Vrbo Reviews

VRBO breached what I thought was a trusted relationship I had with it. I kept up a 5-star rated rental property, and expect that they would see the benefit to such a high quality listing on their website and deal with me fairly. Instead, they unilaterally imposed an enormous fee on my prospective renters, forcing me to move my listing elsewhere. We get NOTHING in return for this fee. It is nothing more than a shameless cash grab. I believe they underestimated the anger this would foment, believing instead that they had captive owners with established ratings who would not want to give this their brand. Wrong. Think again. I am going to grin and bear it and suffer the hassle of leaving VRBO, advising all my loyal renters, and move to where I will be treated with a modicum of respect.

Misleading fees charged to travelers that think the owners are charging. Bait and switch on terms of agreement. Messing with website so platinum subscription is worthless now! Misleading marketing on their website regarding services and guarantees.

I am a homeowner and HomeAway/VRBO lister for an apartment I own and rent out in Buenos Aires, Argentina as a vacation rental. I successfully listed with HomeAway since 2006; "successfully" I say because up until very recently I had no problems with them nor with the listing. Now... on the website to list, that I pay high annual fees for (and those increased by approx 50% from last year), not only do I see that an additional fee is charged to my guests by HomeAway that was never charged before, but they are adding onto the bottom of my site, "Affiliate" partners; three of which are competitor vacation rental agencies and two of those I know personally and would not send anyone too.

I have had my vacation rental listed on VRBO for 15 years. I pay them $899 per year to advertise to the masses. I pay all the fees associated with my condo... taxes, accommodations license, business license, as well as all maintenance on my unit. All VRBO does is list the unit and make the website available to the masses. Mid-February, they implemented a 10% booking fee to my renters. That is about $100-$130 that my guests now have to pay to book my unit. VRBO is trying to tell us that this is the way of the future and that all other rental sites are charging these fees. That is the biggest crock of B.S. I've heard.

Not only did we rental owners have to suffer through years of VRBO catching their technology up with Airbnb, but now that they are almost there, they have robbed us of bookings by charging a really high service fee to users. Understand this, I pay to list my property with them, up to 8% per booking. My latest guest was charged 9% to book. Yes, VRBO is taking 19% of my income for being an advertising site... Does that seem right. The guest who booked reversed their booking after they realized VRBO snuck a fee in there. My advice to vacationers is to book through the other less-expensive sites like Airbnb or TripAdvisor/FlipKey, or contact the owner of properties directly when you are able to. VRBO cares only about your money and added up to $499 onto your vacation bill in exchange for nothing.

I am very frustrated and sad that VRBO would slap on such an outrageous service fee. Or any service fee at all. There should be no extra fee to the guests. With our online account we already pay a high fee for listing and a fee for % of each credit card transaction. The service fee will drive customers away unless I pay it too. I will not be renewing and will go to Travelocity, TripAdvisor or Rentalo unless VRBO drops the service fee.

New Service Fees Charged to Guests UNACCEPTABLE!!! As an owner I am very upset with VRBO for charging my guests a service fee. I will not be renewing my service through them at renewal time.

Not only has VRBO blindsided all of their customers by adding a sliding service fee up to $499 to all online booking transactions, they added insult to injury today when they sent out a mass email campaign offering a 30% discount to all NEW customers. I guess they really don't care about their OLD customers so as soon as my listings are up for renewal, they will be losing this customer.

I am a property owner. It is absolutely ridiculous that VRBO charges my renters a service fee of an extra $100 for a weekend for the privileged of using your website. It's Vacation Rent By Owner... a way for people to rent directly from the owner without all of the extra fees. I already pay $1600 per year to use the website. Greedy... shame on you VRBO!

