HomeAwayReviews 1,748

I tried to post a negative review relating to a property listed on Homeaway and located near Cimarron, Co. The owner simply backed out of the rental agreement a few weeks before my arrival and left us scrambling for an alternative rental. Homeaway wouldn't post my review because I hadn't stayed in the house. There seems to me to be a major scam element involved in Homeaway's business model. I would never rely on them again for an honest appraisal of any property they have listed.

Seems HomeAway is all about making money from Landlords and don't care about the holidaymakers.

We recently rented via this site from someone who turned out to be a rogue agent. Cut a long story short:

1/ The apartment was dirty when we arrived, we cleaned it when leaving to avoid a cleaning fee. Got charged a cleaning fee (1/3rd of the deposit), when we complained, the landlord decided to keep the whole deposit.
2/ The apartment was incorrectly advertised with old photos that were not representative. The apartment was well overdue a refurb - the windows didn't even have curtains! We had to climb 10 flights of stairs to get to the front door (no lift), no fir escape / smoke alarm / extinguisher, etc, etc.

So we complain to HomeAway and they tell us to speak with the owner who has since decided to ignore our emails. HomeAway have taken no action, and seem unconcerned about the misrepresentation of the property on their website.

We post a review detailing the actions of the owner, and how the property differs from what is advertised. They don't print the review!

So I guess the conclusion is, a traveller has no protection from rogue owners on this site. You'll never know until its too late and your holiday is ruined and your money stolen.

I've had over 12 listings on Homeaway/vrbo for several years now, and as a property manager dedicated to vacation rentals, feel that I have a good amount of experience. Homeaway has the worst customer service of any travel site I've ever encountered. Furthermore, they gouge you for everything--from special offers, to the new renter fee they've included. Trip Advisor / Flipkey is much better, as are nearly every other vacation rental service out there!

After pointing out some issues with the apartment 5D in Sheridan Square Greenwich Village, NewYork to our rep contact - well to cut a long story short they admitted the very noisy aircon was broken but it wouldn't be fixed during our stay. Never mind that we couldn't sleep! Then the emails got personal and condescending when I challenged them and pointed out other failings that were not shown in the pictures such as 80% of the storage space was full of the owers stuff including out of date food in the the even noisier fridge etc. too many to go into here. Now I am back home I escalated this to HomeAway UK head office and basically am told they have passed it on to the advertisor but will not tell me what comms they will have with them due to data protection - so unless the advertiser contacts me I won't get to know anything. They more or less said put it down to experience. I am mostly angry that this 'rep' can get away with treating customers like dirt and just taking our money with no accountability for poor standards. This issue is ongoing but don't hold out any hope of a resoloution in my favour. Will think twice about using them as they are just a portal for owners to post their apartments on. I think I used their sub company Owners Direct in the past and had no problem though. I think HomeAway own several of the holiday rental companies you see on the web so do some digging coz there ARE lots of good ones out there. Oh and they haven't posted my negative review either - even though it is factual, accurate and stuff we would want to know. Hope this helps.

Had a good experience the 1st time renting directly from the property owners so we decided to try it again. Unfortunately, the property owners we originally dealt with had sold their property so we started looking anew.

I spent a great deal of time narrowing down the property listings that were desirable to us and then sent off 4 emails to 4 different properties asking some basic questions.

It turns out that 3 of the 4 properties were managed by the same company and "Eric" immediately tried to pull the old bait and switch. The properties listed on the Home Away site all implied availability for the time we wanted, showing weekly rates.

Eric however wouldn't take our requests as he claimed they didn't rent weekly during the time requested even though the site specifically said they did. He also said that they wouldn't take a booking 3 months in advance. To top it off, he tried to rent us a property that was not where we were looking and twice the price!

After some unproductive 'to and fro' with Eric, I complained to Home Away about the false advertising on their site. Their response was to claim they would forward my concerns to Eric for resolution. What a cop out. Thanks for nothing.

