Greg J.

This is now our second disaster rental with VRBO. The first was a "Suite on the Grand Canal" in Venice. I'll just say it was a room within a flat with a padlock on the door and the guest must enter through another family's rental (in this case while they were quarreling loudly). There was no one to give us the key, the owner is in Panama and it got worse from there. VRBO did not issue a refund and were of no help.

On to the current failure. We rented a $1000. 00 per night home in Minneapolis for a wedding in June. Covid has closed the venue so we are not having the wedding then. Initially we contacted the owner through VRBO (the entire email chain is there) to ask to reschedule in Aug. He clearly stated the home would be sold by then and he would issue no refunds. We signed a no refund contract so we decided to have a family party there in lieu of the reception. When contacting the owner for next week's arrival details we were informed that "since we had rescheduled (the emails clearly show he refused a reschedule) there were now major renovations to the property in progress". After contacting VRBO and learning that there "Book with confidence" is exactly as travel guru Rick Steves states "a deceptive travel practice, at best" I see why VRBO has a 1 star rating. We have been on hold for hours, shunted from one person to another, lied to, told to wait, told they will contact us, told there is a 48 hour deadline for the property owner to respond... crickets! As it stands, the owner has lied to VRBO, they have stalled us to the point that alternate travel arrangements have to be made and we are out $4000. 00 with no help from VRBO.
There are many other travel sites, please do yourself a favor and use any one of them.