HomeAwayReviews 1,748

We booked for a whistler condo through homeaway. We live in Canada and found the rental when searching through google. The website doesn't tell you currency. They did not indicate that they were going to charge in a different currency than the Canadian dollar. We were charged USD. Home away customer service is terrible and they do not take any responsibility. We booked a non-refundable booking. Cant get the money back at all. HUGE RIP OFF. If you think they offer a good service or good deal, if it's homeaway, stay away!

Once I got to the property, I realized that it was a hostel. We needed a private unit for medical reasons. The owner agreed to refund me as long as she found a renter to take my place. She quickly found one but Home Away would not let me cancel my own reservation. The money exchange was going to happen privately between the owner and I, told Home Away. I just needed to cancel. They refused to let me cancel my own reservation. I even talked with a supervisor. Home Away cost me $565. I will never do business with them again.

I listed my Italian property for 10+ years with Homeaway, before their acquisition by Experian. Since then, it's been a trainwreck. What used to be an easy for owners to connect with holidaymakers, it's now Homeaway that wants to be in the middle. I can no longer communicate directly with perspectives. What used to be a nice call to see if the property was suitable is now impossible.

What Homeaway doesn't understand is that for places that rent +$8,000 a week and up, so don't just click and pay. I know Experian wants to be AirBnB of holidays homes, but it's simply a different market.

The website for owners is terrible. And the constant bombardment of advertising is awful. They want me to check my "rating"... this isn't some competition for Likes on Facebook. Owners tend to want good quality, repeat guests who know what the place is like before arrival. It's impossible now to do this.

What really disgusts me is Homeaway now charges several hundred dollars to the guest... for what? They want to now take a commission after years of being a simple listings site.

I'm not sure this is a real company or they have fake homes set up to lure you in to rent a more expensive home. I have tried multiple times to reach the so called " manager" to rent a property and I don't hear a thing. I even had to sign up as a user and verify myself to have access to reaching this person whom I'm pretty sure doesn't exsist. If they do then apparently they only rent to Germans because every review on the property I was looking at is in German. That's probably a good sign to not do business with this company.

I have paid for advertising on HomeAway since 2012 paying thousands of dollars to be able to have direct contact with guests.

This year after the acquisition by Expedia they decided to reward us by cutting off all direct contact with guests until they collect their added fees to not only guests but also to us. So basically we have been ripped off, they took our advertising money and are using it against us and our guests for the sole purpose of collecting fees without any responsibility for the actual business between owners and guests.
The owners of HomeAway are extrymly greedy. All the changes done recently are not allow me contact person who made the inquiry. 3 years ago I had rental fee charged back from my account and I had to pay 50 Euro penalty, because person who rented my place via their system figured out 6 month later that he did not authorize any charges. I got interesting proposal from them to pay another 500 Euro and HomeAway will do future investigation not promising any results. Since that I started screening guests and ask them for copy of ID for my protection. Currently I cannot do that anymore because I do not have access to the guest information. Whenever is any dispute about financial issues HomeAway is not taking any responsibility they just send info about some financial institution in England providing their phone number in England. I pay fee directly for HomeAway and I am not getting any protection from them.

I have been a loyal homeowner on Homeaway since they bought CyberRentsls which is a total of 15 years. I have had nothing but problems with them for the last few years. The icing on the cake was when I received a 1099 Income tax form on a rental submitted December 31,2017. The rental was for August 2018. They had the $2000. 00 deposit which I wasnt going to receive until 2 days after the tenant checked in. So I am paying taxes on income I never received. What if the tenant decided to cancel! After hours on the phone, several emails, weeks of no response and a lot of aggravation i finally got the deposit deposited into my account at the of cost $65.00. That is on top of the $500 i already paid Homeaway and the $180.00 service fee the tenants paid, I will get another $65.00 charge when the balance is deposited. This is something always taken care of between me and the tenant. I would talk to them, yes talk to the people that were staying at my home. After making sure it would work for both parties I send out the lease agreement in January of the year they are renting, which they would sign and send back to me with the deposit. Homeaway is taking away any personal interaction between the Homeowner and the tenant... Along with charging a lot of money and screwing both the homeowner and the tenant. At this point I have not signed back up with them and do not intend to in the future. Im very disappointed with Homeaway,

This site is a gateway to FRAUD. We looked up a property and made a inquiry. The "Owner" responded that it was available and to wire the money because... We did so and he acknowledged receipt but the promised confirmation never showed up. Then we were contacted by the bank who informed us the account was suspicious and they suspected bank fraud. We contacted the "Owner" who played games. We then contacted the Homeaway "Investigative team". There are simply no words to describe the moronic, insipid responses from the imbeciles with whom I was forced to deal with for over an hour. Their conclusion was that the site was fine and it was our fault for following his instructions. Despite knowing that "Michael Rosvold" in Lahaina is a fake and a thief the site remains up and ready to defraud another unwitting customer of thousands of dollars. Doubtless there are tens of thousands of phony listings on their site. I drove by their "World Headquarters" in Austin. It appears to be a former gas station. This company is a joke. DO NOT DEAL WITH THEM!
Edit

We have paid for advertising on HomeAway since 2001 to the tune of thousands of dollars specifically to be able to have direct contact with guests.