Home Away is just another web site making money off transactions between people but providing no customer service to speak of and showing absolutely no interest in cleaning up their site by disciplining or getting rid of the unscrupulous lurking there.

You may get lucky with this site but ultimately I recommend that you avoid them since you will get no satisfaction if any issues arise.

Buyer Beware!

If I could rate home away less than a "1" I certainly would. I have been a good - and repeat - customer of Home Away and VRBO for years with no problems. I found a rental in London that offered a pay online option. This seemed great so I did it. I was charged $106 (69 GBP). The owner offered 100% refund if canceled more than 30 days prior. Unfortunately I had to do so but gave 90 days notice. The owner then told me deposits are non refundable so I disputed the charge with my credit card company. After I made a complaint to HA and disputed the charge, she agreed to refund my money but wants to send it to my US bank account, for which I will pay a fee for an international transfer ($25), or my paypal account (which I haven't one). The charge was directly from Home Away but they absolutely refuse to refund my money saying they are just an advertising medium for owners. That is complete bull! Luckily my credit card company stands firmly behind me and says Home Away owes the refund. If they don't give it willingly then Chase will deduct it from them. I have made a solemn vow to NEVER use either site again!

I totally advice AGAINST using HomeAway an other similar online rental services. If everything is OK then you may grab a good bargain. The problem is if any negative issue or experience happens because Homeaway will skip any help of liability. Here is my terrible experience:

I made a booking for a week stay in NYC almost 3 months ago. However, in less than 12 hours before my arrival to NYC, the owner of the apartment cancelled the reservation. 12 HOURS BEFORE MY ARRIVAL!

Consider this: Homeaway will not provide you with any support at all. They act as a sole intermediary between 2 individuals with no liability on their ads. So in case or a problem or a scam you can only claim against an owner who lives in a foreign country than yours so no legal sue is feasable.

Therefore, I had to find a different acommodation, more expensive since I had no time to search and with higher transport costs. What happened if I had not read the email of the cancellation? I had to stay in the street! Who makes me up for all the damage? NO ONE!

What if once you arrive at your destination, there is no apartment, or the owner decides to cancel? NOTHING, YOU ARE SCREWED! Beware, there are scams and your reservation refund is not guaranteed at all.

Therefore, making any reservation in these websites is a risk.

In six months today is the second time that my reservation has been cancelled two weeks prior to my trip. I planned everything with more than a month or two so it is a total disappointment to get cancelled two weeks prior to my trip.

I was thinking that this is a great way for the renters to get FREE FINANCING with my money. They charge almost half the price right away and total booking is charged one month or more in advance so they use your money for as much time as they want for FREE and you get charged with credit card interest. THIS IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.

I've tried booking on this site for my daughter's wedding for 3 months, a good 6 months before the wedding. Availablity calendars for homes are not kept up to date and I have yet found a property where the owner has the courtesy to respond. The only way to contact an owner is through the home away website and with no response, you're hung out in limbo. When asking customer service for assistance, their response is to email the owner through each home's link to email the owner. Doesn't do you any good if the owners won't respond. This site is awful and has caused a lot of stress trying to find a home for the family to share during our celebration. BASED ON MY EXPERIENCE, I WOULD SAY DON'T USE HOME AWAY.

I'm a renter, not an owner. Over the past 5 years I've rented 4 times from different owners on the same Caribbean island. First 3 homes were great and the ads and reviews accurately reflected what we found when we arrived. But the 4th rental was a disaster. I have gone back to the owners ad, with the beautiful pictures and the 5 star reviews, and can actually laugh now at how inaccurate it was, but I was not laughing when we checked in, after spending $6000 on airfare for 10 of us and 4 months planning a big family get together. What a dump. After my return I wrote a bad review, now the owner is threatening to sue me to get me to retract it. No wonder all the properties have only 4 and 5 star reviews. What renter is going to defend a lawsuit just so their critical review can be published? I will never trust the pictures and reviews on the site ever again.

