HomeAway

They charge the consumer an extra 5-9% of the total rent minus tax. Yep! So, if you use homeaway.com, vacationrentals.com or VRBO.com (because they are all the same company) you will pay an additional 5-9% fee on top of the rent, the cleaning fee, the home owners fee and any processing fee. So, they are defiantly double dipping. AND! If you pay with your credit card, you pay them at least another 2.9% for using the credit card. Stay away from them and use flipkey.com... Honestly, I think they are threatened by Airbnb.com and Flipkey.com.

It is rather simple Homeaway represents the owners and protects them from their clients (you). They will do little if anything to settle a dispute, they have no policies that protect the users (you) from whatever happens. Their answer is you made an agreement with the owner not them, they wash their hands totally.
HomeAway does not publish any reviews that are deemed negative, only positive reviews are posted.
VRBO is the same company with the same issues, my experiences with Airbnb is about the same, I have decided to go back to hotels where I have the say!

I have had a single bedroom listed on VRBO and HomeAway since May 2011. The sites have been a god send for us. We have been able to keep our home due to the revenue. Our guests have been delightful and many are now lifelong friends. I have used the basic plus featured property option and I have seen more and more rentals over time. I tried Craigs lists and got nothing but weirdos and scammers. I have had questions and sometimes the customer service number has been difficult to find but once I spoke to customer service they have always been helpful.

Do not use this company or Retro Delavan Lake House. I reserved a property 4 months ago and my reservation was quietly cancelled ( no email although BOTH parties claim they e-mailed me a cancellation notice. It is my belief (cannot prove) that they dropped my reservation after realizing it was the weekend of the US open and they could get a much higher price. Very dishonest and Both organizations lack integrity...

Expedia posted that the cabin was $150 per night. Then I find out that Home Away charged my card $300 and a $500 security fee. When I immediately tried to cancel the reservation, their customer service was worse than worthless; a waste of time and no service at all! Although I was able to have my bank remove most of the disputed reservation charges, I still got stuck with the service fees from Home Away. Stay Away from Home Away!

I went through the processing of booking a listing, put in my credit card info for the initial homeaway fee but never received a confirming email. I called the manager number listed, and they said they dont post on Homeaway and that was a fraudulent listing. However, I pulled up my statement and Homeaway had already charged their fee to me. I called Homeaway 3 times to report the fraudulent listing
And they would get the initial info and the listing number and then hangup on me. Then I got emails asking me to review my experience? Something is really wrong there. I have rented thru VRBO for years, at least 20 properties but I am not going to deal with them again. Cheap lesson learned. I did have to cancel my credit card since I had submitted that and I did not know who else obtained it.

This home, at 4270A Poha Road on the North Side of Kauai, was perfect for the 8 of us. It has 4 bedrooms and 4 baths and 2 loft areas with twin beds, sits about 50 yards from a beautiful beach and has a fabulous large deck facing the beach. It is off the beaten path and quite private. We had a wonderful time with the kids and grand kids. The kitchen was great with everything you need and 2 large kitchen tables provide plenty of eating area. The owners were very accommodating to a few special requests we had. While this is a little older property, it has been well maintained and cared for. We plan on going back in the future.

HomeAway's business model is entirely based on fear. They charge the guests 4-10% for the priveledge of getting between them and the host. They pretend to be providing protection for the guest but they are actually just neutral- they can not legally advocate against the hosts because they have a fiduciary obligation to the host. The host is paying them more than you are. Most established vacation rentals exist on other sites and can be found. If you have the 10% to blow on this corporate greed fest, go for it, otherwise do it old school. Book your lodging on your own. Find them. It's Easy. Just google the area you want to go and get past all the 3rd party companies. You will find great individual owners and their own web sites and you can talk to them. It's what this entire industry was built upon until these massive corporations interposed themselves. Stop fearing your fellow humans, fear this company.

Umm. So I cancelled the stay because check in was 7:30 pm in New York when I landed at 7:00 am that day. I was notified after I booked and once I would be charged 50% of the stay. I ended up cancelling and when calling Homeaway and Alexandar he told me that once you cancel you cancel your stay sorry there is nothing I can do- due to bad experience before:

Alexander sent a message7 minutes ago
"Hi I'm sorry but once you cancel that's it. I had many issues in the past so I can't do anything else."

Book at your own risk, but Homeaway cannot do anything for you either.

They suck now. Used to be a great website. Used homeaway to book a vacation rental and the fees they charge now are excessive. Also, they don't show you the full booking cost until after you select the property to book it. Then you get to see $150 booking fee, $300 cleaning fee, etc. They added like $500 to the cost of my rental. This company has definitely gone shady. Do not recommend booking through home away. They should rename their website to walletaway.com.

We recently had to cancel a reservation with homeaway and in doing so found out that apparently the property manager can pick and choose who's policy they want to go by regarding refunds. The rental agreement from the property owner stated that if canceled more than 30 days out we would receive 96% of our deposite back. However, homeaway states that if you cancel at 60 days or less, you only get 50% of your deposite refunded. We canceled 46 days out, so who's policy do you think the property manager choose to use? Yes, we're only getting 50% of our deposite back. You would think that between the two parties there would have to be a set, exact policy and not a "let the customer guess who's policy they will have to go by" scam. Deleted the app and learned a lesson about homeaway the hard way!

I booked a property 7 months ago. Two weeks just before the arrival date, the owner informed me to pay an extra amount 11% to cover the tax upon the arrival. I am upset, and the owner cancelled the booking without discussion with me. And I need to find another place to replace it in such a short time especially in peak season. So, no protection for the booking, and it is the first time and the last time I use HomeAway to book a property.

Just got the e-mail tonight about the service fee HomeAway starting charging last month! That is absolutely crazy and doesn't seem legal that you start charging a fee without proper notification. HomeAway says it's for marketing which is a lie to try to justify their greed. Even if. 0001% ends up going to marketing I think we need to say NO out of principle for the way HomeAway handled notifying their loyal homeowners and OUR guests! I recommend dealing directly with your guests even though now I loath paying the annual fee to HomeAway - I can't wait for another company to squash HomeAway! I had a guest request to book and would have paid the "greed" fee. I couldn't get a hold of them right away so I had to accept but I cancelled it right away once I spoke with the guest and the deposit AND the "greed" fee was refunded too. Hope this helps. Thanks to everyone for posting helpful information too!