HomeAwayReviews 1,751

In September 2017 I booked a holiday for myself and my family with www.homeaway.co.uk.

The booking was for Aug 13 2018 until Aug 19 2018.

On the 2 March 2018, 6 months after the booking was made, the property owner asked for a further 1,198 Euros. This was over 500% of what we originally paid. Shocked by this request, I contacted homeaway.co.uk for help. The person I spoke with said that the owner of the property could not raise the price, and must honour the advertised price. Your person said that your company would speak with the property owner and I would not have to worry.

On the 12th March 2018, I received an email from the property owner stating that 202 Euros had been refunded and my holiday was now cancelled.

I then had to tell my family that their holiday was cancelled.

I was very very disappointed that homeaway.co.uk did not tell me that property owner was going to cancel my holiday with my family.

When I book my holiday with homeaway.co.uk, I also booked Ferry Ticket to get myself and my family to France.

I contacted Brittany Ferries to see if I could get a refund, however I received a cancellation fee of £80. I wanted the cancellation fee to be cancelled. Homeaway.co.uk would not refund me nor would the property owner.

Not only have I lost my summer holiday, I have also lost £80.

DO NOT USE homeaway.co.uk... you are not covered if things go wrong.

Click bait who do then try to offer a different crap apartment when you apply.

I submitted an application to rent an apartment that was shown on VRBO and managed through travelmob who is owned by HomeAway. They said they take 24 hours to review and get back to you. They came back that the price had gone up and offered a different apartment for more that it was showing on their sites. Essentially click bait to get you in then switch. The VBRO website doesnt let you post a review until after you have stay in the apartment and strangely enough there is zero reviews. The link to the scam apartment is here - https://www.travelmob.com/p*******

I've now contacted HomeAway customer service three times. Every single time has been a painful experience. It is almost as if their agents speak english as a second language. On the last call, they transferred me to a "higher level" and the person I spoke with then was far more competent. It was an actual conversation between two people that achieved the goal of my call in a straightforward way - the OPPOSITE of what occurred with the other three calls!

Just don't do it. For over a week now I, my cleaning and maintenance staff are unable to access our owner dashboard to manage bookings and see which renters are coming and going. Stayz switched me over to Homeaway and the technical issue has not been fixed at all. Support for owners doesn't pick up at all so you have to call support for guests and a week ago I was told it was escalated and I would get a call back. So far, NOTHING!

I have used Homeaway since 2009 and it used to be a pleasure and an easy site to use. It is just awful, first of all they have completely taken over control of our properties from the owner. We can no longer speak to OUR potential tenant to build a rapport and get a feel of who they are before booking with us, and the extra fee they are charging them is just WRONG and GREEDY. They also took away how we can post our rates by seasons, midweek and weekly; now we have to go in and change each mid week rate, weekend and holiday individually, which is real time consuming. In any event will not be renewing they took a good site and ruined it!

We have listed our properties on HomeAway, VRBO and their sister sites for years. We had had good success until shortly before they were sold to Expedia. In the run up to the sale, fee structures were changed to effectively inflate the look of earnings by imposing fees on renters when the owners had already paid for annual subscriptions. Then they changed how listings were ranked. Then they started listing properties in locations no where near what a guest is looking for. If there were only one or two properties available, I could understand, but in our market there are over 4,500 listings in the immediate market and even at high season there is still a good selection. Then they took away the ability to communicate between owners and renters until after a guest has made a booking. Many guests in our market, (lots of older snowbirds) like to speak with someone before committing a few thousand dollars for their month+ vacation. Now they are forcing a nightly pricing editor that simply doesn't work for vacation rentals that often can only rent once per month.

Customer service call representatives have poor training and can't resolve problems. They claim no supervisors are available and say some will contact you. A few days will pass, and you might get an template email that doesn't address the issue. If you keep pressing someone will return a call, leave a voicemail saying the case has been closed, without resolving the problem.

I could go on and on about the failures of this company. Expedia fails to appreciate that this is not a nightly, rental market like hotels. Their ads promote vacation home rentals as an alternative to hotels but then turns around and tries to treat them as such.

