HomeAwayReviews 1,748

Home Away will suck you dry in traveler's fees (for the traveler) and profits (for the owner). This company, at one point in time, was the ticket to convenient and legit travel. Home Away has turned out to be a monster to deal with ON TOP OF dealing with the incompetent people they hire as the little foot soldiers to attempt to run their business. Home Away charges the TRAVELER an obscene percentage of their out of pocket money to book on-line and in the SAME transaction charges either 8% of the total booking or $500 for the annual subscription to the owner. Oh yeah - don't forget about the 3% fee that goes along with the transaction if the traveler books with a credit card and it's even a higher percentage if the traveler books from out of the country. POOR company, POOR website, POOR planning, POOR decisions coming from the top. Boooooooo. This company does not even deserve ONE star. However, I had to give it one star to submit the review. So, NO STARS given.

I have been with HomeAway for over 10 years and they used to be a great company. In the last two years they have fallen apart and are now just a headache for owners and travelers. The concept of making life easier for both owners and holiday makers is great and as a small company they were very successful.
As they have got bigger and the sharks have circled they are now useless, uncaring and basically crooks.
I am very disappointed how quickly they have spiraled into being so abject and any recommendations as to the new kids on the block who do this let me know and am not talking AirBnB

I have tried unsuccessfully to book accommodation in Rome for over a week. Would not accept my credit card details. I spoke with a consultant who said it was my bank issues. My bank had not stopped payments I contacted he owner and he responded that it was indeed Homeaway issues. Finally my payment was accepted but 36 hours laterI still haven't received confirmation of my booking. So I will now need to pend another 45 minutes waiting on the phone to speak with a consultant. The search engine is disgraceful. I wanted to book an apartment near Campo De Fori and despite requesting search by distance the apartment that I had tried to book about continued to be placed down to about page 6. While accommodation 26 kn away was placed before the apartment i wanted.

I called to try to get clarification on a simple problem, which was that I'd put in a search location and be shown properties at a different location. So far, I've spoken to seven people -- one of whom promised me a phone call back that never came, another who hung up on me in mid-sentence, one who said the 888 number would connect me directly with the Austin office (it didn't), one who put me on hold for a half hour before I was disconnected, a supervisor who seemed allergic to apologizing and hung up on me when I asked for one, and then finally someone who seemed like a normal human being. I've spent a day and a half trying to get a simple problem resolved, and they're the worst.

I have been renting out my places for 3 years on Homeaway. They used to be very good, but since Expedia bought them, everything is turning bad. They are really incompetent in EVERYTHING they do, lousy or non existent customer service, incredibly lousy ifnormation both to home owners and guests, problems with most of the things that is working well on other rental sites. At the same time they have increased their price dramatically.
I hope they are put out of the market or bought by another company that knows their business.

We have had several of our properties listed with Stayz for the last 10 years with no problems whatsoever, they have been great. However, in the last 2 weeks we were forced to upgrade to the so-called new and improved HomeAway site.

It has been nothing but trouble with huge increased service fees charged to our guests and problems with reservations not including extra guests to quotations. As well as this there is no place to add special prices for children (only extra guests).

If they want to compete successfully with AirBnb then they will have no chance with this type of mentality!

Update... I am leaving VRBO and going with TRIPZ. We have been renting our house out since 1999. I was with vacationrentals.com until about 4 years ago until Homeaway bought them. I was forced to go with VRBO/Homeaway. I hate them. It has being nothing but constant changes. Every year they add some charges for either the guests or the renter. Sometimes I can not find my listing. One time they took my rental off line because I had not declined the rental. I did not realize that if I did not decline they would remove my rental. I have spent hours on the phone with them over things like this. If you do not accept a lot of bookings they move you way down on the list. They say it is because they want me to make a lot of money. It is because they want to make a lot of money, because of the charge they now access the guest, (That happen about a year ago). I told them that this is my home and I do not want to rent it out to anyone and we do not want to rent out all of the time. They are the 800 pound gorilla that has taken over the vacation home rental business. I have just found out that if I renew with them next time, I will have to do all payments through them. If leave them they said that all of my reviews are theirs. I have excellent reviews and they are mine not THIERS!. They have changed the way my dashboard is so many times. I have to keep figuring out how to use it. When I call them, sometimes I have to wait for 20 or 30 minutes to get through and I sometimes I have a hard time understanding the agent that I am speaking with. I feel like I am dealing with gangsters. I have my more complaints, but I dont want to take up your time. My Daughter-in-law is listed with them and is having the same terrible experiences.

