HomeAwayReviews 1,751

My son and his friends lost their money and ruined their senior week plans because of fraud on HomeAway site. After dealing with HomeAway, I feel that it is not safe renting properties advertised on this site. HomeAway does not do enough to combat scammers, and does not stand behind its protection guarantee. To read more details, please refer to my blog on this subject: http://simonraban.blogspot.com/2015/06/warning-fraud-on-homeaway-site.html

Think the reviews you're reading are from paying guests? Well you could be very wrong. Homeaway has no policy against friends and family members writing reviews. So all those laudatory reviews you read may very well be written by the owners best fiend or a cousin. So beware. Stayed at one of the properties advertised through Homeaway in Beaufort, SC. It was listed as beachfront, yet was located at in a suburban community a good distance from the water, certainly no views. What was advertised as a "cozy cottage" was actually a converted car port. The floors were sinking into the ground with resulting sand coming in all around the edge. The open concept kitchen living room was a small room with kitchen and a loveseat stuck in on one wall. Chicken clucking in the owners backyard, we're not my idea of a beachy vacation. We had to leave early and made an agreement with the owner and Homeaway that we would be forwarded any monies from rentals that the owner collected during the time that we paid, yet we're not able to stay. The owner did not comply! She rented the property, and yet refused to pay us as promised. She threatened us and out and out lied and called us nasty names after we sent in a less than good review. It took three tries and two weeks of negotiations with Homeaway to get a negative review posted. We were limited to speaking only about the property and not about the ethics of the owner, but the owners response is not similarly restricted. So when you read a review, be careful it could have been written by a close friend whose only interest is promoting the property and not an honest review by a paying guest.

We rented a house in I'lsle Sur La Sorgue through a Kim Fry. The property was good although the towels are a little past their prime... we expected better quality for the rental price. The real problem is chasing up the bond refund. We were a little tired of all the excuses & put-offs but were refunded eventually... don't get angry get serious! Not good enough Kim.

They have implemented a new Quality Listing score which they post for prospective renters. If you don't accept credit cards - your Quality rating is lowered. If you don't want to respond to an inquiry within the web-site's dashboard - they lower your Quality score. Today, they tell me that if I want to accept eChecks I have to enable credit cards as well. There is no fee for accpeting eChecks, but 2.5% charge for credit cards.

I still have an inquiry in my Dashboard from March 2014 that shows that I have not responded to it, and you guessed it... its lowered my Quality Score. They acknowlege its their issue, but claim they can't get rid of it.

At the end of the day the $1,000 annual hosting fee for my home isn't sufficient... they want 2.5% of my booking fees by making credit cards the optimum way for renters to pay. That costs me more than $2,000 in fees to HomeAway.

They seem to push the envelop of being a moral company in my opinion. I wish their was another viable alternative. They really have a monopoly, which sucks!

Hi. I'm a holiday home owner and pride myself on the impeccable state of the property. Most of our bookings have been through HomeAway and until this past week everything has run smoothly. I had a couple arrive last week and apparently the woman had a massive allergic reaction "within 10 minutes". Whilst the house is extremely clean and neat as a pin, it is 500 years old with exposed beams and stone walls and chimney. All fresh interiors and fitting. Brand new kitchen and bathroom. Linens all professionally cleaned and pressed. The 1st email that came arrived and was nothing short of an attack on me and my home. The 2nd email was a personal attack on me. I was initially prepared to return part of the payment as a jester of good will however after the 3rd email demanding I reimburse 6 of the 7 days paid I cut this client off. Surely this comes under medical/travel insurance now? Why am I expected to wear the cost of someones chronic medical condition? There is literally no way I could foresee something like this happening. I imagine they will be chasing HomeAway now though I have been assured they do not have any serious claim. People, please make sure you are covered in case of unforeseen situations like this! HomeAway will not help you and as an owner I have to protect my loses too!

I am very disappointed with this company!

