HomeAwayReviews 1,751

I signed up with HomeAway early this year to let my gîte. They are working on a new 'dashboard' based system for owners and I experienced several glitches in trying to set up the account with them and add my payment details. After numerous calls and emails the glitch was resolved and I was finally able to enter my bank details (even though I had, already, numerous times...).
Fast forward to July - they have not paid me a cent. I am owed over 2000 for the 3 guests I have had and I am getting stonewalled at every turn. I've called and logged the issue via email but have had no update - when I call them to find out what is happening I am told nothing other than 'the technical team are working on it' and that 'resolution time will be dependent upon the complexity of the issue'. No idea of when I may get paid, I just get told to wait. I wonder how many people can afford to be owed 2000 with no consequences... Absolutely and totally unacceptable that they should treat those people who are actually their breadwinners so badly.
On the flip side AirBNB have been a total dream to use... What a shame.

UPDATE
So its now been 3 weeks since I logged my issue. Ive not had a single update from anyone. Ive asked to speak to a manager and been ignored.

Im at a total loss as to what to do now and its making feel sick. I cant afford not to have this money...

The only option available to me, it seems, is to seek legal advice...

HomeAway case number *******

I use homeaway to book a cabin in Jackson Wy. I drive 24 hours with my family and arrive there at 4:30 PM. No one sent us a code for the cabin when we get to cabin we have to go through a crappy area. So we finally find the cabin and we are extremely upset. The ad online said panoramic views, clean, and easy access. Your view is of construction site, resort, and crappy parking for the resorts trucks and equipment. It was not peaceful at all you heard the construction workers and traffic. My daughter has cystic fibrosis. When we stepped in the house the smell was terrible. I have owned a cabin and been in several but this one was terrible. It started to cause my child breathing problems. We had to give her treatments bc she she couldn't breath. The floor would give when you walked and it was not kept up. So after waiting 30 minutes to get code for the cabin on the phone we had to wait more to get it fixed. So they said they would have to send someone over to cabin so we waited hours in our van. Then she gets there and she is the owner who is so rude and disrespectful to us. Then we get one the phone to get money back and they tell us we are screwed out of the money. We told them we couldn't stay bc it would hurt our child health but they dont care. She wouldn't give money back. SO PLEASE DONT USE HOMEAWAY OR TURNKEY. THEY WILL JUST SCREW YOU AND TRY TO SEND YOUR FAMILY TO HOSPITAL IF THEY HAVE ANY LUNG ISSUES.

Rented this place for a the first family vacation in 3 yrs. Place was dirty, soft fabrics had a foul odor, couches full of pet hair and dirt. Most of the dishes in the pantry were dirty with dry food stuck in them. We cleaned the apparent for hours and at night everyone had to sqeeze in to one bed becaise the sofa-bed had some serious smell issues. The bottom of the oven had burned chunks of food stuck on it so was either clean the oven or don't use it... after all the other cleaning decided not to bother.

I have pictures and attached with my review. Their answers was for me to work it out with the owner.

The owner obviously does not care or wouldn't be charging a cleaning fee with out actually cleaning the place. When we rented the property we had to either put a $5,000 deposit or but renters insurance. Either way the owned was covered. But there is no help for the traveler if something goes wrong.

Will never rent from homeaway.com again!

This is a update on my previous Home away review. At this point, I would lower my review to a 0 if possible. As stated previously, our vacation never happened due to double booking. They refuse refund any of the rental money... said the homeowner must do the refund. When I call Homeaway I am put on hold, talk to numerous people and then the call always ends in a disconnect while being transferred. The homeowner has supposedly issued a less that 1/2 partial refund. Which will take 5 to 7 business days to confirm. The homeowner will not answer any calls, or return emails... and Home away is no help. WILL NEVER, EVER USE HOME AWAY TO BOOK A TRIP!

I don't know where to even begin! HomeAway is a terrible company! They are very CORRUPT!

We rented a home in Seneca Falls NY and when we arrived we found the place absolutely disgusting - it was incredibly dirty, smelled terrible, there were walls with unfinished drywall, rips in the furniture and there were holes in the wall and ceiling and holes in the wall next to three electric outlets.
We called the owner and HomeAway immediately and were told we could cancel our reservation and be refunded. As soon as I cancelled the reservation I received an email from the owner that I would not get my money back, which was just the beginning of my HORRIBLE experience dealing with Home Away.

1. If you cancel a reservation, you will NOT under any circumstances receive your money back.

2. Even though I paid full price for this property and have received no refund, I am not allowed to review the property since I cancelled the reservation. So be careful! There could be properties listed on HomeAway/VRBO that appear to have good reviews, but the property could be so terrible that people cancel their reservation and you would never know!

3. If you have any issues with the property or property owner - good luck! Home Away's customer service is terrible. Three separate calls to their 1-800 # and each time I was on hold for about 30 minutes. They provided terrible advice and ultimately say you have to work with the homeowner and that there is nothing they can do. I've emailed them as well and emails go unanswered.

