HomeAway

Do not use this site to book short term rentals! Their 90 day strict cancelation policy is code for screw you. My wife and I were on our way to Arizona when we suffered a car problem that prompted us to turn back. Despite booking the rental ONE DAY prior, their strict cancelation policy was cited when saying they would not refund me a dime, not even for cleaning fees when we were clearly not going to use the property. The 90 day strict cancelation policy is not that evident when booking a property and trying to find the customer service phone number for HomeAway is nearly impossible. Stay away, these guys are crooks!

I was charge a whopping $500 for a $1500 a month rental. Also, my host was charged an equally outrageous amount.
The really awful part is that they will not disclose the % that they charge the guest. The use an "algorithm" and only charge it just before you finalize. At that point, you have checked the place have a comfort level with it, have gone to a lot of trouble and then are placed in the awkward position of having to start your search over again. So of course most people pay it, out of having no choice. Its very underhanded and unethical of this company to do this. Also, on a long term rental, they insist on charging it all up front rather than monthly. Also very unethical.

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 :)

If I could give them zero stars I would. The customer service is basically worthless. I have had multiple problems with guests writing reviews and they don't get published. My guests are getting very upset because they often submit 2 or 3 times and weeks later the review still is not posted. Reviews used to be posted in 2-4 days. Now I have had reviews 'sit in the pile' to be pushed through for 2+ weeks. When you call they basically do very little and say they will 'try ' to get the review posted but it still takes several days. Although they are usually pleasant, I am getting tired of having to call repeatedly just to get a review posted.

And if you want to talk to a supervisor, forget it. They tell you that they will 'start a case' for you but it is often days before a supervisor calls you back. I have never dealt w/ a company where a super is not on staff during regular work hours to assist w/ escalated matters.

Dear world! HomeAway has just implemented a new 4-10% fee on ALL rental transactions.

The roll out of this new fee was done very discretely and it was only when customers and owners both, started seeing this fee pop up around February 20th 2016, that the outcry began.

What's infuriating is that so many of us have paid a lot of money ($1500 myself), to use their product for a year. Plus we pay 2.9% in transaction costs.

So mid annual subscription, HomeAway/VRBO started charging a NEW fee. To me, that's just unethical and poor business.

My hope is that owners and renters begin using different services to rent a vacation spot.

VRBO/HomeAway customers who have paid these $1000's of dollars for their subscription are now having to wait an HOUR on hold for a rep to answer.

Again, I strongly urge users to look elsewhere when renting.

Homeaway/VRBO/Expedia just started acting like Thomas Cook. They take the booking guests money and then if the owner of the property doesn't agree to use their new Payment Processing Company the keep your money. They held back about $10,000.00 of my guests money last month. It feels like Blackmail.
So I had to agree to use them vs Yapstone--who I trusted. Guess what?
The very next day they sent me a Notice that they were going to start withholding taxes from the payments, as well.
But I have already paid all my City and State permit fees and taxes for 2019. It's just another way to blackmail you. If they have your sales and occupancy taxes and you don't do as they say, they'll just keep the money. Guess who has to answer to the IRS--us owners.
WHAT Scammers.

My planned holiday to Morocco had to be cancelled at the last minute when the Moroccan Government closed all its airports to holiday flights because of the coronavirus. I immediately asked HomeAway for a refund (on 20 March) which was acknowledged straightaway. I have recently (@ 20 April) had a refund for the full amount paid out credited to the card on which I paid. Good job in the current difficult circumstances. Grateful thanks to Home Away and the property owner who waived the normal cancellation fee. John H. (Herefordshire, UK)

Be very wary of the reviews of the vacation home you're interested in renting. I rented and have written a review that gave less than 5 stars because the noise level of the location of the rental house was quite high and never mentioned in any of the reviews. It was a disappointment. I submitted a review mentioning the house is located right near a busy small plane take-off and landing approach of a local airport and HomeAway refuses to publish the review saying it is not "substantially" significant. Would you rent a vacation home so you could hear planes take off and land throughout the house? I suspect HomeAway is only interested in publishing the 5 star reviews and nothing less. Makes me not want to rent from this outfit again.

This property manager from Home Away has very poor management skills and should not be renting a vacation house. I had to cancel my weekend stay due to unforeseen circumstances. I understand that It was a week away from the rental date and I would not get a full refund. However Sharon O'Toole failed to update her website reflecting this cancellation. It was a summer month and she could have easily turned over the property, issuing me a refund. She kept the website updated as "unavailable" and just stole my money instead of doing the proper thing. Home Away customer service did not help at all with this situation. They said I am on my own with this issue and it is only between myself and the property owner. If they are managing the name of "Home Away" they need to make sure they have reliable renters who don't scam you. They did not reprimand the property manager AT ALL.

I guess Expedia has figured out how to recover their 3.9 billion they spent on Homeaway by charging this fee. I do like the lower fee for higher rental properties. My properties are at the lower end cost wise, so my customers get to pay 10% additional booking fee. Even the mob wouldn't be this greedy. I am making it a point to tell all my friends not to use Expedia and am hoping another company starts to compete. I see a few hundred homeowners ready to make the move on this site.

We're the ones who are making the big bucks for these guys and they are pretty much hanging us out to dry as if they didn't need us yes i agree i hope that compare another competitor moves in soon i'm afraid i can't recommend home away as they allow the guest to publish all kinds unfair and unkind reviews and they have a tendency to have that kind of guests who give unfair reviews much more than airbnb. This is the second time i've had indian guests from india snack guests in that weren't invited and paid for not paid for and they retaliated when i said something about it by giving me a bad review and homeaway did absolutely nothing about it their suggestion was that i call the police and have them thrown out i didn't have the heart to do that to destroy these peoples vacation although that would have been maybe what i should have done. Hopefully these guys are get their act together because really i'm stuck between a rock and a hard place here