We are new to VRBO as of last October. We just learned that they are tacking on a "service fee" to our customers. We already paid for their services and there was nothing in our contract saying they could charge our customers extra for VRBO's pockets. Our customers are already paying 7% sales tax and 5% county tax and we do not wish for them to be charged for what we already paid for from VRBO. I am so sorry - we chose VRBO as our vacation rental site. We will not renew our contract and may just end it now, as we do not like our future customers seeing these extra charges. It will deter me from renting from VRBO in the future and I'm sure it will cost us customers for our rental as well. Very unhappy with VRBO. Avoid them in every way.

I join the chorus of longstanding VRBO customers who object to the service fee. On my $555 fall weekends the fee is $105, on my summer weeks at $1800 the fee is $117. I have never used online payment or book it now (I take checks and leases via snail mail) and now I am struggling to be sure I know what to say to bookers about how to book without getting caught in the vortex of VRBO fees, for which neither of us receives any value. (I believe I need to tell them to click the "email owner" button and NOTHING ELSE.) I also learned about this only from my bookers who asked me what the service fee was for, and I told them there WAS no service fee... 'til one of them told me VRBO would not let her click to booking 'til she provided her credit card to them, and then I realized what must have happened.

Without any justification, HomeAway and VRBO has implemented a sliding scale 4% - 9% "service fee" imposed on travelers booking through their online system. The cost automatically appears in a homeowners quote to the customer. This price is not justified to either the homeowner or traveler so they can understand how the figure was determined. Furthermore, the quote does not clearly state that the fee is not associated with the homeowner but rather imposed from the HomeAway and VRBO site itself.

In addition to Home Away double-dipping on the Visa charge and the new service charge, the ad campaign, which is supposedly funded by this new fee, suggests, "Why share a pool when you can rent one of your own?" Some of us have vacation rentals with shared pools, thank you very much Home Away! This is actually a negative ad campaign. Additionally, VRBO now blocks the owner's email address, making it difficult to do business in today's market. Obviously, VRBO is greedily capturing MORE revenue by making it difficult to not use their Visa payment method and thereby taking an additional 2 1/2%.

HomeAway/VRBO now requires a "service fee" of nearly 10% that is paid by renters. This is on top of the large fees paid by the homeowner to list their property, and also the fees that HA/VRBO harvests from every transaction involving a credit card. Be aware; you are now able to find many of the same listings at other websites. Assume HA/VRBO will be out of business soon in any case.

Signed up with VRBO/Homeaway last October. Suddenly as of yesterday, I noticed this new "Service Fee" being charged. Our metrics have crashed, and I could not figure out why until we actually had a quote where it showed. Part of the reason for this new charge (a crazy amount for a company doing nothing but connecting renters/owners) was better customer service. But twice I called to be on hold 30 minutes to be hung up on, and then 45 minutes to be transferred to a general account. I really hope there are some business attorneys looking to make a huge amount of cash because as far as I am concerned Expedia/VRBO/ Homeaway and whoever buys them out tomorrow has one hell of a class action on their hands over this.

My analytics on 3 of my units shows that the views have fall by 75% since they started the charges. I have never heard so many complaints from owners and vacationers. We are all having to lower our prices because vacationers are not booking. The pricing has gone up tremendously for them. So guess who pays, it's not the vacationer even though it shows they are to pay it, it's the owners. The vacationer is only going to pay so much. I called and they do NOT give us a choice if using them to book or not. You must book through them. If you book it yourself, they told me we might be liable for the service fee. That's terrible. It's all about greed. They sold it for billions, and now they have to get the money from us. We are all looking for other services. VRBO has lost my respect for them. I have been with them since 2003 and have paid the highest fee since they started. Does not make it worth it anymore to pay their highest fee. It does you no good.

Expedia purchased VRBO recently and have now introduced a fee charged to clients booking homeowners properties. Brian Sharples released a note trying to explain why this new charge was necessary, how it will improve services, and how it will not impact bookings. He has suggested that they completed a study to see if the new fee will impact owners and that studies found there would be no impact. Bull - the study was not done with the homeowner's interests in consideration. The study was more based on how will this new fee impact Expedia's bottom line. Expedia has no interest in making sure homeowners are not impacted - the study was to determine if the fee charge would cover the loss that Expedia will see through people cancelling membership. It also recognized a drop in bookings for homeowners that helped them determine how much they needed to charge to recognize a revenue growth.

