HomeAwayReviews 1,748

Just got the e-mail tonight about the service fee HomeAway starting charging last month! That is absolutely crazy and doesn't seem legal that you start charging a fee without proper notification. HomeAway says it's for marketing which is a lie to try to justify their greed. Even if. 0001% ends up going to marketing I think we need to say NO out of principle for the way HomeAway handled notifying their loyal homeowners and OUR guests! I recommend dealing directly with your guests even though now I loath paying the annual fee to HomeAway - I can't wait for another company to squash HomeAway! I had a guest request to book and would have paid the "greed" fee. I couldn't get a hold of them right away so I had to accept but I cancelled it right away once I spoke with the guest and the deposit AND the "greed" fee was refunded too. Hope this helps. Thanks to everyone for posting helpful information too!

Been using home away for 10 years and it was great until recently when everything changed. They made a lot of changes in their listing site, but the worst thing ever is they now add a service fee to renters. I pay for listing the property and without my permission or even notice are now adding about 10% to the cost by fleecing the renters. I have just lost one potential renter over this and I am furious. No one to speak to, no managers just the usual run around baloney. Good bye VRBO, home away and whatever else you call yourself. Plus you don't have the balls to respond to these complaints because they are just scams.

I am outragged as a homeowner that HomeAway is now charging our renters a service fee to maintain their website and support their 24/7 Customer Service. What customer service?
I waited 40 minutes on the phone to ask what this fee was for so how can HomeAway profess to provide such a service. I already pay $1200 a year for their service and now they are charging our renters for the privilege of calling them. This is another example of corporate greed. The poor renter already pays occupancy tax and state taxes in California.
There is no service that Home away provides that merits ths additional charge.
Anyone up for a class action lawsuit?

So as a homeowner who has used their site for the past 3 years, I came upon this service fee when I was sending someone a quote. To my surprise I saw a $59 service fee for a $550 rental. Obviously I called homeaway and had to wait 40min to talk to someone. I assume they were too busy fielding calls with other homeowners.

Now lets look at what they call a service fee which is supposed to help with 24/7 customer service and maintaining their website. A fee would be fine if it were a across the board fee such as $10, but when you charge 6 to 10% depending upon the rate with a max fee of $499 that is not a fee but a commission. Who in their right mind would agree to pay $499 to rent a house. This makes no sense. My auto renew kicked in February 5th, 10 days before the change so I will be arguing to have a refund and taken off the site.

Finally, assume each owner pays $350/year to use the site which many pay much more. With over 1 million houses that's at least 350 million in revenue. Somehow 350 million can not keep or maintain that site? This is nothing more than greed and I hope this comes back and bites them in the $#*!.

I guess Expedia has figured out how to recover their 3.9 billion they spent on Homeaway by charging this fee. I do like the lower fee for higher rental properties. My properties are at the lower end cost wise, so my customers get to pay 10% additional booking fee. Even the mob wouldn't be this greedy. I am making it a point to tell all my friends not to use Expedia and am hoping another company starts to compete. I see a few hundred homeowners ready to make the move on this site.

Since Expedia purchased Homeaway in December 2015, they have made changes that were not communicated to Homeowners until we discover the software no longer works as it has in the past. For example, the 10% service fee they have begun (Febr 15,2016) to charge our guests, in addition to the annual fee we as homeowners pay to use their match service is over the top! Homeaway is no longer providing the qualtiy software/service marketing they once did. I will be leaving them after my last current booking. If they plan to use homeowners to generate secondary revenue from guests as though we are their booking agents, they should provide a wage and benefits for all the additional administration time and expense these changes have landed on my desk. Homeaway - Farewell.

HomeAway used to be a great service but then they bought up the competition and started screwing it to the users on both ends - owners and renters. Turned the "service" they offer into nothing but a money making proposition for HomeAway by charging outrageous fees, now to renters in addition to owners, and controlling listings more and more to force owners to pay more for aspects of the service that used to be included or considered unnecessary. This is why we have anti-monopoly laws in this country!

Surprises like this kills our business, I have not had a rent increase in 4 years and need to have one in order to stay in business, now that home away is increasing fees in under "booking fees" of 5%, my rent increase can't be realized and I still have to pay yearly subscription plus 3% credit processing. Way to kill small business homeaway! Very dissapointed of the control and limits this has put on me and my customers. Flip key is looking better in my eyes. Booking fees, ok, but 5%? Excessive. I get that home away brings the customers who make it possible for me to stay in business, I get it, I appreciate it, I do. But this is WAY excessive to do to homeaways customers and mine. Shame on you homeaway!

What are you thinking? Gauging our guest with a 10% service fee? It's extortion. It violates our privacy and our ability to do business as we have been for 10 years.
HomeAway used to be a customer service oriented company. Now it's all about you guys and increasing your bottom line. Well guess what your greedy and sneaky tactics are costing your once loyal customers bookings and our bottom line is dwindling because of your greed.
Seriously, you add a 10% service fee to ours guests and we have no say in it?
I have been a Platinum subscriber for a while and I signed up as Platinum so I would maintain my position and get 12 months of the featured listing. Not only have I not received either in the last year, you have done nothing to fix it after numerous calls. I have dropped from a number 7 in the search to number 55. My inquiries are off by 70% as are my bookings. I pay over $2000 per year with my two vacation rental properties. And now you want to f... With my future booking by steering my dwindling potential guests by surprising them with your new "service fee". And by the way a fee we weren't even notified about. To the surprise of two of my guests who I have since lost because we did not know about your surprise fees. It makes us look like fools to our guests.
They are fed up and will go elsewhere to do there bookings.
In addition when I called HomeAway to ask about this non-optional fee to my guests, I was threatened by the Customer service agent that if I collected the rentals fees directly from my guests instead of going through HomeAway payments my listing would be put at the bottom of the list. Total extortion.
All of us came to VRBO/HomeAway to utilize it as a venue to run and promote our vacation rental properties. Now you are interfering with my ability to run my business by controlling my business by imposing your greedy fees. And you are trying to control my customers/guests.
I have lost two bookings and needed revenue due to your unprofessional actions business interference!
Class Action Suit... Bring it on!

We have our listing with VRBO which is just another name in the same company as home away. We booked all our customers using credit cards and our own terminal for 10 years, as this is a better way to go rather than checks in the mail. When the book it feature came out we denied using this feature as we saw the potential of these service fees as a real threat in the future. THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED. We experienced a huge decline in our listing position as well as inquiries, but felt our property was nice enough to handle the drop in position. Anyhow so we thought we were ahead of the game until last night, using private browser we searched our property on VRBO to find out that we no longer came up!
Looking into it further we discovered when searching an area for vacation rentals the site AUTOMATICALLY makes a small check mark in the filters page to ONLY view book it now properties in that area to ensure customers only are driven to these listings so that Home Away/ VRBO get their new fee. This is UNBELIEVABLE and UNACCEPTABLE bad business. I will be calling customer complaint departments with the local news stations in my area as well as other agencies in handling complaints with businesses. I think everyone should join in as well as drop the book it feature as they CAN charge for this service if used, so just CHOOSE NOT to use it.