I would give it 0 stars if i could! False advertisement through and through! Pictures of rentals have nothing to do with actual accomodations. When you confrom homeaway - they are not responsible for anything, supposedly you enter into agreement with individual renters. $2000 poorer, never actually stayed at the dump, advertised as "luxury 2 bedroom apartment in Meat Packing district in NY", and cant even sue the company because it no longer exists...
STAY AWAY!

Over the last 5 years we have used homeaway.com for many beach vacations and were always delighted. We were always careful to choose rentals that were affordable - but not cheap. You get what you pay for after all. We've never had a problem dealing with the owners or management companies, making payment, receiving security deposits back or the rentals. As we began planning this year's trip we are getting the "bait and switch". Not on one property... but every single property we have inquired about -- which now numbers 54. How is it that 54 properties are no longer available for the week we plan to travel -- HOWEVER, another similar property is available at more than double the price.

I will not fault the private owners -- we've only had contact from management companies. If you are an owner allowing your property to be managed... please be aware this is happening. We will not use this site again, we no longer feel it can be trusted.

What a total rip off. Their policy is for customer to pay in full and Home Away will get to your ad when we feel like it. I paid for a platinum membership on Jan 1st with the understanding that my ad would not be posted until I had all the information in the ad. I had info in by Jan. 2nd... and called Home Away/VRBO and asked them when the ad would be posted. She said in a few days. On the evening of Jan. 8th I called Home Away/VRBO back and spoke with John G. (they wont give out their full name). I had given him my name and property owner # and he confirmed the account. John G. Said I didn't have my rates in... so I signed in and saw that I did indeed have the rates entered into the website. He said oh!... I thought you were someone else! Did he even bother to look at my account? Ok. So John G. Said he would send a note to production. When I asked when the ad would be posted, he said 3-5 business days. Ridiculous!... its already been 3-4 days past their promised posting date. Meanwhile I'm paying top dollar for the ad and he can't expedite it any more than that... nor will they offer any refund for the week that they wasted! I asked to speak with someone in management and he said he could have someone call me back in 24-48 hours. Wow... more incredibly poor customer service. I had no other option but to ask for a refund and cancel my account. We'll see how long that takes if I in fact ever get the refund. What a poor experience from Home Away and VRBO!

I was going to write that the customer service couldn't get worse, then decided that was misleading. There is no customer service. We have been members for 4 years, gold level (they just increased the cost from $700 to $750 for guaranteed placement) for 3- long enough to know without a doubt that they make many, many mistakes (at the owner's expense) and couldn't care less. For instance (and I could provide many other "instances"): I found my house listed on page 5 after doing a search using the parameters our house falls under. I called and asked why we were bumped from page 1. She said "up your subscription level".
I said "We're gold. These are all platinum above us? In our small town?"
"No. Its a seniority issue."
"We've been here longer than almost all of these other listings."
"You don't have enough reviews."
"We have more than almost all of these listings."
"You dont have enough pictures"
"We have as many as you allow... are you even looking at our account? We are listed after basic level, brand new, non-reviewed houses with just a few pictures THAT DON"T EVEN FIT THE SEARCH CRITERIA!"
"Yes maam."
"Then why dont your responses make sense? Let me talk to a manager."
"Theres no one here like that. I'm sorry maam, I've done all i could."
That's HomeAway for ya!

I have used VRBO mainly in the past and have had wonderful vacations. Recently I used HomeAway? The owner received my money and then the manager of property notified me the day before I was to arrive that the owner had booked over me with a personal business acquaintance? I have been in email conversations with property managers and so called other business accosiates of the owner and expected full reimbursements as promised... to then receive a check for an outlandish amount and told to cash it, deduct what I am owed and then return the remaining money to? YES! I was scammed big time. The owner has a very impressive FB profile. Have yet to Hear anything from him after sending personal messages. All phone #'s do not connect. Everything before hand checked out as legit... but it wasn't! These people whoever they are... are good at what they do to string you along. I lost over $3,000 for rental... but to have cashed that check would have ended up costing me over $8,000. More. I've just recently contacted HomeAway... I have not heard back from them... but the property is no longer on there site. Renters beware!