We chose a cottage yesterday and were told it would cost £1180 approx with an immediate deposit of £396 approx. Gave c/c details for deposit. Showed kids the house; everyone happy and excited for next years holiday. Then, later in the evening the owner emailed me saying the house would cost £800 MORE than the first price to reflect next years fees. With HomeAway, all communication is faceless and there is no redress or person to complain to, no emails, no way of raising the issue! The owner has the upper hand entirely. This is the perfect platform to scam people. We won't be paying the extra £800 however, I'm sure some people would do so believing they're in some sort of contract. By the way, should you still want to use them, avoid ‘WOODGATE' farmhouse (near Crackington Haven, near Bude), as this is the house the owner tried to scam us out of £800 extra. Date of experience: September 23, 2020I booked a home and once I got there, owner would not leave for hours. Then had me sign a contract ( her own) stating all these ridiculous stipulations, cannot go into living room, cannot use pool without paying an extra fee, no opening windows, and the list goes on and that we cannot post reviews of our stay there was no recourse as I had no where else to stay after flying there. Do not use this company. They do not vet their homeowners and this one was literally crazy. Date of experience: September 30, 2021I don't know why HomeAway offers a customer service as they are incapable of helping with any issue. I have tried several times but they make it very clear that they don't care and are not willing to take any action. Calling them is a total waste of time. Date of experience: September 13, 2020I booked a terrible house in Tellaro, Italy through HomeAway. When we got to the house, there were electrical wires hanging out of sockets including over the children's bed, mould growing up the walls, a loose banister, rickety furniture that looked as though it would collapse at any moment. The entire place was a health hazard. I made repeated calls to HomeAway pleading with them to move us to somewhere else but Home Away did not want to know. They were not interested in helping once they had my money despite the fact they knew that they had place my family and young children in hazardous conditions. Even worse, they continued to advertise the property in question even after I sent them photographic evidence of the dangerous state of the property and did not publish my review. Disgusting company. Do not book with them Date of experience: September 17, 2020The place was very clean inside but had a odor smell which made us only spent one night instead of the 2 nights we booked the light in one of the bedroom was not working the property around was very bushey. We wanted to try something different but this place was not worth the price per night. If a person pay for 2 nights no need to be sending emails on check out time. I wi not recommended the place. Date of experience: November 28, 2022Booked accommodation for a wedding well in advance, had to cancel because of Covid. Made the cancellation within the "free cancellation" window and I was whacked with bank transfer and currency exchange fees, even though I paid with the local currency while booking. "Free Cancellation" is in NO WAY free, be wary of that before you commit your money! I will not be using HomeAway again. Date of experience: December 22, 2020We stayed at 10 Old Dock Road in Plattsburgh NY! Never stay there! The place was a complete rib off! The AC didn't work and our family of three sweated there for four nights and couldn't sleep! The worst of it is when we left they charged us $200 for damages that were not true! They stayed complete lies! In fact they should have refunded our money for that stay not charged us more! Avoid at all costs! Wanted to add that the water smelled horrible too! And that my sister Ona Belser paid for this for me her brother so that this review has nothing to do with her! Date of experience: October 18, 2021Booked through HomeAway almost 2 months ago. First booking didn't go through - although payment did. Call center assured me that it was an Internet fault. Payment would bounce back to my account and to use a different card for booking. I did - paying $454.05 again. After a week payment had not bounced back and bank told me both payments had been cleared by HomeAway. It has been 2 months, many unanswered emails, then automated emails asking for the same information again and again, repetitive phone conversations and STILL NO REFUND. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY. Date of experience: November 22, 2020Don't stay at Durham house apartment Shocking customer service. I booked Durham House apartment in Beer we left early due to how dirty it was. With covid we had expected it to be clean but the state of it was disgusting - we took photos and contacted The owner Sue Wesley she was rude and very nasty and HomeAway was hopeless. Really to listen to all these bad reviews. Don't stay at Durham House apartment in Beer and don't use homeaway Date of experience: September 9, 2020I booked & paid an 8 night rental for a House (March 2020) 11 month in advance. Nearly 2 weeks later HomeAway contacted me saying the fee would be more that time of year and we need to pay extra $200 per night at their discount rate. I refused after getting legal advice, so they cancelled the booking with no comeback. Outrageous behaviour & totally deplorable Date of experience: May 5, 2019When VRBO/HomeAway 1st began it was awesome service but appears they've hired the greed mongols and here's how they play you now... So you find a rental and they list it at 162.50 per night. Oh wait but that's not all because what they don't show until you book is an additional $100 owners fee, a $49.00 service fee and then they top it off with $41.72 lodging tax. So now the $162.50 per night is really $353.22:-o! Oh of course you need to set aside another $150 for the damage deposit which hopefully you get back. I'm sure they don't treat the property owners any different and overcharge them too! Hopefully a less greedy alternative shows up soon or someone figures a craigslist style platform that all property owners can utilize and so we can begin paying what the home owners are asking and not the hidden doubling of cost that VRBO/HomeAway has devised. Last, HomeAway will sell you trip insurance on top of all this too LOL! Date of experience: June 17, 2020BEWARE - on Homeaway, all the European properties advertise prices using $ dollar sign. However, once you book, these prices are then converted into Euro. A $350 a night