VRBOReviews 2,004

I will admit that yes I've had 2 or 3 great experiences on VRBO and met great property owners but this is due to detailed research prior to booking. However on the flipside I've had one apartment double booked and was notified by the owner 1 week before. They eventually found us another apartment but not suitable for a vacation rental. Got no compensation from VRBO.

FRAUDULENT LISTINGS! - I've seen two such listings (in the same country and about a year apart). The latest was an apartment that is actually currently for sale (know this because I recently viewed it on the realtor's website). They've used the exact same photos and made up a convincing little story on the listing. It actually had one review which was similarly convincing however the photo used was from a real estate agent in the same country. This person I've met during property viewings and know for a fact they live in the country, however the listing portrayed them as visiting for the first time.
I've tried to contact VRBO re this listing and the other but there's no direct link to report these type of listings and they most they do is say fraudulent listings are covered by your booking.
So in the matter of interest, you show up to your vacation rental with your family and having paid a good few thousand dollars. Get out of the taxi and go to where you're "supposed" to be staying and the unit doesn't exist, is really not for rent or a property for sale. How does this VRBO guarantee help you at the last minute?
Great if you can get a property with over 10+ reviews but if not don't risk it!

Badly trained rude CSR - VRBO/Homeaway customer service is one of the worst i have encountered. I just had a CSR hang up on me 2 minutes into a call because I disagreed with his assertion that their fees were better that AirBnB. I had been on hold and transferred around for 35 minutes before I finally go this imbecile.
Process - Another time, I had them send me a threatening email to refund charges that had already been refunded to a guest because they did not take 10 seconds to check.
They recently changed their subscription and fees which caused a lot of confusion but do not seem to have staffed up to cover the questions.
VRBO is not open about the fees they charge homeowners. Besides a subscription, they also charge 3% for the payment system. Compared to other listing sites which only charges 3% total. I actually get more bookings on those sites for more per booking

I have been a VRBO owner for 3 years and they are the worst company I have ever done business with! Since their new service fee was implemented my listings are starting to drop to the bottom of the search, regardless of what filters or sort criteria are used. I hate this company!

Owner only refunded half of our deposit since there were regurgitated food marks on the toilet and the surrounding area from when my son became sick. We cleaned it up the best that we could with the products available. Owner did not follow the SC law that says you have to give an itemized list of expenses if you with hold any of the deposit, and return the balance with interest. Owner never responding to any of my emails, nor postal mail. VRBO would not help since they do not get involved in deposit disputes once the stay has already take place.

I own 2 vacation rentals in Hawaii and I have been using vrbo.com for 8 years. In the beginning, I could tell that the website was improving over time. Now I feel like they are about to go out of business. I hope they don't but it would be good if they could improve their customer service.
I also don't like how other people can write untrue reviews on my site and vrbo still will leave them up. It does protect the renter but it is unfair to the owner that false information about the property is up on the site. It is false advertising.
Airbnb has taken most of my business recently.

We were early adopters of VRBO as guests, using it often to find lodging for our family of 6. Then when we ended up having rental property of our own, it was our first selection to list on. The recent excessive rate hikes are forcing us to leave. We will no longer list either of our properties on this site, nor will I rent any from that site. They are greedy! The business model worked with owner's paying a fee to list. Now they want to bring in a business model like AirBnB AND charge customers 6%! Not right! No added features or benefits. Guests want us to pay it or "split" it, so I can either raise my fees or eat the added cost. Not happening. We are already in the red with our properties, we can bleed anymore! I will happily pay AirBnB 3% and the guest pays 3% because that is ALL that I am paying, I am not paying an additional $400 to list just 1 property with them! I hope there is a massive revolt and they either revise their policies back to normal or go bankrupt!

Hi,
For those of you who are frustrated with your vacation rental experience on other sites, we've created a new site called Vacationstayz.com. Our site is pro-owner and pro-traveler. It's free to list your home, and free to book. We don't take a cut of the transaction. We offer an optional membership for owners who want featured placement.

The site is in an early stage, and we are working to build more traffic. Take the time to add your home. It's free!