I discovered that a new "service fee" has been added to bookings. VRBO failed to notify me of this additional fee and I only realized this when someone recently inquired on my rental. This fee or potential of a future 10% fee paid by the customer was never disclosed when I signed up for VRBO in late 2015. Many owners may miss opportunities for bookings as they have already established rates that are fair to their market. Adding an additional 10% to the total booking can be quite substantial depending on the rental amount.

The new VRBO booking fee is highway robbery and as mentioned by many simply greed on top of what owners already pay. Fortunately our renewal is in April and we will find another way to advertise our properties. In the interim, I am putting notice on the description of my properties to contact us directly to avoid paying the 10% fee. At least as an interim fix until the subscription expires. You can always use PayPal and work directly with the renters. At some point if a class action is filed, count me in.

I have asked them to please provide me with documentation supporting their decision to gauge customers from when I signed up and paid for a year in full and they have failed to do so. I have called and emailed and they are not responding. Horrible way to treat owners and I had to find out through my customers who are reluctant to book. I did disable auto-renew. They will profit themselves out of business.

I have 3 listing with VRBO. I pay them roughly $4500 a year in advertising/listing fees and now there is a huge surcharge!!! I'm going to dump VRBO/HomeAway and start working more with Airbnb. To say I'm pissed off is an understatement.

I found out by accident that my guests are being charged 10% by VRBO. I pay a yearly fee already to VRBO. I am appalled by such greed. Why not 1% or 2%? 10% is a lot considering they are not managing the property or the requests. This is very disappointing, I will be switching to a new company soon.

I had been using VRBO for a number of years and had been very satisfied. I now find out that they are charging between 4 and 10% as an additional service fee to the renters. I have found that since they have implemented this fee my bookings have discontinued. This is not right. I would hope that people would switch to flipkey.com.

I've utilized the VRBO site for my cabin for over two years and while quoting a vacation to a potential renter on the phone today noticed a "SERVICE FEE". It's 4 - 10% the total of my rental. Shame on you!!! This is triple dipping, VRBO. Seriously. Not how to conduct business. You were just purchased by Expedia -- who should understand the value of a BRAND. You've just significantly damaged YOURS by poaching from your clients -- that would be US, the people who own vacation properties without whom there would be no VRBO/Homeaway. I held my end of the agreement and paid you contractually what I owed for one year as I understood. I DID NOT agree to an additional fee outside of the OTHER one that you also apply when my guests pay online. I believe I'll be taking a vacation from VRBO. Pathetic business practices!

I have been a member and pay a annual fee yearly every June to be on a website to Rent my place to Vacationers who want to rent by the owners. This month in February 2016, this company started charging customers the 10% fee. I have people calling me to take it off because they are repeat customers. I cannot take it off for them. I am losing business booking, and have not received one since it started. I had 6 reservations in January for July, if that tells you my business has come to a stop. Please help...

The service fee appears to be paying for the VRBO/Homeaway staff answering the 888-640-6970 phone number that recently appeared on my VRBO advertisement. He represented himself as the booking agent. He said I could call the owner to get answers to questions I posed if he couldn't readily find info in the listing... but call him back to book. I don't need a booking agent. I never book without speaking to the guest. Need to find an alternative to my long-term relationship with VRBO/HA.

The new HomeAway and VRBO service fees is a complete change in the business model of how these websites do business. When I paid $1,300+ for my subscription it was because of the free service to the guests. This new fee complete changes things, yet HomeAway and VRBO won't issue refund. They have a monopoly with double the amount of listings of other sites and need to be regulated.