should be advertised as 350. It is very misleading to customers. My $350 a night stay was really $400 a night. Not a happy customer and probably will never use them again. Date of experience: April 11, 2019This site lists fraudulent properties and knowingly sells uninhabitable rental accommodation. Trying to get a refund is unlikely due to unfair clauses. Will never book with them again and urge others to rethink before parting with their money- fine if everything goes ok, but if there's a problem or you need help then you're doomed. And to add salt to the wound, they don't let travellers leave bad reviews, so you never get to share the truth Date of experience: July 6, 2019Bad customer service, bad attitude. No refund given due to orders from corona virus to stay home. Owner said to get insurance, but no insurance covers what is happening. HomeAway says it asks it's owners to give a refund, but it's only at the owners discretion. We got nothing back from $705 that we had already put in. So we had to make a decision to either stay home and let her keep our money or go to a forced vacation, against orders to stay home from the government and risk our lives just to go. In this case, I think we should have been refunded. There is no insurance that covers this kind of shutdown. Owner says she has bills to pay. Very rude and awful. No compassion for what it going on. We need that money back too for food. Highly don't recommend! Date of experience: March 25, 2020HomeAway allows owners (Branch Hill Estate) to give unfair traveler ratings. The owner of this rental bullied us asking for a 5 star review before we received our security deposit. Then after we asked for time to properly review the property, they gave us a false rating. When we asked for an explanation or correction, Branch Hill Estate would not respond. Date of experience: August 28, 2020Booked accomodation in Sydney worst thing I ever did there was electrical wires hanging out of ceiling fans windows were painted shut could not be opened at all aircon didn't work properly. This company charge a 295.00 cleaning fee and a $600.00 security deposit which they also kept for cleaning biggest rip offs ever never use again would not recommend at all. Date of experience: May 16, 2017Reservation request on Friday provides a inaccurate and confusing contract 3 days later. This after a 24 hour confirmation 'guarantee'. The phone help desk is worthless. One of the worst customer service experiences ever. Glad to know Expedia owns them, I'm deleting that account also. Date of experience: January 15, 2018What poor policies and customer service. I've spent hours back and forth trying to get simple answers and payments resolved as an owner. I have been relying much more on Airbnb for this reason. Really wish VRBO had a different payment processing partner. Date of experience: January 23, 2014For Owners who might need Customer Support please don't use this site, because it doesn't exist at Homeaway.com or VRBO.com. Getting through to a voice isn't that hard, but actually getting any form of intelligent life on the other end of the line is. Sorry homeaway you SUCK! Date of experience: September 24, 2012I ad over 1000 fake enquiries which jammed up the calendar on my listing and all calendars which were linked. When I called customer support they refused to put me through to a supervisor. Their follow up email is pathetic: Dear Peter, Thank you for contacting HomeAway Customer Support. We have identified that fraudulent reservations are being received by some property owners in large quantities. I am sending your information to our Global Risk Department for further investigation. The current recommendation is to let the inquiries expire. There will be an initial impact on Ranking Metrics. Steps are being taken to remove the impact as soon as possible. Visit help.homeaway.com for answers to frequently asked questions. Sincerely, Cynthia HomeAway.com Customer Support Date of experience: August 28, 2018I tried calling to cancel my listing and waited 16 minutes to then just get a recording. Vacation owners beware! Once your place gets a unfair review, there is nothing you can do about it. Unfortunately HomeAway has a monopoly on all vacation rental sights. I wish someone would give them some competition. Date of experience: February 18, 2016We don't use VRBO booking service - never have, don't want to. Happy doing business the way I always have. However, when prospects see our home page there is a "button" that says "How To Pay Safely". Push that button and up pops this: "This owner doesn't offer online booking through VRBO's checkout. You won't be eligible for our Book with Confidence Guarantee. Never use instant money transfer services such as Western Union and MoneyGram. Learn more" So, gosh darn. Even though I have many, many positive reviews, and have been on VRBO/HomeAway for five years, someone considering my property might just think - No confidence. No guarantee. Oh my God! Let's look elsewhere. And I think they are looking elsewhere. My inquiries and bookings are way down... I will not be renewing. Too bad. It's been a good ride. I will be emailing all of my past guests to let them know, and to suggest they not patronize these a**holes. Cheers. Date of experience: March 17, 2016I'm disgusted by the new Homeaway/VRBO service fee and their bullying. I've refused to "opt in" for booking online and my bookings are down dramatically. Not one inquiry in March, though I'm usually fully booked by now. I won't list again with these sites. What's the alternative? What are other formerly happy users doing? --Judy Date of experience: March 26, 2016Tried 3 times to book properties with HomeAway in the last couple of days. First was advertised as available, booked then declined as already booked. Second was booked, accepted and paid, then cancelled as already booked. Third was booked but owner didn't respond within 24 hours so booking lapsed, nevertheless 2 further payments were made against my credit card. I'm currently trying to get refunds for all the payments and also will hopefully remove my payment details from their system ( uk call *******3841). In the meantime I'd advise to steer well clear of this company - at best they can be described as incompetent idiots, at worst crooked scammers. BEWARE! Date of experience: April 3, 2016Allows fake accounts on rental site and then makes the customer suffer the financial burden, up to an including holding money for so long that vacations had to be cancelled. After 4 weeks, I am still waiting for over $1,900.00 refund. Tip for consumers:Don't Service Value Date of experience: December 27, 2017