re-list our property. Again they have refused. From what I read on this site, they treat travellers with the same contempt as they treat us homeowners.
Perhaps enough contributors to this site are interested in joining us in some form of combined action? Please post on our Facebook page. Its time to "Stop Homeaway UK".

To the people at HomeAway UK Limited, yours is a truly despicable company. Im sure that you will try to shut down our Facebook page. Im also sure you will try to get this review removed. If you fail, are you going to make your usual feeble attempt to defend your position, or are you willing to change your ways before external regulation is introduced to force you to do so?

How secure do you think your job is? The feed back from Home owners and holiday makers is astronomical. Greed will be you're down fall. They have moved the goal posts that many times orchestrating exploitation from owners and holiday makers. I will be looking for alternative site as we have two properties.
Service fee for what? You hold the home owners money making interest in your bank with it. Taking full control, it is not what home owners originally signed up for. Well you have had our subscription. But for the last time! Holiday makers please dont blame the owners. In the past there was transparency.

There was a time when dealing with this company was a pleasure. Not any more. The changes to their procedures, without any form of consultation or advice, have been appalling. Why should holiday makers have to pay anything up to 12% more than the advertised price? Why should I have payments into my account reduced by 3%? Why, in this time of virtually instant money transfers, should I have to wait up to a week to receive payments? Why is their customer support so excruciatingly poor? Why did I pay what I thought was a one off annual subscription of almost £300? Why won't I be paying it again?... Because this company is money grabbing, unethical, dishonest and exploitative.
I could go on... and on... and on...