This year after the acquisition by Expedia they decided to reward us by cutting off all direct contact with guests until they collect their added fees to not only guests but also to us. So basically we have been ripped off, they took our advertising money and are using it against us and our guets for the sole purpose of collecting fees without any responsibility for the actual business between owners and guests. Book direct and save
#bookdirect

Been with HA/VRBO since 2007. It was really a Vacation Rental By Owner. An advertising platform for the owner. Now it is a booking agent that has total control of your money to put in or take out of your account at will, AND... charge you fees to do it. The home owner is just a figure head, oh but wait... if there is a problem... yup its your problem! We do the work & they take the money. Sure does not feel like Im the owner anymore. Customers are frustrated with the changes and owner support at HomeAway is failing fast. I have been hung up on several times after being told to just live with it. Searching new sites now as it seems Expedia bought this just for the Benjamins & the use of your home, to heck with the owner! And now they are rating us by how many bookings we get... lol, almost forgot thats more fees for them. REALLY?$$$

After reading all the terrible reviews on here, I guess we got lucky. We rented a condo in Panama City Beach, FL and were thrilled with the entire experience. The owner was a wonderful man, and the property was everything he promised and more. We loved it so much, we're going back in May and staying in the same place.

I recently delisted my home from homeaway.com. They fail in an epic way to resolve any issues. Nothing but passed off accountability and responses read out of a manual. I recently had a guest damage my apartment and HomeAway couldn't care less or offer any assistance to help. I was referred to a third party insurer who took over 30 days to even look at my case. Result, they won't honor my insurance claim (even with photo proof) and I'm left with a damaged property. Then when I had a guest dispute their credit card for paying for their stay HomeAway again stepped aside and referred me to another third party that took the money back 30 days after the services were rendered. I again provided all the proof of a confirmed reservation and correspondence. If you are to rent your home for short term, do not use HomeAway or vrbo.com to do so. Stick with Airbnb or bookings.com or if you're desperate, good ole Craigslist. If you use HomeAway, you will lose in some way early or later on. Please beware.

I booked a cabin with HomeAway for a rental in December of 2018. I recently cancelled the trip on the 14th of January with no problem my money was refunded. The problem is the refund was sent to the original payment account but I had closed that account back in October. My bank sent the money back to HomeAway on the 17th of January and it's now February 1st and no one can give me the same information when I call HomeAway or their payment department. I'll be told that they have the bounce back from the bank and it has been sent back to the property owner and the property owner will refund it back to the right account or mail a check. Than other times I'm told that they haven't received it and I have to contact my bank to have my money transferred into the correct account. They can't transfer what they don't have because it was sent back to you. I don't understand how these people can keep giving me different information every time I call. I asked them to look through their notes for my account and I was told there's no notes of me calling them. What!? I have been calling since January 22nd after talking to my bank and being informed that they had sent the money back to you and when. This company is so full-of-it and I will never do anything with this place again. And I will recommend to everyone I know and reads this post not to do business with them either. Would have never thought that this simple process would turn into so much frustration and aggravation. Refund me my money so I can go on about my business and never have to be bothered with this company ever again.

Homeaway complaint
Ibiza town, property number #******* contact: encar

1. Owner cancelled booking, doubled prices, then re advertised

We booked our family villa holiday Aug 2017 for June 2018 holiday.
We contacted owner December 2017 to confirm all ok prior to booking 8 return flights.
January 2018 we received emails from owner (whom we had spoken to and she confirmed all was ok, 4 weeks prior) stating she did not know how booking was made, it was not her, she was cancelling and refunding payment. However, if we would like to re book, our dates are available - albeit the price had been more than doubled!

We now had 8 return flights booked and no accommodation.

We contacted Homeaway, they were not interested and we were not even allowed to leave a review, as we had not stayed there.

They suggested we go through their on line complaints procedure, we did, we received 1 email acknowledging our complaint, advising they would investigate. Then nothing, except an email to rate them on their service on the matter!

2. Refunded payment £142 less than paid. Homeaway not interested

I paid original reservation deposit, about £1,400 and homeaway book with confidence insurance fee, about £350 through the homeaway web site using my barclaycard.
Upon receiving my refund, some weeks later, it was £142 less than originally paid.
This was due to international payment charges incurred on payments out and payment refunded and the fact that the euro exchange rate had weakened from original booking to refund.
I explained all this to homeaway and they werent interested. They said they were bank charges, nothing to do with them.
I reminded them that we had done nothing wrong. We had booked through Homeaway, paid through homeaway, it was cancelled through homeaway by their customer, and we were refunded through the homeaway process. Why should we not receive every penny we had been originally charged?
I then contacted Barclaycard directly and explained the situation. They were very professional and informed me that it is the merchants duty to refund original sum in full, including all charges etc. Barclaycard then said they would credit my account immediately and take the matter up with homeaway. Hooray for Barclaycard

Summary
Homeaway holiday bookings - BEWARE
You are NOT protected through homeaway
You will get NO help from homeaway
All homeaway are interested in is their fees and an automated booking process.
Anything that does not fit this formula, they will not rectify.