HomeAwayReviews 1,748

I have been trying to list my property for over a year with Home Away without success. I have been rejected twice by the Madrid office, even when I supplied all the information required including passport, title deeds etc etc. There is always a problem with TRUST AND SECURITY department, which they will not explain to me, so I am not sure if its the property (totally licenced by the authorities for Tourist use... under my name) or the PERSON ie myself. Needless to say my property has been listed on Booking, Wimdu, Airbnb, TUi, for over a year and I have no criminal record nor debts
I was refeerred to the TEXAS computer centre, which I called at least 3 times (free of charge) where they told me that they either had resolved the problem ( they hadnt) or the solution was to simply register with a NEW Email address, which I did several times, without success
Yesterday, a year later, I got a call from the UK office asking if I wanted to list, which I said I did and they charged me by credit card and hours later blocked my account
I have spoken to them today and they dont want to refund the money

I recently rented a property in Bradenton, FL (Property #*******). Upon leaving, we removed all sheets, put towels in the washer, emptied all trash leaving the condo spotless. A day or so later, we received an email from the owner thanking us for our cleanliness & stating that our deposit would be returned immediately... which it was. In my review however, I noted that we had a problem with insufficient hot water and the pots & pans were inexpensive for a "luxury" condo with some having rust/dirt. In other respects, I thought the place was great... a bit overpriced, but still very good. It was our honest, candid opinion. Almost immediately after submitting my review, the owner posted a very negative review including a poor rating for cleanliness! I contacted HomeAway to explain the situation asking that I be allowed to respond to the owner's review, remove the owner's review, or allow me to add a couple other negatives that I had omitted. HomeAway refused and took the owner's side. I can only conclude that some owners receive renter's reviews BEFORE they post their reviews allowing them to give low ratings to any renter who criticizes their property. This makes me question the validity of the reviews which are key to anyone considering renting.

We booked our dream vacation for my husbands 50th birthday at a beautiful mansion in New Orleans. Two days before our arrival the homeowner called us and told us the property was no longer available but that he was moving us to a property just as wonderful. We had friends flying from all over the country to meet us in NOLA for the celebration so I had no choice but to take Frank the owner/CEO of Heirloom and an owner that also uses Homeaway at his word. When we arrived the home was dirty, dated smelled and smelled like mildew. There was one functioning toilet and shower for 10 people. I thought Homeaway would help us out since Frank put us in a home not even listed through Homeaway but all they told us is that they hope both sides come to an agreement. I have now been in contact with American Express and an attorney. Im beyond disappointed and angry. I dont think we will be using Homeaway ever again.

I have travelled across the globe for 15 years and used Homeaway recently for the first time. Truly the worst experience I've ever had with a company. I made a reservation, got a confirmation, was charged $1600, and two days later received a cryptic email saying the property was in fact not available. However, they did not refund me the money. After three weeks, and several emails, they still have not refunded me the $1600. I called them and waited on hold for 40 minutes, spoke to three different people, and was eventually told I had to call the "property owner" to get a refund. Another call, another 40 minute wait on hold, and then finally, after three weeks, I get a refund, but not including the "Homeaway fee" of $200. So I had to call one more time to Homeaway, to get the service fee refunded. Another wait on hold, at least 30 minutes, talked to three different people, and was eventually told they could not issue the refund yet, since the property owner hadn't confirmed with them that it was cancelled (even though I had already receieved an email with the cancellation confirmed, and a refund from property owner). Once again, this is an absolute scam. They make millions a year by making it extremely hard to get refunds. Never ever use this site, people. Plenty of good alternatives around, like Airbnb. What Homeaway does would be illegal if it wasn't for the Supreme Court consistently acting to protect corporations against consumers. All we can do after being scammed is tell the truth on websites like this.

I paid $399 for posting a listing 2 months ago for "INSTANT PAYMENT" per the representative as my listing is nonrefundable. All of my renters are happy and received their confirmations but I'm still not being paid. I called HomeAway Payment Department at *******106 and was told all 4 times that their underwriting department is processing these requests and I'll receive an email about when I'll get paid. This is just outright robbery. When you advertise that this is "INSTANT PAYMENT", the listing owner should be paid instantly after the renters have made their reservation and paid for the reservation. It's not acceptable to have owners pay for the service thinking they are going to be paid instantly and still waiting after 4 calls into the payment department and not being paid. HomeAway should be reported to BBB for fraud.

I've been with HomeAway/Owners Direct (now all swallowed up by Expedia) for many years, this feels like the last year. Presently I have over 10 properties advertised there. In the past everyone listed on these websites had paid (quite a lot) to have their properties listed. Therefore most people took care with their ads, good photos, kept it up-to-date etc. Now as well as us subscription (paying) listers they have introduced commission listings. You don't pay for the listing, instead HA deduct a payment from each booking made - potentially this is more money for them. It means in reality there are hundreds of low grade properties with low grade listings (that will also be repeated on AirBnb, Tripadvisor and countless other sites). It also means the good quality listings like mine don't get a look in. HA have introduced "Ranking Metrics" which is ways in which owners can manage their listings to be ranked higher in the search. It's meaningless, its dishonest. My well managed listing is 500th in the search! Behind some absolute rubbish.

