HomeAwayReviews 1,748

Expedia posted that the cabin was $150 per night. Then I find out that Home Away charged my card $300 and a $500 security fee. When I immediately tried to cancel the reservation, their customer service was worse than worthless; a waste of time and no service at all! Although I was able to have my bank remove most of the disputed reservation charges, I still got stuck with the service fees from Home Away. Stay Away from Home Away!

I was previously with STAYZ who have now been taken over by HomeAway. I cannot believe that HomeAway think a prospective guest would be willing to pay their outrageous "service fee". I would rather pay a higher commission fee as property owner than our guests be charged a service fee. What HomeAway dont understand is that guests will not be willing to pay the service fee (it is significant), they will look elsewhere and HomeAway and the property owners are the losers. HOmeAway also want to charge property owners commission on the cleaning fee which is ridiculous, this fee goes direct to the cleaner not the property owner.
Will be interesting to see how long HomeAway last... predicting not long, guests will look at other booking avenues as I am as a property owner.

I have a property listed on Homeaway and they are the worst company I have ever dealt with. Apart from their website being the worst I have ever used (as a property owner), they take two weeks to pay after the guest check-in date when their policy states they will release the booking fees one day after check-in, then their policy states their bank takes 5 to 7 days to transfer the money! They blame the banks however why is this so when Australian banks process transfers overnight? In reality it takes 10 days for Homeaway to release the booking fees and then in addition they hide behind the time it takes their bank to transfer the money; "5-7 days". This is all just lies, rather Homeaway are holding onto the monies of all owners around the world for ~14 days to collect the interest on hundreds of millions of dollars. That equates to millions in interest payments to Homeaway at the expense of the rightful owners of that money, the property owners. Guests that I have spoken with expect the owner would receive the money upon check-in. In summary Homeaway are thieves! As a property owner I urge people to use tripadvisor or airbnb, we have no such payment delays with them! Most owners list their properties on all these websites and Homeaway will not improve unless they lose market share.

This joke of a site is built for owners to be able to operate in the gray area, with plenty of false advertising (pictures don't correspond to the property, descriptions are inaccurate). Never having to show their faces or even disclose email addresses or phone numbers allows them to hide in the shadows in impunity.
In my first experience, we rented a place that the owner had rented out on AirBnb already and when we showed up, she told us that the place was "already occupied and that she didn't understand because the HomeAway's site should be talking to AirBnB's site". In this case, she was rather sympathetic and luckily had another place available but the conditions were far from the ones that i signed up for.

The worst part is their system logic regarding the owner's ability to refuse a reservation. Again, this is a system built for owner's, if they don't like some about your name, profile, or whatever they can simply refuse to lodge you. OK, i'm trying to put myself in an owner's shoes and understand the use of this in the extreme cases where the renters name is "Una Bomber" and he asks in a private message if there is a basement to store his explosives in. Otherwise the only the reason this exists is for Owners to be able to post their property on multiple sites (as in the example i've given) and shop for the best offer.
The system logic gives them 24 hours to refuse a reservation - even if you've reserved for tomorrow night. The result of this imbecilic logic manifested itself in my 2nd experience with HomeAway: i reserved for the following night (unaware that the owner could refuse up until after my supposed check-in time), when i learned of this stupidity in the their logic i immediately contacted the owner via the internal messaging. No response. No phone # anywhere. Upon arrival (yes i found the place in spite of the lack of address), the place was empty, the owner nowhere to be found, and an incoming message told me that the owner regretted that they couldn't let/rent to us.
Really cute. We ended up spending 4 times the amount for a local hotel. Thanks HomeAway POS $#*!heads!

I'm not even sure where to start, but we found out ON OUR OWN that our house we rented for weekend one of Coachella 2018 is under court ordered foreclosure so we contacted the listing agent to get more info and found out that the owners have not had access to the property in over a year. It's April 4. We booked May 2017! They listed the home knowing they were stealing our money.

We immediately contacted VRBO and let them know and they said we would have to work with the rebooking team to get something new booked. Well it's now 2 weeks later and we've been given the runaround and still have not spoken to the rebooking team. We understand that they go in order of check in for dealing with issues, but we've patiently been waiting 2 weeks. The rep we talked to today gave us one option that was 3 bedrooms with no pool and no room for 12 people and not anywhere close to comparable to the house we thought we rented. The second house they offered was over 50 miles away and all the reviews said the house was falling apart!

