HomeAwayReviews 1,751

BEWARE! Crappy experience. Lots of fees. Rental home was so dusty I sneezed the whole time and itchy eyes. We discovered bedbug bites after we got home (i researched it, bites don't appear until a few days later)! Called HomeAway. They did nothing but say we should contact the homeowner. Homeaway took no responsiblity - we called them first out of a sense of doing what's right: letting them know so they didn't let others rent the place! Owner called me a liar and said, 'FU' to me (but said the full two words) and hung up on me. Horrible. Pluse, Homeaway charges lots of extra fees, as do the homeowners. Worst part, we paid a $95 linen fee for sheets with bedbugs.

I rented a villa in Dakar, the pictures looked gorgeous, I paid around 700$ for 5 nights, I arrived their I found that the property was significantly misrepresented; construction was going on in the house, I found that there is no AC in a 90 degree day, no wifi, no hot water, no towels, mosquitos all over the house, bed bugs, no pressure in the shower water, no cable, no TV (all these things were advertised in the site). I left and went to a hotel, I called HomeAway for a refund, they said they cannot refund because they are just a like a middleman between me and the owner, (their website says the following "The Book with Confidence Guarantee provides travelers with following benefits:
Comprehensive payment protection that protects your full rental payment against listing fraud, phishing, property significantly misrepresented and more"
They wouldn't refund me, they said they will try to contact the owner and try to ask him if he is willing to refund me, and it's up to the owner to decide. Even though the charge on my card was made by home-away. Based on this experience I'm going to stay away from HomeAway.

Booked an apartment in Amsterdam in good faith, paid upfront, etc. Reached out to the apartment owner on the day of arrival as I had not heard anything. Next thing I get is a cancellation of my booking... right before my flight leaves!

Called Home Away who said they cannot do anything about the cancellation and offered to find me a hotel room... which by then, most places were already booked. I booked an apartment because that is what I wanted, not a hotel.

In the end, I ended up paying almost £800 extra to find an available apartment for the weekend. It was too big, but all that was available. Home Away offered nothing in terms of compensation.

They would not even allow me to review the apartment I had booked in order to warn future users of what can happen to them!

The add insult to everything, the 'refunded' my fees they collected... except for £4.98 for some odd reason.

Best to avoid this company and go with something more reliable!

We rented a property at 7041 east Presidio, Scottsdale AZ (Presidio) from Homeaway subsidiary VRBO from October 6-8. When the owner/rental manager (rentalguest.com) refused to return our security deposit we asked Homeaway to get involved. They sent me a form letter basically saying it was their policy to let owners and renters work out their difference. When I told them the owner/remtal manager will not return my calls or emails, Homeaway also stopped responding. Forget about their deposit safety program. It's a bogus lie.

I Booked a cabin in Flagstaff for new years 2017, they charged my credit card on September the 5th and now on November 25 they cancel me supposely because my bank said it was a potential faud. This is totally a lie, i talked to my bank and they say they didnt cancel it and how come homeaway says that after 2.5 months after.
Of course the property was relased and now its shown for 3 times more of the price i paid for those dates. No help at all with home away as they are bleaming my bank.

They are the worst, please do not use them. I booked a location and tried to cancel right away but they wouldn't cancel anything. They charges me a $80 fee right away and $59 fee for damages but it's been taking two weeks for me to get my money back. They want me to call the property manager and ask to send HomeAway a confirmation cancellation, WTF, i got charged $80.00 plus i still have to do their job. I would never recommend businesses or homeowners to use HOMEAWAY or anyone who want's to rent a property. And when you call to speak with someone good luck in trying to understand them. They need people who can speak good English.

I, recently, booked a Homeaway guest house in Mar Vista, CA. According to the presentation of this particular place, people gave it 4 1/4 stars. I attempted to access the actual reviews, but was unable to do so until I paid in full, which I did. It was advertised as a guest house with a bedroom, bathroom, shower, etc. After payment I read the past reviews, which referred to the shower as outdoors. I was shocked, to say the least. I, also, got a list of rules and regulations, which negated some of the reviews ie: a great library of books (regulations said they were not to be touched), fruit left in the refrigerator ( no, a small bottle of water, can of something and a bottle of some off-brand soda) with the regulations that one could not eat anything beyond the small kitchen area. The worst thing for me was, that one could not bring friends or family into the rental area and if the renter wanted to meet someone, they should do so in some place away from the rental. Okay, I didn't say, in the beginning that I'm an 82 year old grandmother. I was obligated to give a profile before I was accepted. Frankly, knowing the renter was a grandmother, I would have assumed she was a senior person and I would not have accepted the reservation due to the outdoor shower, alone. The four days I spent there, the weather in Los Angeles was a bit cold and I only took one shower outside, using my friends' showers for the other days. Also, I said, in my profile, I was in Los Angeles to visit friends as well as two of my grandchildren. I had planned to have my granddaughter stay with me for one or two nights, but due to the regulations, that was not possible. I feel this rental was misrepresented. I would have liked to have my grandchildren, who are adults, come and sit outside with me in the lovely patio. In my payment there was a cleaning charge, and insurance. To be honest, the house was not that clean, the bathroom had ants (which I got rid of) and the base of the toilet was filthy. Oh, the bed was a pull out sofa. I would never recommend this rental or Homeaway. I feel if you're paying for something you should know, in detail, what you're getting.

