HomeAwayReviews 1,748

I have been using Homeaway for over three years, and they have always been good up until now. For reasons unknown to ANYONE, they have become "Greedy"! They say the Service Fee is charged to the customer, your Renters, which ultimately takes money and customers away from the Owners. Homeaway is charging the Owners their standard $650.00 Annual Fee, plus gouging the Customer a high percentage of the Owners Fee. This is totally unacceptable, and I will not tolerate it. When my Contract runs out, I will not renew it! I will find another site and/or make my own website. I think everyone who is with Homeaway should leave them as soon as possible. Goodbye Homeaway! Joe

First of all, I never received a notice for the new service fees, at least one that was highlighted as a change of this importance should have been. Since the change, I have not made one booking as a landlord, both because of the service fee and the change in the program which requires a greater fee than the $200 that I was charging. I haven't found out yet if I get any money back when I withdraw my membership, or what happens to bookings in the future that I have already scheduled.

In the past, I was a member of VRBO. When Homeaway bought them, they got double the fee because I kept Homeaway. Now this, so I am taking my business elsewhere.

Just found out about the service fee being imposed upon renters. We own one property and the service fee alone will be around $300 for a week rental. Homeaway used to provide a service that cut out the middle man and made vacations manageable for middle class America.

Now that a service fee is applied to rentals, vacationers will be looking elsewhere! I stopped my auto-renew, which fortunately was in a couple weeks and will be looking elsewhere... any suggestions appreciated! Flipkey through Trip Advisor perhaps.

So very upset and disappointed! At least we all can rally and make our voices heard!

HomeAway brought in a very high (average 8%) fee to anyone booking through their site. This is on top of the $1200 I pay annually to list my property (which has gone up every year for the past 5 years). I don't see any added value to the renter for this high fee that the renter can't figure out for themselves. Read the reviews, see how long the owner has been in business, and be smart. Simple as that. Paying an extra 8% is not worth their so-called "added benefits". My bookings have declined steadily over the past 2 years anyway. If this fee isn't lifted, I'm not sure this site will be worth the high fees and the hoops they make owners jump through, and now renters, too. There are scores of other companies waiting in the wings, thankfully.

Expedia bought HomeAway for 3.9 Billon dollars in cash/stock last year. This per transaction fee is how Expedia does business today. Unfortunately, HomeAway has lost sight of WHY they started in the first place.

Owner rented homes shouldn't be treated like Major Hotel chains. But, since HomeAway/VRBO/Vacationrentals.com all started, the market has grown. First HomeAway bought up the completion and raised the Annual subscription fees. And now unfortunately, Expedia wants to start making lots of money off the little guy.

Most of us only have one property, unlike major hotel chains and it's going to be impossible for owners to absorb the additional costs, so they decided to use the "Expedia" model and push the fee onto the Traveller.

"The Expedia-HomeAway combination would displace Booking.com as the worlds largest lodging seller in terms of numbers of hotels, vacation rentals and apartments etc. Expedia Inc. would offer at least 1.3 million properties although Expedia and HomeAway officials spoke of 1.5 million compared with Booking. Coms 821,400.

In tandem with the acquisition announcement, HomeAway revealed it will change its business model midway through 2016 and will add a booking fee for consumers. Until now, unlike Airbnb, HomeAway charged fees to hosts but not to guests.

Expedia Inc., which has over the last year acquired Travelocity, Orbitz Worldwide, and Australias Wotif, obviously wasnt done with its acquisition spree as it competes with the likes of the Priceline Groups Booking. Com and Airbnb in hotels and vacation rentals with Priceline, and apartments and increasingly vacation rentals in the case of Airbnb."

#StopHomeAwayFee

VRBO is claiming their new fee will cover and help them place traveler in a hotel or other accommodation in the event traveler is misled or rental is unavailable upon arrival. Impossible, many rentals happen in prime tourism areas during peak season. Regardless of intention the reality is in the event a rental is not available when a traveler arrives for VRBO/Homeaway/Expedia to claim they will help book a hotel/other accommodation is ludicrous. Many of these areas are booked months in advance regardless of hotel or home. Booked/ sold out/ no vacancy is just that. The traveler will now be out even more money because they wasted $ on a fee that is just that a fee! (and 100% non refundable per VRBO's own admittance, even when all other charges are refundable due to cancellation, traveler will not be refunded the fee!) Better off putting that fee to actual travel insurance that will legitimately cover and guarantee losses incurred on/during your trip. Otherwise it's no different than taking your hard earned money and lighting it on fire that's the equivalent value of "Book with confidence"

VRBO is a brand of Homeaway... and you will notice that they are pushing everyone toward the Homeaway name and trying to quietly eliminate the "BY OWNER" part. Why? They want to compete with AIRBNB which is a totally online booking venue. They don't want the consumer to feel that they are renting from an "owner"... they want to be the retailer or our homes. Eventually, they want to wrench all control from our hands so that we just get notice of bookings the way hotels do. Sad fact... they are letting go of the real identity of their brand and opening themselves up to compete for property owner listings with every other Tom, $#*! and Harry who opens a site. And, some smart person will realize this and think that the millions that Expedia has determined "not enough" is plenty of the pie... and duplicate the "old" listing model.

Signed up to HomeAway after reviewing the gamut of sites out there to offer my place for short term rentals. Have had good experience with AirBNB, but as an owner I wasn't happy to stiff renters with their terrible fees.
So I signed up to HomeAway, and frankly haven't been all that impressed with the number of requests I've had for my apartment (which is stunning and has views of Central Park and is offered at a very competitive rate).
Rang to demand a refund and to close my account, and was told that obviously they are able to change their terms and conditions at any time (which I of course read when I signed up... hmmm). Now, being a Claytons Lawyer, I know that you are not able to change price as part of an amendment to terms of a contract unless agreed by both parties, but of course HA will say that I as the party to the contract have not been affected by the changes, hence they are within their rights to change.
I can feel a class action coming on!

After successfully and exclusively listing my lakefront vacation rental property since 2011 with HomeAway/VRBO, I have spent much of the past week setting up listings with TripAdvisor, AirBNB, etc. February has historically been a busy month for me with many inquiries and bookings, but this year it dropped off to practically nothing (and that was BEFORE they added their greedy "Service Fee" for travelers). My business has it's own merchant account for secure credit card processing (never hacked or breached, unlike HA's "Secure and Reliable" payment processor OpenEdge/GlobalPayments, which was breached in 2012), and my listing is obviously being negatively impacted by my not using their payment processor. Add to that the new 4-10% "service fee" automatically added to the total rental cost and it's certainly understandable why rental inquiries from HA/VRBO have dropped to practically nothing...
My current HA/VRBO listing expires March 3, and at this point I have no intention to renew with such a greedy, underhanded company that shows such obvious disregard for it's customers... and quite obviously was trying to offset the bad press it's getting by posting fake 5-star reviews on TrustPilot.com!