VRBOReviews 2,004

My husband and I have two VRBO properties and we find VRBO's new fee unconscionable. As a property owner, VRBO allowed me to list my property for an annual subscription fee or a 10% commission per booking. In addition, they charged a fee to process charges/refunds to credit cards. This arrangement allowed me the option to evaluate how best to keep my property competitive from a pricing standpoint and maximize my income. This arrangement also allowed VRBO to have 2014 revenues of $446.8 million, which was up 28.9% from 2013.

VRBO has built a business and a reputation by promoting that there is "never a booking fee". How can any company justify going from "never a booking fee" to a booking fee of up to 10%. VRBO this is a huge step in making yourself obsolete---owners cannot be competitive with their pricing and renters will go elsewhere.

According to VRBO's published statistics, one of our properties is among their top 10% in production and doesn't even break even from a carry perspective and yet they want more.
VRBO is not looking out for their property owners or their renters, VRBO is looking out for VRBO.

As an owner on VRBO, I just lost a significant booking because VRBO added $499 Service Fee to my transaction. The guest would not pay it because she did not find that VRBO was offering a service that was a $499 value. I have to agree! I pay $1000+ per year to VRBO to list my home and another 2.5% to 3.5% of every transaction in credit card fees. The company was savvy to buy up all competing sites, then sell to Expedia. Of course there is a great deal of money to be made in the travel industry. I'm certain (and hopeful) that another company will introduce a new website modeled on the old VRBO.

We have used VRBO/Homeaway for two summers to list our vacation rental. This year our bookings have gone down 90%, and we don't even show up in searches for our area. We also noticed that we cannot turn off their 'payments' portal (ripoff at 3%). We found that they are trying to charge any prospective customers $200 over what we have listed. They have gobbled up all the competition and now are getting way too greedy and monopolistic and giving homeowners the shaft. Shame on you.

We have been with homeaway V. R. B. O. since 2011 have over 40 five star reviews.
We love helping families enjoy their vacation. In the last year or so the company started pushing hard to get us to take credit cards and online book. I tried to let it go and keep the home rented but now the service fee... who is going to pay that! We really are not making giant profit as it is, the rental income has helped maintain he home etc. I do not choose to take credit cards as one guest scammed us for 2000. 00 dollars and in the end the credit card company took it out of our account, The company really pushes the mobile site and the auto booking even setting up a pull for it by enticing the guests to go to the mobile booking site then sending the owner notices that hey your guest tried to access the mobile booking site that was unethical of them to do that. Is there a place where all the owners are getting together to email each other or something Id love to hear from other owners. I could use some advice as to where to go now... shame they had to run the greed into the ground. C

Wow, our VRBO.com reservations dropped almost 90% overnight and I thought this was due to competition from Air BnB, etc. Now I see that a service fee is charged to our customers who book throughout VRBO.com and Home Away.com. Wow, what an incredible move on their part. What I'm really concerned about is the fact that Expedia, in my home town, bought VRBO.com and HomeAway.com and believe they did this. I knew VRBO.com and HomeAway.com were too good to be true and I see this as the death of both of these companies that have succumbed to greed. Incredible ride while it lasted. I need to jump over the Air BnB who is rewriting the future of Vacation Rentals.

The new VRBO service fee is the epitome of greed and biting the hand that feeds you. It tacks on a 10% fee to my rent which is onerous. It limits the amount of acceptances I get when the guest sees this (up to $499) fee tacked on. Further, it makes it look like the home owner is charging the fee. Charge whatever you want but don't make the fee a percentage of what I charge and don't tack it on to my price like it comes from me. GREEDY!

Hi Homeowners,
We've all heard the complaints! Most homeowners have suffered huge losses in rental income thanks to these@&?%$ at VRBO/Homeaway. Having said this, my plan has been to leave these greedy crooks. Before leaving I built my own site with "go website", signed up for a free 2 month listing with "Vacation Home Rentals", and a totally free listing with "Home Escape"
With all these alternatives in place I still did not feel right about just pissing off the remaining 6 months of listing with VRBO, not to mention all the lost money in rentals they have caused me and everyone else. So I called VRBO and asked for a refund since they moved me way down in the listing since I did not opt for the "book it" feature and have changed the terms of agreement on 2/19/16, in the middle of my year long contract with them. You all know the answer "sorry we don't give refunds." Upset I left it at that until I read someone's posting here on this site to file a chargeback against VRBO through your credit card company used to pay for your listing. I myself used a Chase Visa card to pay for my listing and so spent a few minutes and called my credit card people, explained my position and requested a form to ask for the refund of my money.
I wrote how I was moved way down on the listing pages, how they changed the terms of agreement with no notice and to review this site as well as consumers affairs complaints on VRBO. Also mentioned that a class action lawsuit process has been started in Texas. All in all I invested about 20 minutes calling, filling out the form and faxing it in. I did this about 20 days ago.
I'm am excited to say that "I WON AND VRBO LOST!" I only really wanted a 50% refund, but went ahead and asked for the entire amount. I received back my FULL yearly subscription of $899.00 today! Take that you son of a guns! I encourage everyone that has felt screwed over by them to file a dispute of charges with their credit card company and to ask for your money back. Again I want to thank the person who suggested that people try this avenue of justice, posted on this forum, and I can gladly testify that it can and did work for me!
4/13/16
Ron S.