I would have give homeaway a lower rating bt it wouldnt let me. We saved up for a year to take a vacation in Puerto Rico. After the hurricanes, we reached out to Homeaway to assist with an owner that was not returning our calls. They called the owner and the owner said the property was fine. The owner continued to give us the run around and we continued to request assistance from Homeaway. After 60 days, it was to late to challenge the transaction. The owner sent us an email informing us that the property would have water in a couple weeks and power in January. (Two wks from our departure date) We lost $1283 to the property owner. Homeaway was worthless in, and during the process. We will not use them again!

I rented a house in St John for Oct. The hurricane hit and the reservation was cancelled. The owner gave us back our deposit but Home Away has yet to credit my account. The owner has gone back and forth with this company and cannot understand why account has not been credited. This happened around Oct 15 and here it is a month later and NOTHING HAS HAPPENED TO CREDIT MY ACCOUNT. I have gotten American Express involved and they have not had any luck yet as well. I have talked to several people at this company y who HAVE NOT BEEN SNY HELP!

Do not use this company! The website says that the security deposit would be refunded within 7-14 business days which is standard and I understand why there would be a delay. However, in my case I checked out of the property on 10/22 and I had not received my refund within that time frame. On 11/7 (over two weeks after I checked out) the home owner contacted me with questions about things that were supposedly left on when we left. I told them we did not leave anything on and I thought it was resolved, but when I still had not received my deposit back as of 11/13 I contacted HomeAway and they said I wouldn't receive my deposit back until 12/3. I contacted customer service twice and the second time I was on the phone for over 25 minutes and was transferred 3 times and each person said the next person would be able to resolve the issue until I got to the last person who said that the refund is dependent on when the home owner decides to initiate the refund and there is nothing they can do now which is completely in contradiction to the terms on their website. Don't fall for their deceptive and shady business practices like I did.

There not worth 1 star but there wasnt a minus! Decided on a late break for my wife and I. Looked on homeaway and found one we liked sent of request to book complete with card details, rather surprised to be told that the owner had 24 hours to reply, we were travelling in 4 days. 23 hours later received a email stating that the apartment was not available (still advertised as available) so we booked another apartment sent of the details and our card details once more and once again were told that the owner had 24 hours to reply. 10am monday morning we received an email wherein the owner said his neighbour's flat had been put out of action and the neighbour wanted to use their apartment for the people who were in the broken one so we couldn't have it. OK these things happen but the owner said he learnt of this at 8am Sunday morning, so it took him 26 hours to inform us that we couldnt have the apartment and we were flying the next day. I wouldnt trust homesaway to organise anything. There staff have trouble speaking the language and couldnt care less attitude, for instance asking me if I had emailed the owner when i wanted to enquire about anything, are they stupid it could take 24 hours to get a response.

Looking to book a beautiful venue for my wedding and my payment kept getting declined! Thinking it was just a security issue through my bank, I called them and they said everything was fine on their end. I just used a different card but I still had the same issue! Upon calling their customer service rather than putting in my information like my name, number, and email address in case we got disconnected. Every time I was transferred to somebody new (which was every 15 minutes) I had to repeat it a number of times because they could barely speak English! I stayed on the phone with them for nearly 2 hours, got hung up on once, yelled at, and by the end of this fiasco was told "my request could not be processed and there was nothing further they could do." I am hoping I can just place my reservation through the owners directly because reading some of these terrible reviews I would hate knowing they got 20% of my deposit regardless after how I was treated!

I couldn't agree more with the previous NEGATIVE REVIEWS! Not only are they greedy but they lack decent customer service... wonder how they would feel if A company to whom they had paid good money, consistently kept them waiting on hold for up to 30 minutes just to finally tell them "this line is no longer available due to customer call volume!" Their representatives are lacking in knowledge about the system and often can't locate the customer's information! However, in case you don't believe it is all about greed, then try calling their number for the people who want to book a reservation. It's amazing how fast they answer that call, no waiting period, no hold time! With so many more vacation rental companies now in the market, that offer 100 times better customer service at half the price... here's betting they won't be around for very much longer!

I have rented my home through this company for 7 years. A year ago the problems started (read the reviews). It got worse and worse. As an attempt to maintain a venue for attracting renters, I succumbed to their demands, but it keeps getting WORSE! I don't think they actually WANT the homeowners business. I don't have a theory for their reasoning?!? I have finally dropped them, but I have been monitoring, and for my small rental area, the number of homes available has dropped from 245 to 203 in just three months. So apparently other homeowners are as frustrated as I am. For Cape Cod and the islands, visit WENEEDAVACATION! They are awesome. NO BS!

I am a home owner and i am upset with homeaway
A guest put in a wuestion and a request, I coversated with the guest on his issues meanwhile i did not accept his request and the homeaway just hid me from the website. I was not able to communicate with the guest and visa versa. I lost my rent By fortune my guest of next week conacted me to ask me what happened. After consulting homeaway they explained that if we do not accept within 24 hours we are hidden from the website... but also for current homeaway guest. Hoe confusing is that! I will add this in appropriatebehavior of homeaway in my contract but i find it unacceptable they change the policy without informing us.

Rented from this company a few months ago. Went to Montreal and rented a property through luxmontreal, and a owner name Lawrence. Bad experience overall, and wasn't allowed to post a review without it being edited numerous times. Owner of the property was allowed to write a detailed response which was full of lies. Owner ended up taking my security deposit based on false accusations. Attempted to contact home away and gave no valid explanation for the issue. I would stay away from this company as well as luxmontreal the property ID is *******. Also if you do stay at this place, and the owner tells you that you can leave, and just make sure the door is locked, DO NOT TRUST HIM, wait for him to come to inspect the place before leaving.