4. The Book with Confidence Guarantee is one big SCAM. They will NOT reimburse you for anything! Even if the property is grossly misrepresented or UNSAFE they will still not refund you.

5. They will let anyone list a home on their site. No background checks are performed on their property owners. They will allow property owners to continue listing their properties even if they have had complaints.

Homeaway only allows reviews of their properties if the OWNER invites you. During our 2 month European vacation we rented several apartments through homeaway and had bad experiences at two. Of course the owners in both cases did not invite us to leave a review (we had no hot water in one and the other was grossly misrepresented in their ad). I contacted homeaway and they just kept repeating that I had to wait for an invite from the owners which of course never came. I also found out later that owners get to review and have the right to refuse to have listed any reviews they don't like, so even if they invite you do leave a review, they can just refuse to have it included in their listing if they don't like it. Clearly homeaway is 100% for the owner with little regard for the renter. I will never use their service again. TripAdvisor and booking.com do allow independent reviews and I urge you to use them instead.

Homeaway is a serious joke folks. I'm a business owner and I have over 20 properties in over 6 countries. I've tried many times renting on their website and even if you make an application, they won't ever notice you if you are accepted or not. Obviously I was doing something wrong in my application, but apparently they do not care about their hosts at all because after spending HOURS, making over 3 different profil on their website, I never got accepted for a single of my properties.

If you're looking for a rental website, get something else than homeaway

Matt :)

I rented a house in Berlin MD, paid for, confirmed and money out of my CC. Next day the owner (Louisa) texted me and ask me to switch my dates because she got someone wanted the house longer than me. So she canceled my confirmed reservation to rent to someone else because of money, no regards to customers feelings. Called HomeAway and they said nothing they could do because she canceled my reservation within 24 hours, no customer protection. So BEWARE...

There were so many things wrong with this house that it was almost comical.
1. The stove didnt work; they sent a repairman unqualified to work on gas stove, so he couldnt do anything; preventing me from baking all of our traditional July 4th dishes
2. Pool pump was broken and was replaced 24 hours after check-in
3. Was told repeatedly that could not check in before 3:00 pm; yet when we arrived at 3:30, the cleaning crew was still in the house cleaning for another 30 minutes
4. There was debris (cigarette butts, etc.) by the pool area and lots of leaves; Owners informed me that landscaper only comes on Thursdays (just too bad for us that we were in house Sunday Thursday, so we just lost out on a clean yard).
5. Nasty fry pans
6. The TV in one of the bedrooms didnt work
7. One of the showers didnt work
8. One of the bedroom closet sliding doors fell off when opened
9. One of the bathroom door lock gets stuck so hard that people repeatedly got locked in, making that lock unusable
10. Master bedroom door gets stuck whenever closed completely
11. Smoke detector outside master bedroom chirped entire time because needed battery change
12. There was a hole in the wall of the pool room
13. A towel bar was broken off the wall of another bathroom

I tried to book a property on homeaway.co.uk, only to discover their payment system did not properly work. After a last minute arrangement (of which customer support were utterly useless), I arrived at the property to discover that during the day, it was incredibly noisy and major problems.

I wanted to write a review on the property such the property owner would either experience a drop in customers, OR, that they would go on to fix the issues and remedy the experience so others did not have to suffer the noise I had experienced.

The noise consisted of construction works that lasted for hours (from 9am to as late as 7pm), door slams that could be heard from three floors up, a collection of cooing pigeons in a roof nook (who would start cooing at 7am onwards and despite efforts to scare them off, they would return), and finally... the property owner herself who, I kid you not, *stood outside my door talking loudly on a bluetooth device - to which I opened the door on her and caught her by surprise (after this, she stopped hanging outside my door).

She would talk loudly, for hours on end. It could be heard from several rooms away. I have never in my life encountered anyone who spoke so loudly. She was not old. She was not deaf. She was just inconsiderate.

I visited the HomeAway site for reviewing a property, to which the blurb falsely states that if I book a property, I will be given a 'review link' to submit a review on. Nope: no such link. It also states that, if I don't receive a review link, the property owner can 'CHOOSE' to give me the opportunity to leave a review. The bias selection process in the reviews is staggering.

Do not fund these fraudulent hucksters who give the false appearance of an 'honest' review process, when in-actual fact they cherry pick reviews.

The best apartment we have stayed in Perfect setting for all amenities eg ferries bus train enabling you to go to Capri Pompeii etc. The sea front is just a couple of minutes away. Salerno is a lovely place to go. The apartment itself was spotless clean and comfortable Pasquale & Guisy the owners were very helpful and kind nothing was too much trouble for them to make your stay a real treat. Every day there was plenty of fresh fruit and a variety of breakfast choices and homemade cake! Highly Recommended!

I have been a host for over 5 years. I now have multiple properties & while Airbnb could make some improvements, they are light years ahead of Homeaway & VRBO. As an experienced host I feel that how they run their business & their customer service is the bottom of the barrel. Even their supervisors can't answer simple questions, are rude & poorly trained. As a host, this company just isn't worth your time. It's way more stress & problems than its worth.