Spoke to a lady named Shanice for my property. She wasn't able to find any of my listings, on top of that, she accused me of making listings up that she wasn't able to find. Then suddenly after accusing me, she said she sees the listing and only the name and dates were viewable. Obviously, she wouldn't be able to help me so I asked to speak to someone who was higher up or even a supervisor, she couldn't provide me one because they all don't work on weekends ( Must be nice). On top of that, she couldn't provide me a name and told me if I wanted to speak to a supervisor I would have to call back to speak to an agent that will transfer me and at that point hope and pray someone is there. First, the hold time before an agent actually answers is close to half an hour, and they are super unhelpful

Once upon a time I had a very high opinion of Homeaway. Most of my bookings came from the site and I didnt mind paying the annual subscription, even when they raised the rate to include VRBO. My guests communicated directly to me and I got to establish a relationship with them as we interacted in the months leading up to their arrival. To my guests, Homeaway was just the search engine that lead them to me But now, there has been a shift in the relationship and Homeaway wants it to be that the guests are renting my property from THEM. They have taken control of the money, dictating deposit amounts and holding it until check in. For my summer rental property that books 10-12 months in advance, thats a long time to wait for MY money. And most troubling is I used to get a signed rental agreement from tenants. With their 24 hour booking, I am forced to accept a reservation without a signed contract. Even though I posted it on the website for people to read, it makes me feel vulnerable and open to potential disputes. And most egregious is the service fee my guests must now pay. Its $400 for peak week! Theres no question I will lose business because of this money grabbing fee! Im looking for other advertising alternatives and will drop Homeaway as soon as I can. Shame on you Expedia for being so greedy. Shame! Shame!

As a homeowner, VRBO, HomeAway, and Vacationrental.com have taken 100% of the control of who rents your property away from the homeowners. They have removed all owners contact information, ie, phone numbers, and have forced owners into accepting or denying a reservation strictly by what they can read from what the guest types into the reservation request. No longer do us home owners have the ability to determine if a guest is the right fit for our homes or not. The only way to do this from this point on is to accept the reservation, which charges the guest's credit card, in order to get their phone number and email address. Then, and only then, can you call the inquiring guest and feel them out as to if you truly want to rent to them or not. If you decide not to, then you have to log back into the site and cancel the reservation. Keep in mind that if you cancel more reservations that you take, big brother, IE, HomeAway will pull your listing and you get no refund! Such a load of $#*!. These problems did not happen until Expedia bought out the vacation rental company, I will be pulling my listing with them and going another avenue. Not to mention, they charge customers 9-12% additional as a "SERVICE FEE" to book through them. This is all on top of the $300/yr I pay to list my property on the site.

If you are a homeowner, I strongly recommend you NOT list your property with this company if you want to have any amount of control of who rents your home. If you are only after the money and don't give a crap about your property and how someone treats it, then go for it! As a guest, I'd find a different way to book a home. You are being charges way too much for extra fees and you too have no good way to communicate with the homeowner directly. Be cautious.

