HomeAwayReviews 1,751

What are you thinking? Gauging our guest with a 10% service fee? It's extortion. It violates our privacy and our ability to do business as we have been for 10 years.
HomeAway used to be a customer service oriented company. Now it's all about you guys and increasing your bottom line. Well guess what your greedy and sneaky tactics are costing your once loyal customers bookings and our bottom line is dwindling because of your greed.
Seriously, you add a 10% service fee to ours guests and we have no say in it?
I have been a Platinum subscriber for a while and I signed up as Platinum so I would maintain my position and get 12 months of the featured listing. Not only have I not received either in the last year, you have done nothing to fix it after numerous calls. I have dropped from a number 7 in the search to number 55. My inquiries are off by 70% as are my bookings. I pay over $2000 per year with my two vacation rental properties. And now you want to f... With my future booking by steering my dwindling potential guests by surprising them with your new "service fee". And by the way a fee we weren't even notified about. To the surprise of two of my guests who I have since lost because we did not know about your surprise fees. It makes us look like fools to our guests.
They are fed up and will go elsewhere to do there bookings.
In addition when I called HomeAway to ask about this non-optional fee to my guests, I was threatened by the Customer service agent that if I collected the rentals fees directly from my guests instead of going through HomeAway payments my listing would be put at the bottom of the list. Total extortion.
All of us came to VRBO/HomeAway to utilize it as a venue to run and promote our vacation rental properties. Now you are interfering with my ability to run my business by controlling my business by imposing your greedy fees. And you are trying to control my customers/guests.
I have lost two bookings and needed revenue due to your unprofessional actions business interference!
Class Action Suit... Bring it on!

We have our listing with VRBO which is just another name in the same company as home away. We booked all our customers using credit cards and our own terminal for 10 years, as this is a better way to go rather than checks in the mail. When the book it feature came out we denied using this feature as we saw the potential of these service fees as a real threat in the future. THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED. We experienced a huge decline in our listing position as well as inquiries, but felt our property was nice enough to handle the drop in position. Anyhow so we thought we were ahead of the game until last night, using private browser we searched our property on VRBO to find out that we no longer came up!
Looking into it further we discovered when searching an area for vacation rentals the site AUTOMATICALLY makes a small check mark in the filters page to ONLY view book it now properties in that area to ensure customers only are driven to these listings so that Home Away/ VRBO get their new fee. This is UNBELIEVABLE and UNACCEPTABLE bad business. I will be calling customer complaint departments with the local news stations in my area as well as other agencies in handling complaints with businesses. I think everyone should join in as well as drop the book it feature as they CAN charge for this service if used, so just CHOOSE NOT to use it.

Your money is NOT safe switching hands with this company! I booked a house in September for June 2016, early this month I tried to contact the owner to verify all was good for our trip to Italy... I sent several messages via homeaway, I got zero response! Contacted homeaway to see if they could reach out to the owner. After a week or two of no response or verification that homeaway had actually reached the owner, I sent a message to the owner and to homeaway to cancel the reservation, the refund policy of the owner is 100% if cancelled within 30 days of check in. I was told by homeaway that only the owner can cancel and do the refund, mind you I was able to make my reservation and my payment via their website. I was told they are only a site to book through! To me this is most likely known by people who want to scam or take advantage of a renter, book the house, get money, fall off face of Earth, keep money! Renter is completly screwed! Homeaway has many other companies so beware if it's one of theirs!

This is the second time I am making a review for this company. I had a guest that contacted me, provided some very confidential info which I feel puts the guest at risk so I contacted Homeaway to have the email remove from the communication list in case my account is breach or even to protect the guest from Homeaway staff. But they refused to have the email remove or even archived it, stating that it's impossible to do. Second, I receive a 1 star review in error. My guest revised the review and submitted a second review. I contacted them right away to see when the new review will be updated. I was advised they have a team that reviews them, and usually updates them in 24 hours time. 9 days later, I check the original review is still in place. I contacted them again, and was advised the second review is automatically rejected as there already is another review in place. Doesn't it make sense to update the latest review instead of rejecting it? Now in-order to have the new review updated, I must request my guest who has already checked out to go back into their site, remove the original review and make another review. The second review had already been rejected! Talk about backward processes. If anyone knows of a better listing site, please let me know. Not to mention they are also double dipping: charges listing owners an out front fee and charges guests an additional fee but the service they provide is outrageous.