I understand inflation and don't mind when prices and costs gradually creep up, but VRBO just slapped on a HUGE new to cost to its current subscribers and guests.
In August, I joined VRBO to list my beach house for rent. I paid $349 for a 12 month subscription, $49 for it to be a "feature listing" for one month, and then $149 for a featured listed for an additional 6 months.
This is a total of $547 to use their listing service.
VRBO/Homeaway is still able to make a percentage of each transaction processed through Homeaway payments (which is pretty much all of them) So here is a steady funding stream from each listing in addition to the annual fee.

Then, I get an email notice in November of 2015 stating "More travelers We plan to introduce a new service fee for travelers who book through HomeAway websites, enabling us to spend more on marketing to bring even more travelers to your vacation rental listing and highlight the benefits of vacation rentals to traditional hotel shoppers." When I read this I thought... Why?... There is not really a need for this. But, whatever, if this is how you choose to explain away your new fee, no big deal. UNTIL I SAW WHAT THE NEW FEE WAS! YOWZA! Up to 10% of the amount of each booking? I had a one 3 night booking request which totaled $630. This extra fee charged by VRBO is $56.70!

If I average five 3 night bookings like this each month for 12 months (which is only 50 % of available days), VRBO gets an additional $3,402 a year. If I'm able to book 75% of available days, that's an additional $5,103 a year! And that's on top of the $547 I pay to just list the house and the transaction fees they earn on all Homeaway payments.

This price increase is unheard of and unfair to all of those that have based their rental business on the VRBO platform. We will be looking into the ethical and legal aspects of this further. Shame on you VRBO, Homeaway, and Expedia!

I am a property owner. I have listed my vacation rental on VRBO for about the last 10 years and have been until recently satisfied by this website. They have brought me upscale customers and an increased number of bookings when compared to other similar websites. Through the years, the annual fee that I pay for my webpage ad has increased, but likewise my bookings have also increased. However recently they started automatically tacking on a huge new service fee to every quote that gets created for potential renters. Most of my rentals are from two to four days and while I don't have to pay this fee, it is adding from $45 to $90 to my average quotes!. That's a huge increase in fees and entirely unwarranted. The only thing I can figure out is that the folks at Expedia who just purchased VRBO/HomeAway are behind this. I am very unhappy. Today I called their service line for owners and had to wait more than 20 minutes to talk with someone and the agent admitted I'm not the only one unhappy with this as the call in line is being flooded. Any one out there a lawyer? What can we do? How can we make them eliminate this ridiculously high new fee. They already make several hundred dollars off my ad and get a piece of every rental transaction and now they want what will be thousands of dollars more a year. This people are altogether too greedy. VRBO reminds me of the local county government. They do nothing for me except to demand that I collect an additional 10% for hotel tax. So now I have the government times two! Might as well NOT rent if I don't make any money.
Update: 03/19/16 There is a lawsuit in process led by both an Austin, TX lawyer and another one from CA. Two sites appear to be possible alternatives... although I need to do more research: Homeescape.com and Villas.com

Just try getting any customer service out of this company! Somehow, they have my listing on the site twice... an old one and a new one and the old one has cheaper prices, so I am getting angry people wanting the cheaper price. They take no responsibility for recent renters that destroyed my house and NOW they are adding this SERVICE FEE (anyone any idea what that really is for?) onto all bookings, so the place is now more expensive! WHY? They never asked me and on the flip side when I look at renting a place myself, I will look elsewhere than paying what they call a SERVICE FEE. It´s not really that hard to scour around and find a direct contact with a lot of places listed, so skip them out of the picture completely.

Booked a home in Cabo for February for myself and family, purchased airline tickets, family all excited. The owner backed out of deal saying she had opportunity to rent the property for the entire month, would find us a equal or better property. She did nothing. We ended up renting another property for more money. When we asked the prior owner for the difference, owner suddenly silent and vbro shifted complaint to another dept. who did nothing.

We booked a trip to Rio for the Olympics. Now that all the viruses and health concerns have broke we decided to cancel. Upon cancelling we were informed we were scammed and there was no reservations even though we booked it through VBRO.com. We contacted them and they are not willing to stand behind their $1000 guarantee. So we are over well over $1000 and will never use them or home away family again. Spend your money elsewhere!

