Brooks H.

I have been using VRBO for several years to list my rental property. This year VRBO (Expedia) started charging a service fee, with no warning or discussion. Up to this point VRBO had been charging a few percent service fee on their credit card payments.

I just went through my bookings to reconcile the guest payments with my bank account statements. I was shocked to find out that VRBO (Expedia) has now begun keeping the security deposits. This certainly did not happen last year. I have not received any notice form VRBO (Expedia) that they were holding security deposits, they simply did this without notification. I went through the payment pages and found that they were listing payments without including the security deposits in the totals. Only if you look at the payment "details" can you see that the guest has paid more than the amount shown on the page as "payment."

So what is one to do it there is damage that is to be covered by the security deposit?

Since VRBO (Expedia) is "helping" us by holding the security deposits, does this mean that VRBO (Expedia) is accepting all responsibility for damage caused by guests regardless of the amount of the damage?

At this point, it is time for all of us who use VRBO (Expedia) to DEMAND a full monthly accounting of what each guest pays and what VRBO transfers to the owners. It is time for full transparency by the management of VRBO (Expedia).