I guess the most significant impact we'll see as a result of HA being bought recently by Expedia is the implementation of a new 6-10% service fee. This goes on top of rental fees, cleaning fees, taxes and whatever else... adding yet another line item that increases the cost to our customers. If I look at just my situation, I pay around $1200/year to HA for the right to use their website, which I thought was expensive but probably worth it compared to other options. This new fee will generate somewhere between $3k and $5k per year for these guys... so 3 to 5 times my current subscription payment.

If HA has some new great service they are offering and want to make it an optional purchase for guests, that's ok by me. But I'm wondering what they'd have to do to increase the value of their service by 3x? My view is that this isn't about service at all, it's only about being bought by Expedia and having a new huge fee added.

Bad business in my opinion. Like many others that are just learning about this new fee, I will be shopping around and looking for better options.

Isent a potential guest a quote 4 days ago. Last night the guest called to say they wanted to accept the quote. This morning I went to send the rental documents and saw that the quote showed up now with an additional 5.5% fee. I called VRBO reps several times this morning to ask if they would make an exception for this one transaction and remove the service fee since my original quote (4 days ago), hadn't included it. If they don't remove the service fee, for this one transaxtion, either 1) I look dishonest to my guest; 2) my guest is going to ask me to absorb the fee, 3) the guest will walk, or 4) I'm left no longer trusting the VRBO tools. The reps simply didn't care. They said the guest had to pay the fee. When I suggested I should take the rent outside of the VRBO payment system (via check), the rep threatened that my listing would go down in the results if I did that.

First, VRBO makes me look dishonest. Then they threaten me. Is this anyway to run a business? It's not how I run my business. I'm looking for other options now. Thanks, VRBO for turning a deliriously delighted customer into a very unhappy one.

We paid over 1200 to have a vacation rental website owned by the homeowner. We never agreed for homeaway/Vrbo to take over our website and get between us and our renter. They not only add this illegal service fee but also tell our renter to use homeaway payments and try to sell them damage insurance. I have multiple properties and prices have gone from 329 to over 1000 per property.

None of us gave homeaway/Expedia the rights to edit our website or hide email addresses and force us to communicate through the dashboard this is a violation of our privacy.

Everyone here with the same complaints let's check on a class action lawduit

I've been with Homeaway/VRBO since 2004. Over the last few years they have slowly increased fees and reduced service levels and options for homeowners. I have slowly lost control of how my listing is managed and annual fees have doubled.

Anytime I have contacted them I have been met with a generic paste from their manual. Totally pointless and insulting.

The nail in the coffin is the new service fee for each booking. Homeaway, I've had enough and will not be renewing! Interestingly, there was a poll on our rental community website. Of those that used Homeaway, 84% said they would not be renewing!

This booking fee is really hurting my business. In my advertising I have always used VRBO because they had no booking fee. This weekend I will be changeing all the information in my adds and useing AIRBNB as my primary. Although Airbnb does charge a booking fee as well, it is a much lower %. I am a economy booking that apeals to lower middle class families. Especially families of lower enlisted Soldiers. A 9% booking fee has them spending a extra 50-100 bucks they simply can't afford. I am very disappointed in these changes. I would love to use VRBO as my primary again if you make adjustments but for the time being I will direct my customers elsewhere

I have been with this company since 2007 with 3 houses currently listed. Yesterday the CEO, with his $6+million salary, has now taken away from me approximately $18,000 per year. We are small companies, with limited funds, but will now be forced to "eat" the new Service Fee (4-10%) they have added to our customers. Hotels will now be taking our customers if we let this "fee" be charged to them. We already pay 2.9%. I will definitely be looking for other ways to find my customers. Good Bye HomeAway and VRBO.

Service fees to our Renters? After we pay you for advertising... which is a hefty fee that certainly covers the... what the hell does it actually cost you for us to book our Renters? Your description on 'Learn More About Service Fees'... total crap; "It enables us to invest more than ever before in marketing to bring you more travelers, as well as in our trust and security and mobile capabilities." Yea, not at all. I've lost two bookings because of your 'small fee'... which isn't small when certain nightly rates are large, especially with a 'luxury' listing that sleeps 20+. Never had problems earning the trust of the Renter... now, seems I do. Like a child I'm gonna say it... you know you're wrong. You are a bunch of crooks... been getting better at stealing from us over time. I'm done... moving my rental advertising somewhere else. Awful.