We recently booked a reservation through VRBO for a ski vacation in Snowshoe, WV the week between Christmas and New Year's (VRBO#*******). Due to the extremely mild weather, the resort was closed due to lack of snow. As in no skiing. At all. We contacted the owner to try to move our reservation to different dates (when there would hopefully be snow) or request a partial refund in consideration of the extenuating circumstances. The owner ignored our messages. We contacted VRBO for assistance. They encouraged us to file a complaint. All VRBO did was forward our complaint to the owner, who responded with basically "too bad". VRBO's response was "that's all we can do." We then attempted to post a review on the VRBO listing for the unit to warn future travelers of our bad experience with this unreasonable owner. We were told that VRBO's review requirements don't allow reviews on the booking experience, only on the property. So, if I had wasted even more money to drive 18 hours round trip to go on a ski vacation with no skiing, I could have posted a review that I thought the couch was ugly. But apparently if I lose my entire rental amount due to an unreasonable owner during a once in 10-15 years freak weather phenomenon, then I can't post a review. BTW – Snowshow Resort provided full refunds to all people that booked properties they manage. I will never use VRBO again.

This past summer we had the worst rental experience ever. After attempting to contact the owner multiple times and giving them plenty of time to respond (6 months), I finally decided to share our experience in hopes others could avoid. However VRBO refused to publish my review stating it "was not relevant to the property being reviewed". Really?!?!?!? We stayed at the property and I captured our experience with accuracy, so help me understand why it's not relevant. I suppose it's because I didn't provide a 4 or 5 star rating. Obvious proof that VRBO is as shady and dishonest as the owner we rented from. Well I can guarantee we will NEVER rent from this owner or use VRBO ever again. Please share, because VRBO refuses to publish my review.

VACATION RENTAL #
*******ha

I was booked for 4 nights 2/5/16-2/9/16. I paid in full 10/10/15. On 1/16/16 i received an email from Ryan saying the city no longer allows less then 7 night rentals and he offered me a far inferior place across the inter coastal. I stated we booked 4 months in advance to secure a place across from beach and downtown so we could walk to everything. He offered 200.00 in cab fare for a 3000 vacation rental we made 4 months in advance. Again we booked and paid in full 4 months in advance so we could secure the location we have been staying at for 15 years. He said fine ill refund your money. I luckily found one rental left in the area and booked. As far as payment i then went back to Ryan to ask if he could just write a check for the new property manager, or do instant paypal as i did when i paid with my 3087. 00 he was holding for 4 months. His answer was i will send instant paypal on THE 24TH! The other property understandably 2 weeks before rental wanted to be paid in full to secure. Now i have to pay another 3000. 00 out of pocket to secure. Ryan said he could not refund any sooner, ill have it on the 24th.
For 15 years we have done this trip and never once had anything close to this happen. It was a nightmare reading that email saying we do not have a place to stay...
If there is any doubt to this entire situation, i have the entire email chain from day 1 inquiring about the townhome, to the numerous daily emails "shall we book" to the end and not once, even after i said so, did the word SORRY come out of his mouth, nor did i get a call apologizing...
On top of it i was refunded 3000. 00 when i paid 3087. 00. I understand its a paypal fee of the 87.00 but in this situation? Seriously.
NIGHTMARE-+-

VRBO REFUSES TO PUBLISH THE NEGATIVE REVIEW!

VRBO is a joke. They let property owners post anything they want without verifying it, and if you post a negative review about a property they will NOT publish it! DONT TRUST WHAT YOU SEE! We were scammed into staying at a house that claimed to sleep 20, it wasn't even close and the conditions were awful. When I tried to write a review to inform other potential renters VRBO refused to put it on their site. They are all about protecting the property owner... GARBAGE

I was interested in renting a condo from VRBO. The reviews were all good, but I don't really know if they are real renters reviews or not. After reviewing the rental policy for which I have to agree with, I was little hesitant. The policy was very one sided. It protects the owner only. There is nothing there protecting the renter/vacationer. For example, It states that the owner can cancel at anytime, with a refund. It did not state what reasons, emergency or not, and when the refund will be due. It states that owners can come and check the unit, but does not specify required notice time or reason. It required renters to pay $110 cleaning fee plus $49 Property Protection Package. The protection insurance is non-refundable even if you leave the place in good condition without breaking anything. There is nothing protecting the renter. For example, what does VRBO promise to do if the property was not as advertised, is dirty, or unlivable. Full payment for the entire stay, even if it's 3 or 4 weeks, is required to be paid 30 days in advance. What happens to your 4-week rental money paid when you arrived and the condo was not livable?

We rent a house is Kissimmee Liberty village 1183, verbose listing is *******! This house had and does have many bedbugs, the house was sprayed twice while we were there and still when we left they were alive! After paying my rental the owner assured me there was no bedbugs and the was treated, not the case! If it was treated it was a blind person who did the treatment! Although the owner refunded us half our rental he refuses to do more! We had 12 people in the house for ten days sleeping on three air mattresses and the owner thinks this is being accommodating! There were no other houses available! It sucks!