I have an investment banking background. I understand what is going on and the risks of trying to grow a company. If you are an investor, do some serious due diligence before committing. If you are contemplating listing, expect to be forced to use platforms that don't work for most vacation rentals and certainly don't expect any help from customer service. If you are a renter, do yourself a favor, search the headline for the property you like and book directly with the owner like you used to be able to do, you'll save hundreds.

It's under new ownership and it's a mess. If i look under my town, homes not even close to the area come up. What a mess it would be to book a house miles away. They are playing the financial best for them game and not what is best for the traveler. They hide listings that aren't making them as much money and put others at the top of the list. It's such a mixed up mess now. It's like dealing with the Mafia. I can't believe this could be happening. They won't let the traveler contact the owner until after you have paid. HomeAway staff is not able to answer questions about the location of the property or what is in the house. The owner is the best person to talk with. I am going to book direct by finding the owner. It is no longer Vacation Rental by Owner anymore. It is now rental by Expedia.

VRBO and HomeAway used to be the go-to site for renting a vacation rental, but I guess all great things must come to an end and it happened when Expedia bought them out and completely changed everything about this company. We try to search four properties that we know are there and they won't show up, they charge an excessive 12 to 15% extra on top of the owners rates, and now they've hidden all phone numbers and contact information until you input your credit card number and pay for the booking. Completely ridiculous. I've been having good luck doing a Google search for the property name and location and find that a whole bunch of owners also feel this way and have set up individual websites to take direct bookings. This is such a great solution, to a problem that really doesn't need to exist except for corporate greed. One other way we've been finding Great Rentals is to Google vacation rental and then the name of the area island or town you're looking for. You'll have to scroll past the first two three pages to get to the individual owners that have websites, but saving the fees makes it worth the trouble!

This monopoly have taken the owner out of vacation rentals by OWNER. They charge our guests exorbitant fees. Hide all contact information of the owners and renters until the guest pays a deposit. They are holding our houses and businesses hostage at the expense of our guests who are just looking for homes to rent, where they can talk to the owner and get what they are paying for. Corporate greed hurting people who save for s year to take their precious families on a vacation. Book direct with owners. Stop this insanity

It has taken me hours to get the refund for a house that I cancelled. I cancelled two days after booking with 5 months notice so I was due the full refund. The owner said that they had cancelled it with Home Away. Now I am still calling Home Away, over a month later, to get their service charge reversed. I will get all of the money back, but without my persistence this would not have happened. I wonder if they scam people and keep their money. This is a horrible business model.

I recently booked in Spain. What I didn't like was the fact they deducted the cost of the booking from my credit card at the time I booked and NOT when I actually arrived at the accommodation.
They did this with the security deposit also which is NOT acceptable. I got stitched up by my credit card for a big fee when they took the deposit and also for when they put it back. I also had to ask the accommodation owner to chase my deposit as they can take a week to pay it back!
So I lost money on the currency transaction and paid fees I didn't need to amounting to £40.00. I believe my deposit is exposed whilst they have and the reason they take both payments fast is to cash roll their business. Imagine the deposits they hold at any one time and if something happened to the company they would never be repaid!

HomeAway used to be a great site until Expedia bought them. They now treat my HOME like a hotel room, which it is not. I have a 4 Bedroom/3 Bath with private pool and spa. I use to be able to communicate with guests prior to booking to make sure on both sides that our home is a good fit. That is no longer the case. My listing has been deactivated many times because I list my Facebook page in my listing. My Facebook page lists things that are going on at Walt Disney World, Universal and Sea World. I also booked a guests, sent and email with information on the house, which included my phone number in case guests needed to reach me, remember guest booked, and I was deactivated.
I call HomeAway to address issues, they DO NOT CARE, they are just after their service fee from the guest (which covers I dont know what) and my subscription $.
I am so disappointed, as this could be a good relationship with the site and homeowner if they would just listen to us and work with us.
These are our HOMES, we are not hotel rooms. Apples and oranges!