HomeAwayReviews 1,748

I have advertised my property on Homeaway since 208. If you had asked me 3 years ago to rate the company I'd have given them a solid 4.5 out of 5 stars. If you asked me now I'd give them less than zero! When Expedia acquired Homeaway in Nov of 2015, the press release read, "It's a Game Changer". I've personally come to find out that the underlying message there was that it was a game changer for the owners and at the owners expense. In the past, I had a wonderfully successful steady stream of rentals and income for my single vacation home investment property in the Pocono Mountains of PA. At exactly the same time as the Expedia acquisition and since, I've experienced a steady decline despite having made no changes to my Platinum listing and keeping current on all of the recommended tools to keep the highest possible search position. My business is now less than half of what it was and there is no end in sight to the decline. It's uncanny that I have noticed many other owners reviews with the exact same experience. Homeaway has become a greedy bully of the worst kind at the expense of the owners and now also at the expense of the renters. This site at one time recognized the owners as their customer base and has completely flipped. They now see the vacationers as their customer base and at the expense of the owners. They recently started charging travelers 6-9% fees to use the on-line booking service and are now forcing owners to have to use that service or suffer the consequences of reduced visibility on the site. The algorithm and best match B. S. they are touting is nothing but a cover. They are using their technology platform and monopoly of the market to line their pockets. My Premium annual fee was about $900.00 which I believed to be a fair price for the performance. So lets say they now drop that to $300-$400 but exact 6-9% in fees from the travelers. That would equate to approximately $3870. 00 based on my 3 yr avg revenue 2013-2015. You do the math. Travelers have a budget and they have lots of choices and this practice does nothing but force home owners to drop our rates in order to remain competitive. The Expedia acquisition has ruined Homeaway and has ruined my business to the extent that I now have my property on the market. Very sad indeed. I only wish that I'd realized what was happening and sought out alternatives sooner. I'm absolutely disgusted with Homeaway and will not be renewing my listing with them and I urge other owners to do the same before its too late for you as well.

As a property owner be very careful when dealing with the HomeAway network. They charge fees upfront to the homeowner and then charge guests to book the property (their new service fee). Not only are they double dipping, they will monitor all your communication with guests and remove you from the site for mentioning other properties they may be able when yours isn't or push your listing to the bottom of the pile via their Best Match policy. Very, very frustrating to work with and they even admitted to having a department solely responsible for monitor your communication. Wow!

They charge the consumer an extra 5-9% of the total rent minus tax. Yep! So, if you use homeaway.com, vacationrentals.com or VRBO.com (because they are all the same company) you will pay an additional 5-9% fee on top of the rent, the cleaning fee, the home owners fee and any processing fee. So, they are defiantly double dipping. AND! If you pay with your credit card, you pay them at least another 2.9% for using the credit card. Stay away from them and use flipkey.com... Honestly, I think they are threatened by Airbnb.com and Flipkey.com.

After booking my rental with HomeAway, I was never updated with the address or any information related to my stay. I contacted HomeAway via email (they don't list any telephone numbers) close to my arrival date and received an automated reply that they would be in contact with me within 24 hours - that was almost 2 weeks ago now and still no contact except for an email wanting to know if I was satisfied with the response (?). I flew the 800 miles to my destination confident that I would have answers once I got there - not so! Thankfully they do list the owners contact number and I got the information I needed from her at 6 PM on the date of my chech in. I will NEVER use HomeAway again and will tell everyone how horrible my experience was. Wish I could contact the owners outside of HomeAway since their property was awesome!