I'm so pleased it's not just me! I reside in the UK and have one holiday home in Florida and have successfully micromanaged it myself via VRBO for a number of years. In January I switched to Homeaway Payments in mistaken belief it would be easier for my customers and me. I've had nothing but problems and my guests get confused thinking they've paid a deposit, when all they did was enter their card details. Has taken me hours to untangle each new booking. Disaster. And now this service fee slipped in by the back door. Just plain greed and dishonesty by VRBO. Yesterday I lost a booking because the on-costs for a short stay make it seem unaffordable and poor value. I'm very sorry I signed up for another year.

I have been with VRBO for 5 years. I advertise through VRBO/HomeAway but also on vacationhomerentals.com which is now part of Trip Advisor. I would say at least 60-70% of my inquiries come from vacationhomerentals.com. I have always taken that inquiry info and input it into VRBO so that I could keep all my bookings in one place. VRBO allowed me to send formal quotes, rental agreements and receive payments. VRBO benefited from me because I brought customers to their website that had reached out to me through a competitor vacationhomerental.com.

I paid for an annual subscription and listing on VRBO, valid until October 2016. All of a sudden they are charging my clients extra fees for the same services I have already paid for, seemingly random amounts. I was told it was on a "sliding scale" too "complicated" for me to understand!! I choose to have customized quotes for each client's request: sometimes I give them an extra night free etc. based on their needs and what I can do for them. I have very clear and accurate communications with each client. Yet VRBO makes "automatic quotes" based on the rates listed which conflict with my customized quotes.

We have listed our rental property with VRBO since 2002. Now since Expedia purchased VRBO they are charging clients service fees. We are losing bookings every day. We did not sign up for this! Very unhappy!

I have advertised on VRBO for years. We pay an annual fee to do so. Without any warning or information at all that this was coming VRBO just implemented fees for bookings. Now there are fees in the amount of 5% added to all my bookings that I am now charged. The company apparently was sold to Expedia. Unfortunately the small business owner again hammered with the fees! No warning or agreement!

What has happened to VRBO? Did the nice people that worked there all quit and the really mean "do nothing" people take over their jobs? I spoke with SHAWN at VRBO for over 30 minutes about the "new fee" and all he could say was "Well, we do a lot for our customers and we are just doing what the rest of the industry is doing!" He had nothing intelligent to say and offered no one I could speak to. So here it is in a nutshell... I have been a paying client on VRBO for years and CAN'T get out of my contract, BUT they can change the terms of the contract at any time! Sounds like the government has taken over VRBO. I will not be renewing my contract and will find another way for my clients to pay me! If anyone starts a class action suit, count me in! I wish I could give them a ZERO.

The new VRBO service fee is nothing more than corporate greed at the expense of the very people who trusted VRBO with their property listing. Sure VRBO charges the renter the new fee... but it's the owner who ends up paying the price in lost bookings and a need to lower rates in order to remain affordable. I am sick and tired of VRBO continually raising prices and fees to the owners who renew their listings. But this new fee? It's criminal.

Someone please begin a CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT!!! We despised HomeAway when they acquired VRBO. Like most owners, we do all the work in booking guests and the follow-ups. Their software is archaic at best. Now Expedia and/or CEO of VRBO (Brian Sharples) is charging a Service Fee!! I've tried to call several days in a row and each time hung-up when it went beyond 30 min of cellphone air time. We are all for companies that make a profit but not when they rip off people! We would not be so angry if there truly were/are additional SERVICES to offset the cost.

I have been renting my second home out with VRBO for many years and it has been a positive experience. It seems that ever since HomeAway bought VRBO things have been changing for the worse and last week I notice they added a service fee of between 3-10%!!! I did not feel I was informed about this service fee nor did I have a choice. When I called VRBO to ask about it, they could not tell me what the exact percentage is for my property- they told me "it varies depending on the rental amount"- Huh??? AND they told me it was not a problem because the renter pays for it, not the owner! But that does not take into account the fact that if it gets too expensive, then the renter will not be interested in my place for rent, hence will need to lower my rates to stay competitive. This is GREED! And unfair. I plan not to renew my subscription even though I have had my rental for over 5 years with this company.