We advertise our duplex 2 different ways on vrbo and it has been a decent experience in the past. Suddenly, I noticed that they are raising my yearly rental fee above others because I will not use their online booking services and they have lowered my ranking so much that I only had 2 renters last year from my booking. Clearly this is not working for me. I only wish that my listing had not auto renewed recently.
I am looking for a new site that has integrity- let vrbo continue to represent only the people who falsely advertise and the ones who are fine with their huge fee that they are adding to our rentals. I have been loyal to them for a long time. Enough is enough.

I have been with VRBO for my beach rental property since 2009 and have had good rental seasons. I was concerned because I had no rental bookings this year where normally they begin mid-May. I had only had four inquiries where normally I would receive many.

I called VRBO and asked if they had any idea what was going on. The Customer Service Representative told me that the first thing that he saw was that I had not updated my calendar. He indicated that I needed to update my calendar because customers did not like a calendar that had not been updated. I told him that since I had no bookings, I could not update my calendar. And then I was told that I could simply click a button to update even without any bookings.

In a follow-up e-mail, he then told me, "As a reminder, listings will be hidden in date search and calendars will be hidden on the property page if a calendar has not been updated in some way in the past 60 days."

This is the first time since using VRBO in 2009 that I had been made aware of this. I have never updated my calendar in the past except with rental reservations and I have had good rental seasons.

As soon as I clicked on the "Update Calendar" button, I had numerous inquiries. I estimate that, by not knowing about this, I have lost a large piece of my summer rental income - at least half of May and all of June, based on previous rental history, not counting people who might have been looking for July and August.

If I did not have an active rental and rental calendar, I obviously would not renew each year. It is amazing that my calendar is not active whether I click update or not.

We've had our Mexico property on VRBO for 11+ and decided to rent it through the VRBO website. Originally we paid them a $249 annual subscription fee to list on their site. VRBO would directly connect prospective clients owners. Then the site was sold to Expedia a few years ago and everything changed. Now in addition to the owner subscription they charge a 4-9% service fee to the renters and force the owners to use their online booking service so they control the distribution of rental fees; i. E. they park the money an escrow account and make interest off it before finally handing it over to the owners. And most recently they started doing it with security deposits. If the renter uses a credit card to pay the rental fee they charge the owner a 3+% credit card transaction fee. They also encourage the renters to purchase outrageous rental/trip insurance premiums through them. Along with all of this the stopped publishing owner/client contact information (emails, phone numbers, etc) to prevent direct contact outside their control. So they are scamming the owners on 3 fronts and the renters on two. This is the epitome of greed. We now refer to them as "Ex-GREED-ia" and refuse to ANY of their services. Hopefully they will go out of business for it but I doubt it.

I have been using VRBO for several years to list my rental property. This year VRBO (Expedia) started charging a service fee, with no warning or discussion. Up to this point VRBO had been charging a few percent service fee on their credit card payments.

I just went through my bookings to reconcile the guest payments with my bank account statements. I was shocked to find out that VRBO (Expedia) has now begun keeping the security deposits. This certainly did not happen last year. I have not received any notice form VRBO (Expedia) that they were holding security deposits, they simply did this without notification. I went through the payment pages and found that they were listing payments without including the security deposits in the totals. Only if you look at the payment "details" can you see that the guest has paid more than the amount shown on the page as "payment."

So what is one to do it there is damage that is to be covered by the security deposit?

Since VRBO (Expedia) is "helping" us by holding the security deposits, does this mean that VRBO (Expedia) is accepting all responsibility for damage caused by guests regardless of the amount of the damage?

At this point, it is time for all of us who use VRBO (Expedia) to DEMAND a full monthly accounting of what each guest pays and what VRBO transfers to the owners. It is time for full transparency by the management of VRBO (Expedia).

VRBO has reached a new low. They are trying to force property owners to use auto-booking so they can charge them even more, and, what's worse, charge guests for using the site. Their greed is unsurpassed! What they are doing is unethical, greedy, and borders on illegal. They have created a monopoly and are forcing those who use their site to pay more and more and more, while receiving nothing in return but problems. Property owners who do not comply are pushed to the bottom of the listings. VRBO is trying to manage financial arrangements between guests and property owners so they can charge both parties for inferfearing in their bookings. Introducing a third party to the booking process only complicates matters, creating problems that did not previously exist. Check out HomeEscapes.com for a FREE alternative. We need to get behind this site and help them promote the new site. We despirately need a good alternative to HomeAway and VRBO.