We reserved a World Mark two bedroom in Indio California in April of 2017 for a stay in February of 2018. Paid half up front and rest of fee months before our trip. When we arrived WM had no record of our stay. We were treated so wonderfully by Addy at World Mark and the manager. All it would have taken was for Home Away to send a fax confirmation of our paid reservation. They had months to do so but failed to do so. Addy spent over an hour working through a maze of phone holds to make it work for us. Thanks to Addy and Indio World Mark for your high standards. Too bad we were subjected to embarrassment and humiliation by the lack of effort by Home Away. Never again!

Don't believe the Book with Confidence Guarantee. I reserved a property in Park City, Utah. The owner cancelled after I arrived in Utah. No explanation, no reason. Home Away made re-booking EXTREMELY DIFFIULT. It took me15 phone calls and many hours for it to book a replacement property. The cost of the replacement was substantially more. Home Away made filing a claim EXTREMELY, UNNECESSARILY difficult. It is not worth it. I recommend everyone to stay away. This company is unfriendly to consumers.

I would absolutely NEVER recommend this company! The company charged our visa account the 154 service fee for a reservation we never made! They told me I had to cancel the reservation to get the money back - but I had never made any reservation for the chalet to begin with, and when I contacted the owner to cancel (the non-existent) reservation, he also said that he had no reservation to cancel on his end because it did not exist. It took 2 months to get the money refunded, with 6+ phone calls lasting 30min+, each time re-explaining the situation. I absolutely do NOT recommend this company!

My letter to Home Away:

Getting my refund is taking much too much time and effort.

The property owner has not responded.
Your first customer service person took a long time to figure it out, and then deliberately hung up.

When I called back, the more helpful customer service person couldn't help me, but instead transfered me to "traveler's assistance" which also couldn't help me accept to refer the case to "trust and safety" after having a fruitless phone call with the property owner's husband. "Trust & satety" doesn't talk with customers.

Instead of the hassle free assistance which we have come to expect from Expedia and VRBO, we are getting a run-around with a real issue about whether we will get our money back without filing a credit card case or a small claims case.

Instead of saying that your company will stand behind our right to a refund, we are instead getting a slimy put-off that our agreement is not with Home Away, but with the property owner. It isn't just slimy nonsense, but it isn't true, wouldn't stand up in small claims court or even the credit card company, and makes your company look terrible.

When I asked for an email acknowledgment of my case and the fact that it was being referred to your trust and safety department, I couldn't even get that.

It shouldn't be easier to file a small claims action then it is to deal with your customer service, but it is.

I use to love Homeaway, been with them since 2010. After reading some of these, I guess these changes are a result of being bought by Expedia. My complaints are: 1. They block the renter and owner from seeing each others phone number until a payment has been made. 2. they force the owner to use their payment method but the owner does not see any money until the renters check in! They have collected the payments and earning interest off of MY money that the renters 'think' they have submitted to the owner! 2. You can not talk to a supervisor or anyone to file a formal complaint. They send you an email and no response. 3. Their damage deposit policy is a joke. I can only imagine the headache for the owner if a 'claim' is filed requiring all sorts of documentation, then want the owner and renter to resolve the issue on their own, then if no resolution and HomeAway is forced to pay for damages, they turn around and go after the home owners home insurance to recoup any money they paid. AND it only covers "damages' not violating house rules. So no incentive to follow owners rules. A renter could park a car on my grass over my drain field and I guess I would have to dig down to the lateral line to see if any damage. One of many examples of why a security deposit is intended to cover violations of house rules. They scare the renters to not do any monetary transactions outside of their venue saying theirs is the only secure method. Their damage deposit policy is like pulling teeth for both the renter and owner to get their money back and to make a claim. I refuse to use their damage deposit payment method. Poor renters end up paying an additional 8-15% of the rental fee after all the fees and hidden process fees are done. They get rich and the owner has no security against damages or violations of rules and they go hungry waiting on THEIR money months down the road. I think it should be illegal to sit on the OWNERS rental money. Another example of corporate greed. They get over 500 for owners to subscribe and then 160 service fee on every reservation. They go through a 3rd party company for processing payments and they charge at least 3%. They will lose my business after this year.