HomeAwayReviews 1,751

I reserved a townhouse in the Florida Keys just before hurricane Irma was forecast to hit the keys. Big mistake! The HomeAway policy offers a full refund if you cancel with 60 days notice and a 50% refund if canceled with 30 days notice. I gave a 51 day notice due to the approaching hurricane. HomeAway notified the owner to respond to the request in 24 hours and after 3 weeks there was no response. A call to HomeAway did force the owner to call me and verbally agree to return the full deposit. However yesterday (9/26) I was notified the return would be $150 (40%) of the $367 deposit.

Hardest company to deal with! I reserved a cabin and within an hour had to cancel due to my travel companion being in a car accident. Tried to call several times, only got voicemail and never got a return call. Through email I was told that all of my money would be returned except $40. Even when I forwarded that email to them, they claimed the employee that said that was wrong and I would only be receiving half of my money. No compassion!

Renters, please forgive us non professional homeowners. Homeaway is making us look bad. It is Homeaway's responsibility to process payments and recognize duplicate payments, it is not in the power of the owner to do so, payments are handled by Homeaway et al. I have lost two $4500+ reservations due to the lack of competency in this area, they blamed me. If you are not flued to your phone this is what happens. They should never process a dup-licate payment ever. Period. Who would charge 2x as much as the quote. Should be automatic. None of the problems I have with them has ever been successfully resolved. This all is post expedia bought all websites. Going to a non expedia website. Been a nightmare. Pam orisek Dolphinwatch#*******

Home Away (aka VRBO) constantly changes their booking practices without any communication ahead of time. Aside from the change over a year ago to charge a fee to renters, the most recent changes were only detected when processing bookings and inquiries. I called Homeaway on both accounts only to be told that they recently implemented a change. These are not trivial changes.

One of the changes is that Home Away is now withholding the renters security deposit. If you think about the number of bookings, the number of rental properties, and in some cases the amount of the security deposit, this probably amounts to millions of dollars that Home Away is depositing into their account weekly and retaining for anywhere from 1 to 12 months. I'm pretty sure this is an illegal practice since the deposit is an optional charge controlled by the home owner.

The other change is just an annoyance. We used to have the option to view the phone number of the potential renter BEFORE you confirm the booking. Sometimes, as a home owner, you need to call the person on their inquiry to address questions, which is much easier than through an email response. You can NO LONGER view the phone number until the person has booked.

Home Away has a rating on several review sites with a majority of 1s and critical comments. Contacting Home Away only gets you to a call center to file a complaint, and I have never received a response.

We called to inquire about a property listed. This was a last minute booking and were told the owner had 24 hours to respond which didn't work for us. So we told them not to put the booking through, that we needed to look at other options as we are leaving in hours. Within 10 minutes we received a CONFIRMATION booking notice. So we called back to have them stop it and were met with unhelpful customer service who informed us it was our responsibility to contact the owner to cancel. WHAAAAAAT? We were then hung up on. When we called back and got another agent she was just as unhelpful so I asked to speak to a manager. She said there were no managers available and when I repeated myself that I wished to speak to a manager PLEASE she argued again saying no manager was available. This went on for several minutes and then I was still told no manager was available but I could speak with a supervisor. I'm beating my head against a wall with these folks. STAY AWAY. Don't book with HomeAway!

Here is why I am leaving:
* No longer possible to contact customers before they pay and thereby offer a better and more personal service, adjusted to the specific requirements of the customer.
*Exorbitant 12 %increase for so called service fee when no service is provided
*All kinds of newspeak/jargon to justify extra rules and charges
*Used to be called owner s direct, no longer direct...
*From what I read on the internet I am part of a groundswell of resentment at such greed on the part of this company.
I will not be renewing my subscription, along with many others.