I have been an owner using VacationRentals.com a member of the HomeAway family since 2007. I have loved it up until the recent buy out by Expedia. In my opinion they bought the competition so their hotel bookings would sell better.
If it had not been for one of my inquiries responding back to me that he would not book because of my No Cancellation Policy I would have never known that they had changed my cancellation policy from full refund up to 14 days before arrival to No Refunds on Cancellation. And that's not the only change.
They have done something to the way charges show to guests they now get 3 charges on statement instead of 2. It appears to have something to do with the refundable deposit being charged last instead of first. I require deposit on booking then full rental fourteen days before arrival. So they bill portion of rental equal to deposit amount first then on second billing divide it into the balance of the rental and deposit amount. Sound confusing? It is.
They are charging my customers a booking fee on top of doubling the fee for service that they are providing me. And what do I get for this extra fee? Customer service that stinks, less flexibility in my terms. Now I MUST give 50% refund at 7 days if I offer 100% at 14 days.
The worst part is they have bought out all the competition.

The only good thing is I am getting more international interest, and bookings are coming again since I fixed the NO REFUND ON CANCELLATION issue.

I have used HomeAway since they were CyberRentals, a tiny home based business in VT, nearly 20 years ago. Over the past 3 years they have radically changed their procedure & are now as large as any corporatocracy out there, owned by Expedia. They are completely unhelpful & recently started charging, in my case, to the guest, $120 (weekly) service fee. I have ALWAYS charge a REFUNDABLE $250 damage deposit which I have ALWAYS refunded in full to EVERYone. My sweet sweet barn has ALWAYS been COMPLETELY booked no later than mid March, at the latest, with many shoulder weeks or partials, booked as well. This year I noticed, at exactly the same time as the service fee was added that I STOPPED getting inquiries... NONE, so I upped my placement from Bronze ($799/annual) to Gold ($1200/annual!). Since I upped placement, at least 1+ month ago I have literally had 2, count them, 2 inquiries which are not even bookings & today is June 1! I have the highest level customer service with nearly instant replies, 5 star ratings, online booking, I take CC's... ALL of which H. A. told me (when I noticed No inquiries), if you do this this & this then all will be well... NOTHING has worked! I have had nearly 450 VIEWS on my page in 1 month & only 2 inquiries which were not bookings! WHAT? NOW, I will LOWER MY PRICE which I have had for YEARS, by $200 IN HOPES OF RENTING THE MONTH OF JULY... in Wellfleet, one of the most sought after towns on CAPE COD! Seriously FINISHED with HomeAway GREED, but they got my annual fee so I'm stuck with them for this year.

I'm a prop owner who has had a vacation rental on Homeaway for 8 years. They charge me $400+ and offer many upgrades for promoting my house. Now they are charging over $100 per booking to the GUEST when I book. My house, my services, my negotiated terms -- but they charge guests $thousands to simply use a consumer facing web site. I run my own FB campaigns to promote my home at a Homeway URL. Absurd, greedy and unacceptable that they would quietly implement a monetization scheme on my guests, effectively forcing down my average rental fee in the same way taxes and other fees do.

We're a host for some luxurios Swiss rentals. Homeaway used to be a good company until about 3 years ago but now they're just pulling one stupid joke after the other. Our ad was hacked, they didn't find out, we had to and thank god we saw it early enough before someone got cheated. No excuse, from Homeaway, simply nothing and their service desk seems to be manned with people who must have worked as garbage collectors in their first life. The best protection for customers is personal contact to the owner. Homeaway tries to prevent that by keeping the communication on their server. Sure, their interest is taking percentages from the owners revenues and now they've come up with that service fee. Their search engine is 18th century technology. Even if we put in as many search items as there are possible we don't even find ourselves. We think they do this on purpose just to push you into a platin account. It seems like they're really trying hard to give everybody a bad time, renters as well as homeowners. If anyone can give us a good alternative, we'll be very grateful.

I was mostly happy with HomeAway until they added a horrendous Service Fee to travelers booking our homes. This service fee typically adds $35 per night to my bookings. I have called numerous times to complain but have gotten no satisfaction. My inquiries and bookings are definitely down since they added this fee. All the vacation renters in our area are livid because of this horrible fee and scared of what it is doing to our rental incomes.