Property *******

We rented this flat via the HomeAway site. It was a total fraud and HomeAway has not been at all helpful and they still allow the owner to advertise on this site.
The photographs that were sent me were a compilation of photos of a variety of apt and villas rented by this agent.
The apartment was not clean and light bulbs were out in the master shower room.
The door to the shower room was broken.
The stove/hob was broken.
The kitchen was not as advertised, fully equipped. It did not have a cooker or a kettle or a coffee maker. The BBQ was dangerous and broken.
There were no sea views as advertised and the private beach access did not exist.
Most importantly, the master bedroom external door was broken and would not lock.
The handy men who arrived to look at the glass door did not have tools nor the parts required to make the door secure. Neither man was interested in looking at the hob as they were not electricians. Nothing further could be done until Monday. We arrived on a Friday and our flight home was on Weds.
I told Clara, one of Julio's employees, that we would be leaving and moving into a hotel as we could not stay in a flat that was not secure. She indicated that she understood.

In terms of unauthorised payments on my card there were three. Two for 235 Euros and a further for 200 euros but I would like a full refund as the property was not as advertised at all.

I have forwarded HomeAway the emails where Mr Terry and Julio have agreed to transfer funds into my account, and request my details but as of today no monies have arrived.

I just answered a question from someone asking if it was "safe" to rent a property on homeaway, since it had been advertised since 2010 and had no reviews. Did some additional research and found an interesting article in Forbes. It explains that an owner can have HA take down all of their reviews as an alternative to posting a negative review. This would explain a lot! I don't know how to add another answer to that same question, but hope that Lisa R. Sees this!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/maureenfarrell/2011/01/20/homeaway-and-vacation-rental-by-owners-confusing-review-policy/

Home away/vrbo has added a "service fee" to all on line bookings. This increases the cost of renting our properties. They also charge us a fee when we book on line which decreases our income. Although owners don't have to pay the "service fee" renters do which makes it seem as though owners are hiding fees. I have told renters how much they can save by booking directly with me. Most want to cancel the on line booking & book directly with me. However, this penalizes me because my listing priority is based on the number of on line bookings. For owners & renters looking for an alternative I have had good luck with flip key by trip advisor. I pay about 1/3 of what I pay VRBO/Homeaway & get about twice the bookings. I was in the process of listing with airbnb until I read their complaint policy.

I entered a search on HomeAway for Ocean Beach, Fire Island for Memorial Day weekend (5/22-5/25/15). The house I chose stated "Minimum Stay ~ 2 nights", was given an Instant Quote of approximately $1800 & sent a message stating my interest. My jaw totally hit the floor when I received an email in return that stated a Rental Amount of $4250! I promptly sent a return email stating the price I was quoted & a reply email was sent stating that the house has weekly rentals & they were 'giving me Monday-Thursday free'! How is it free if I am paying for days/nights that I will not be there?! My final email which has yet to be answered states that as well as it is false advertising if the page clearly says "Minimum Stay ~ 2 nights" when it is actually weekly. I had looked at other houses that required a weekly stay or sometimes even 4 nights which, of course, I did not choose because that was not what I was looking for. I told them that I would not be renting from them.

I booked a property through VRBO / Home Away with their online payment system and paid full price of the property with damage deposit 3 months ahead. The owner did not send me a confirmation or details. The booking stated that if cancelled within 60 days, the traveler will get a 100% refund. I asked the owner to cancel, he did but did not refund me. I am now in my second week of deliberations with the owner and Home Away. My credit card charges say 'Home Away' but they state that they are not responsible for the money. The owner refuses to issue the refund (states the money is with Home Away and he has not seen a penny of it). So far, I have not been refunded the money and Home Away refuses to help. It's a huge scam. Don't use the site.

Just had a ridiculous experience with these guys. Have been advertising properties on a pay per booking base but their system is definitely not as advanced as other platforms as airbnb, trip advisor or others.

I have been receiving threatening emails from Homeaway that they were going to take my adverts offline because they suspected me of taking bookings outside their system. The reason of the suspicion was that my conversion rate was below average.

When people leave an enquiry and you send a customer a quote the dates get automatically blocked so no other enquiries come in. Also the customer will start receiving annoying payment requests while he never confirmed the booking. (but Someway treats the quote as a definitive booking). The customer then gets irritated (rightfully so) and starts telling me to leave them alone (while the emails are automatically send by Homeway)

The only way to unblock the dates again is by cancelling the booking and that is when Someway thinks that you as a home owner are taking bookings outside their system. The emails I have received were written in a very annoying threatening way, this is no way to treat any customer!

My suspicion is that they are not at all interested in pay per booking adverts but do all of this to change the pay her booking ads into yearly subscriptions. I am sure they will lose lots of homeowners or professionals who advertise more than one property and do not want a ridiculously high fixed cost per year.