USED TO BE A GREAT SITE. DESTROYED BY LARGE CORPORATION FORCING POLICIES AND POOR SERVICE. THEY INSIST ON OVERCHARGING RENTERS AND HOME OWNERS. A DISASTER. AWFUL SERVICE TO OWNERS AND RENTERS.

WHAT USE TO BE A GREAT SITE FOR RENTAL HOMES MANAGED BY OWNERS HAS BEEN DESTROYED BY FORCED POLICIES AND POOR SERVICE. AFTER BEING WITH THEM FROM WHEN VRBO.COM STARTED I WILL LEAVE THIS SITE BECAUSE OF THE HORRIBLE SERVICE AND FORCED PAYMENTS. THEY WANT TO KEEP RENTERS MONEY UNTIL A DAY BEFORE THEY ARRIVE. MANY RENTERS PAY 6 MONTHS TO A YEAR AHEAD OF TIME. THEY TURN YOUR SITE OFF WITHOUT WARNING FOR WHAT THEY VIEW AS "POTENTIAL DISALLOWED VERBIAGE" AND IN MANY CASES ITS BEEN THEIR ERROR OR NOT EVEN DISALLOWED VERBIAGE. NO EXCUSES AND NO MONETARY RELIEF FOR TAKING YOUR PROPERTY OFF LINE. DISASTER SITE. YOU ARE BETTER OFF PAYING A MANAGEMENT COMPANY OR ADVERTISING YOURSELF.

I am so distraught, we opened our home and successfully rented 4 different occasions and recieved 5 stars from each. Currently today we checked in another renter only to find they deactivated our accout (owing us thousands of dollars). They haven't released any if our renters deposits (making us look bad) and now have told us we must collect the money ourselves... FROM PEOPLE that are long gone already rented, reviewed and paid HA?

Our state was just hit by a devastating hurricane and the current renter is an evacuee and for that I cant kick tgem out as HA suggest I do. I need serious help finding someone that can help me straighten this mess out... We trusted thus company, remodeled our home, moved into an apt in order to allow maximum availability, been an awesome host and now because of this robbery we are in danger of loosing our home because we are NOW not able to pay our bills because we are out approximately $3k in revenue.

Stay far away from this site, it's just not worth it. I requested to book a place and received an email later stating this place was not available. I then booked another place on Airbnb only to find homeaway charged my card. I have spent hours trying to get my money returned and am currently on the phone with them on hold. Even on the homeaway site it doesn't show that I have a reservation. It's looking like I'll never get my money back. This site sucks. I've never had any problem with airbnb, I should've stuck with them.

My family, from across the USA, booked a rental property through homeaway.co-Villa-Formosa, Orlando Fl. First, there were hidden fees that I had no idea I was charged until I looked at my paypal account. Second, the place that we stayed in had black mold, the oven did not work, and water poured into the home every time it rained. The amenities listed did not work, and most of the bikes were dangerous and broken. When we tried to post a review online, we were told that the link had expired and that we could not do so. When I read there own policy to them which clearly stated that we had a full year to submit our review, they refused to resend the link and told us there was nothing we could do. The owner of the property was a scam artist who was clearly allowed to be by homeaway.com. Buyer BEWARE!

We joined Owners Direct in 2004 with our holiday villa in the Algarve, Portugal. HomeAway took them over, increased the fees owners paid however still operated a good service. We paid the top tier of the subscription offers and obtained most of our rentals from HomeAway.
Now that Expedia have bought HoweAway the whole formula has changed. Now we pay a much reduced subscription but our renters are saddled with a very significant commission and we get charged a 3% fee as well.
I don't want our guests to have to pay any more than the rental advertised. Once they have enquired I don't like them being saddled with the rental commission on top and I resent not being able to contact them direct until HomeAway say I can. How dare they stop me chatting to potential guests by direct email or telephone. They are my guests not theirs.
I don't mind paying them a hefty sub and then being left to deal in my own personal and friendly way with potential clients but I really hate the new Expedia driven money grabbing scheme they have imposed on us holiday home owners.