Juliea G.

I booked a reservation for a house in Miami in November 2020 for my birthday in February 2021. We were set to check in on 2/13/21. About a week before my check in date (2/5/21), I received a message from the property owner stating that they are cancelling my reservation because of the pandemic. Panic set in as I had 13 people (including myself) flying in to Miami in a week and expected to have a house to stay at. I called VRBO and explained the situation; asking if this was something they could actually do. I was told that property owners can in fact cancel reservations at any time but they will need to pay VRBO a penalty for it if it's within so many days of the reservation. This penalty doesn't help me out in this situation at all because I'm still without a house. They then tell me that they can look at other properties and help me get re-booked with another one so we have somewhere to stay. The representative gives me a listing to look at in the same price range that was completely ran down and not nice at all! Of course the initial price I paid wasn't going to get us anything fancy a week before we were supposed to be there! They said they would escalate this to their re-booking team and have them reach out to assist in finding me another location. They also mentioned that they could possibly help cover the difference if the new property was more expensive. I expressed concern that I had not yet received my refund from the cancelled property ($4440. 65) so I was not able to pay anything until that came through (in at least 3 business days) to which they said it was fine and they would take care of it. The next day (2/6/21), I received an email with a really nice property asking if it was okay as a replacement reservation. I agreed to it and again, brought up the huge price difference since this new property was over $1500 per night compared to my $770 per night before. They reassured me that they would take care of it using financial assistance and make sure we had somewhere to stay come 2/13/21. I received another email a few hours later stating that I would now need to book the new property through their site as normal, send them my reservation ID number and they will work on reimbursing me the difference of what my responsibility would be. Once again, I panicked because how am I going to pay for this reservation up front as normal if I have not received my initial refund of $4440. 65 nor do I have over $9000 just sitting in the bank to pay for this. I didn't receive an email back so I ended up going through Affirm (a financing partner) so I could get it booked since I was now only 5 days away from my vacation. I figured this would be fine and a fast process so that once I got their reimbursement and my refund, I could pay Affirm off before it started accruing any interest. On 2/10/21, I had to jump through hoops by sending a copy of my driver's license, sending an agreement email to them with their exact verbiage, and filling out a DocuSign with my account information. They emailed me on 2/11/21 stating that everything was received and now it needed to be reviewed to see if I qualified for the reimbursement. I didn't hear anything again until 2/18/21 (after we were already back from our vacation) when I received an email stating that a reimbursement request was sent to their accounting department and that I could expect my refund by 4/1/21. At this point I am frustrated because I'm accruing interest on this Affirm loan because this is taking so long to process the reimbursement. I called VRBO's customer service line on 2/19/21 requesting a supervisor and was told that the team I'm working with does not take inbound calls. The representative told me she could submit a request to have someone from the team call me though. I requested just any supervisor that could help and after an hour of being on and off hold, she came back and stated there were no supervisors to talk to and that I would need to have one call me from the correct team. I gave in and she submitted the request and said I would get a call within the next 24 hours since they are open 24/7. I also replied to the email chain with the estimated dates and requested a supervisor call me ASAP because I am not happy with the timeline. It is now 2/22/21 and I have not received any call from a supervisor (nor anyone for that matter). I did however, receive an email back stating that their team only communicates through email so a call was not going to happen. The email also stated that they understand I am anxious to receive my refund but this is a manual process and takes longer to do. ANXIOUS?! I'm not anxious, I am angry that I'm awaiting a refund for this much money while I accrue interest charges that they aren't going to pay for. And I'm also angry that when I am requesting a supervisor to call me, I'm getting the run around and no phone call. It's extremely frustrating that I am having to pay all this extra money towards fees/interest for something that wasn't my fault because they just allow their hosts to cancel reservations the week prior. I just want my refund already so I can be done with this company! I will never book through VRBO again nor refer any friends or family to book through them. I have never dealt with such awful customer service!