They will lose out soon to the much more customer friendly portals as airbnb, trip advisor, wimp etc.

I made a reservation through Homeaway website that led me to deal directly with the owner through e-mail. The owner informed me that she was getting a trouble to get into her account to approve my request. She told me that a homeaway would help me out and get in touch with me. Then I received an email from Homeaway customer support (*******@bookings-homeaway.co.uk) which gave us the wire details of the payment. I asked for credit card option and they said wire transfer was the only option. Considering that the e-mail came from the customer support, I made the wire transfer. The day after, I got an e-mail from a different Homeaway customer support (*******@homeaway.com) telling me that the listing is a fake and that I should try to reverse payment. It was too late and the $$$$ has left my account. I tried calling their CS and found out that even the customer support e-mail was a fake. In the end, they will only refund me up to $1000 and there was nothing else they can do. How FRUSTRATING!

Stayed at Royal Pelican 322, Fort Myers Beach, month of Feb. Place was as described by Distinctive Beach Bentals. Had all the need amenities. Location to beach, mall, and grocery store was excellent. Contemplating returning in 2016..

Not good if you are a Homeowner. They keep trying to" fix what's not broke" as they say. Leave well enough alone and stop harassing home owners who are paying you. First "Reviews" which I am personally against as a home owner. Can I review one of my tenants who damaged my propety? Now they are trying to take money on line like ebay and pay pal. Please. They are not collecting my rent. Now some hospitality AP. Please stop this. It is enough. I want to get out of this. I do rent my home but are harassed sometimes with inquiries by people who don't book and are too stupid to read the web page and ask the same questions over and over again. They should be fixing the webpage if anything. That needs work.

Awful experience with Homeawaway! Apparently the owner can change terms, price whenever they want. The condo we rented in Puerto Rico stated it slept 8. The second night we were there the condo owner then tried to charge an extra $100 per person over 6 PER NIGHT and claimed he never advertised it slept 8. Sent documentation from our original booking to Homeaway showing he did advertise it slept 8 and no extra charges ever mentioned if more than 6 stayed in condo. Homaways response was basically owner can change their listing whenever they want. Filed a formal complaint but nothing came from that. Owner kept my $1,000 deposit for payment of bogus charges. Asked about their Carefree guarantee and they said that is void once you get there, only good if something goes wrong before you get there. Also found out nothing shows on owners' site if they have had formal complaints filed against them. Renters should be made aware of that and how many complaints have been resolved! Certainly won't use or recommend Homeaway ever again!

VRBO increased the prices by 30% and decreased customer service by 30%. Longer hold times to speak to a representative, and then you get a person that cannot help you. The representatives have not been properly trained and give you the impression that they are looking for the answers on the website.

Complaint of VRBO by Owners
In 2010 I began renting my Beachfront condo to short term transient guest to cover my expenses with this condo. Like so many other property owners I turned to the service that I used my self, VRBO.com (Acronym for Vacation Rentals By Owner). Initially VRBO was nothing more than a classified ad site for property owners to post their properties in various categories based on location and amenities. Initially the process was pleasing and enjoyable. Skip forward 5 years and there is not a day that goes by where I do not think of a way to escape the necessary evil in my life. VRBO! VRBO enacted a policy in 2011 that required owners to allow reviews of their properties. Prior to that, as an owner you could disallow or allow this feature. As a digital consumer I recalled the process Ebay.com has in place where the review process is not so onerous. A purchaser may think twice about leaving an embellished bad review in fear that they will be given one in return for merely falsifying a review to be vengeful.

VRBO has completely stepped away from their roots. VRBO does not own my property, I do. My property is not a Hotel, its mine. I do not have to let people stay at my property, I allow them to as my guest. VRBO is spending a lot of its efforts to compete with the www.expedia.com, www.travelocity.com, www.hotels.com market. Those sites are renting hotel rooms from companies that rent hotel rooms.

Needless to say because VRBO has drifted so far away from its initial vision it allows pure onerous reviews where a guest that just chunked my TV out the window and lit my sofa on fire may post a negative review about my property in the fact that I kept their $300 security deposit "unjustly."

I request assistance to return the power to the owners of the properties (the people that pay VRBO.com's salary) or even the playing field by requiring guest to create a profile and get reviewed themselves as well. Perhaps they may think twice before hurling that TV out the window this time.