Previous review from Leon D is spot on "Horrendous Site, NO GUARANTEES of money back. Do not book through this company unless you want a tremendous amount of stress trying to get back what is rightfully yours.
I booked a property in France for the Christmas period way in advance of the dates. My balance of my holiday become due the end of November. Not having heard from the owner at all since booking, despite having emailed him with my new email address, I felt uneasy paying my balance without any kind of contact. I asked my son who lives in France to call and this is where it all began. The upshot of this is that the owner had unfortunately died and a member of his family had moved into the property that we were meant to have. We were shocked at not having be told this by HomeAway and that they were still sending me emails for the balance to be paid. My battle with them commenced. I had expected to phone and get an apology and maybe sorry we did not know about this, but do not worry Madam your money will be refunded immediately and we will sort this with the owners family! How wrong I was, I had weeks of stressful phone calls and emails backwards and forwards. I could go on but I probably won't be allowed to write that much. My bank have now refunded me and they are dealing with this cowboy of a company, however I am still unable to sleep easy yet as it appears they can still dispute this with my bank.
This company makes it as easy as possible to book but unbelievably difficult to go through their claims procedure. I understand there has to be a system in place for refunds but my claim was because of a very unusual situation, I was unable to go to the property and the owner was no longer around to agree or provide the refund!
Even after all of this I am still getting emails for me to review the holiday home that I apparently stayed in. DO NOT BOOK WITH THIS COMPANY YOU HAVE LOTS OF OTHER OPTIONS. Oh and they are also part of Owners direct so I would think carefully before dealing with them also.

Title says it all. Turns out that if a traveler cancels and the property owner refunds the complete charge (in accord with the owner's cancellation policy), then HomeAway will refund its service fee. However, if the property owner retains a portion of the charge (10% is pretty common), then HomeAway keeps the whole service fee. This is difficult to discover on HomeAway's website; in my case, it resulted in a total cancellation fee of almost 20%. I will not patronize HomeAway again.

I am a property manager who has used HomeAway for years to assist in booking the properties we manage for our owners. In the last 1-2 weeks, I've lost 3 reservations because HomeAway leads the customer to believe they have paid the entire amount in full when the customer has only paid their booking fee. HA will not release the customers information so the we as the Lawful agent of the owner can contact the guest to finalize the booking. HA refuses t give the customers phone # or email even after they have paid HA. HomeAway says that we must mark the customers booking as Paid (when really they haven't paid us at all) which then sends the customer an auto email telling them that they've paid - in order for us as the property manager to get the information for the guest. It causes the Guest to feel that we as property managers are doing something wrong when really it is HomeAway. I've called support 3-4 times now and one agent refused to let me speak to a supervisor. I just called back now and was told the Resolution Dept was closed at 10:45 am Texas time. HomeAway feels they can "rule" everything. They are directly going against our state laws in the way they require us to handle the booking but they Could care less.

I'm sorry for guests because they Don't care, they don't deal with things quickly and they don't respond to issues. HomeAway doesn't manage or handle the properties in any way but lead guests to believe they do.

We as property managers are trying our best to advertise properties so that guests can book and have a great vacation. HomeAway is ruining it for everyone.

I booked a year in advance and my rental was "cancelled" according to the property manager and she agreed to give me a full refund. Home away claimed that her account was frozen and my 1900 dollars I paid couldn't be refunded until her account was reactivated. I booked through homeaway- they should resolved the issue instead I spent countless hours on the phone with home away representatives, managers, and finance department and haven't gotten ANY money back even after property owner told them to refund my full amount. TERRIBLE SITE, DON'T EVER BOOK THROUGH THEM if you are really wanting to stay at the place you booked. NEVER AGAIN. Reported them to better business bureau.

It doesn't matter if hosts have house rules or not as guests can break them and all customer service will do is say that they are sorry that your guests broke the rules.

Any questions you ask will be evaded as they refuse to answer anything you ask them, no matter how simple.

Whatever you ask them to do, they will do the opposite.

Neither hosts or guests are verified in any way.

Stay away at all costs.

We booked through Homeaway, and the dates i selected wasnt available but they took our insurance deposit. So we had to select another date, and of course, i asked if they can apply it since then first one was cancelled. The homeowner told me to call customer service. We booked our stay in Telluride, on our way, we had mechanical problem with the vehicle. So we tried to call but we were getting any help. And it was the day before New Year day, so they said office will be open until Tuesday. As of Today, we have not receive our money back. 4800. 00. Bought cancellation protection of 254.00 in case we had to cancel our trip. Thats bogus! Why buy cancellation protection and now were having problem recovering our 4800. 00. They just robbed our kids of a summer vacation we wanted to plan! Pissed off! They better put this up for everyone to read! I wouldnt even give 1 start for this rating!

HomeAway, owned by Expedia, is exploiting both homeowners and vacationers by using its market dominance to force costly and unwelcome business practices on both parties. We are homeowners providing vacations at two private properties in Europe and, since HomeAway was bought by Expedia, our vacationers have suffered badly from maladministration by HomeAway, in particular having extra wrong amounts deducted from their bank accounts and at the wrong times, contrary to the agreements into which they entered. It takes HomeAway 7 days to rectify mistakes some of which amount to more than 4500 dollars! This is seriously embarrassing for us as we aim for all our guests to have a great vacation and personally greet them and do everything we can to help them with any personal problems that arise - for example finding a lost wedding ring and returning it to guests from Canada. We have been told by 'customer services' that occasionally Home Away has to re-set its website, resulting in our specified settings being 'lost' and it is our responsibility to keep checking that everything is correct! We also look forward to the day when a decent competitor sets up. In the meantime make sure you never use Expedia for airline or hotel bookings.