We booked super early to avoid the high fees of the homes once the dates/tickets were released so now all of the remaining home are triple what we paid and they are not helping us out in any way! Not to mention the rude rep we most recently spoke to who told us "then there's nothing we can do" well, there is! There are houses still available. Yes, they may be more expensive but we are covered under the contract and there is no cap on the price of the house they can rebook us at! We are beyond frustrated as we still need to house 12 people and VRBO has been nothing but awful to us. We've asked to speak to a Supervisor at this point as the agents refuse to transfer us to the rebooking dept to see what they can do as we were told they have more flexibility. I just cannot believe a large company like this treats their customers this way and it's like pulling teeth to get this resolved when it's something they should have caught in the first place, not us! DON'T BOOK WITH VRBO/HOMEAWAY! Use AirBnb instead!

When you request to book, owners respond with higher priced offers siting mistakes on Homeaway calendar or they bait and switch for lesser quality properties but for the original price. When I check to see if the owner has corrected the calendar, no corrections have been made. It's all lies because HomeAway does nothing to stop this. When I filed a complaints, twice, they were ignored by HomeAway. Use Airbnb instead. They have never given us any problems.

We booked a property on this site. # ******* Boutique Fishermans cottage.
We only needed 9 nights. The booking went through. The owner contacted us a few days after saying that the booking for 9 days would not work for her as she only lets for either 7 days or 14 days. Owner said that the homeaway system was at fault. Property owner suggested we go in and pay extra money to cover her costs even though we were only going to stay there for 9 nights. A ludicrous offer to pay for 14 nights and stay for 9.
We were travelling to UK from Australia and all the juggle back and forth and time zones to actually get someone to talk to "live" on the phone became a big problem to sort it all out before heading off on a big trip.
The owner then just deposited the money back into our account - essentially kicking us out of the booking - leaving me with 1 day to try and find alternative accommodation before I was flying out with my family the other side of the World.
I was limited taking an elderly Mother away after a knee reconstruction and needed property without a big walk. I found this behaviour on the property owners part very unreasonable. The outcome was that Homeaway did not take responsibility as they stated that it was the owners problem that it allowed the booking for days and not theirs. Homeaway did help us find alternative property however, and covered the extra charge as the only properties left at this stage were out of our budget which we appreciated but the reimbursement took 5 months to get back. But we did get it back and grateful The irony is that the property that kicked us out of the booking - we could see that it was vacant during this time anyhow! So she lost out anyhow. If she had left us stay for the 9 days she would have had income. The treatment did cause a lot of stress and uncertainty but we appreciate that homeaway helped us out eventually. But the original property owner is another story - we lost money in international fees with currency conversions on transactions made and now out of pocket and still can remember the angst of trying to get it all sorted in a few days before flying the other side of the World.

After finding a rental, getting a price quote including total price including taxes and fees, entering all our information, and clicking"book this stay", then we get a page that says the damage deposit is $1500 of which some or all may be refundable OR we can buy their trip insurance for $60.
On principle I consider this blackmail. $60 isn't a huge amount, but isn't it a "fee"?
A $1500 damage fee seems quite ridiculous for a 2 day stay of 2 senior adults.

Look elsewhere. We booked a home for a September wedding in January, 2018. The owner took full payment (over $1000). In late March we received an email stating the rental was cancelled and our money would be refunded. No reason, no personal contact, no apology. We contacted HomeAway and were told we had no recourse, that there was no requirement that owners follow through, and that "things happen to change an owner's situation". Yes, like a better rental deal, I am guessing.

In September 2017 I booked a holiday for myself and my family with www.homeaway.co.uk.

The booking was for Aug 13 2018 until Aug 19 2018.

On the 2 March 2018, 6 months after the booking was made, the property owner asked for a further 1,198 Euros. This was over 500% of what we originally paid. Shocked by this request, I contacted homeaway.co.uk for help. The person I spoke with said that the owner of the property could not raise the price, and must honour the advertised price. Your person said that your company would speak with the property owner and I would not have to worry.

On the 12th March 2018, I received an email from the property owner stating that 202 Euros had been refunded and my holiday was now cancelled.

I then had to tell my family that their holiday was cancelled.

I was very very disappointed that homeaway.co.uk did not tell me that property owner was going to cancel my holiday with my family.

When I book my holiday with homeaway.co.uk, I also booked Ferry Ticket to get myself and my family to France.

I contacted Brittany Ferries to see if I could get a refund, however I received a cancellation fee of £80. I wanted the cancellation fee to be cancelled. Homeaway.co.uk would not refund me nor would the property owner.

Not only have I lost my summer holiday, I have also lost £80.

DO NOT USE homeaway.co.uk... you are not covered if things go wrong.