I am a property manager. I manage 17 different homes on VRBO. ALL 17 HOMES have been affected by this. They are all different and in all different areas. We have had numerous complaints about the new fees and lost numerous bookings because of this. My clients pay good money to be on this website IN ADDITION TO paying processing fees per transaction. The reason we chose to advertise on VRBO is the website is WELL KNOWN worldwide and is the largest out of all the vacation rental websites. We chose not to go with other websites because of service and booking fees passed on to the renter.

Just discovered when reviewing a booking request that they are levying a service fee on top of the other fees that they are charging. Really annoyed and plan to delist my property and focus on Airbnb.

I just finished reading Mr. Sharples letter to owners and property managers on the VRBO website. The major item left out of his letter is the fact that HomeAway was purchased by Expedia, and the changes are clearly motivated by a need to increase revenue to justify the $3.9 billion purchase price. I have offered online bookings and payments since I first started using VRBO in 2012. My property has a 5 star rating, and I pride myself in replying quickly to interested renters. One of the strategies I have found to be extremely helpful is offering all-inclusive pricing. During the first and second years of using VRBO I had many potential renters back out after seeing all the additional fees (cleaning, security deposit, sales tax).

I have been associated with VRBO as an owner of rental property and have been relatively happy with them the first 4 years. In February 2016 VRBO deceptively introduced a 4% to 10% charge to the renters for simply booking on VRBO. In the last couple of years VRBO began punishing the rental owners by placing them a lot lower in the search engine if they did not place a "BOOK IT" as a method of payment. This method of payment allowed VRBO another way of gouging the owners and renters.

We just signed up with VRBO on the Platinum Plan in Jan. $1500 annually!! Is that not enough? This is ridiculous. They just add a fee that does nothing for the consumer. We should at least be grandfathered in with "No additional Fee" if you already have a contract with them. Anyone new can then choose accordingly. I have not had 1 booking since they instituted this fee. What's next, more fees to me? VRBO better change this back or they will find themselves with one less "owner" next year paying them anything. Did someone say class action lawsuit?

I have been a customer of VRBO for 10 years. They have instituted a "service fee" on top of their expensive yearly fee without notice and while I was within contract that did not include these service fees. They said they need to charge these fees to better manage the business but when I called to get information on this fee, I was on hold for 20 minutes. This is not good for travelers as it only means higher rental prices. This is completely unethical and the greedy work of the new owner, Expedia, and CEO, Brian Sharples. I will be moving my rental business away from VRBO. I wouldn't be surprised if they receive a class action suit for breaking the agreement with so many homeowners and travelers.

HomeAway charges me $1249 per listing. They have just added a sliding scale service fee. My fee adds up to over 6% on my rentals. There is no benefit to anyone except the corporate greed of the company. What a way to treat your loyal customers and while trying to defend your position.

I'm a homeowner with two properties listed and have been a HomeAway member for four years now. Up until today, I would have given HomeAway five stars. Their customer service has always been top-notch, and their dashboard is user-friendly. A few days ago, however, I just set up a booking and noticed a new line added to the payment list--a 9% "service fee" which my guest must pay. (Assuming he still wants to book after seeing it...) This will severely damage our ability to attract guests and perhaps kill our rental business. The shame of it all is that there's absolutely no need for the fee beyond Expedia's desire to suck more cash into its corporate coffers. It's a short-sighted move and a classic case of killing the goose for the golden eggs.

I've been a VRBO customer for nearly 10 years and have always been satisfied, until the last two months that is. They joined in with Expedia and touted how this was going to bring a lot of recognition and vacation renters. But all it has really brought is ridiculous new fees. Credit card fees jumped from 2.5% to 2.9%, and tonight I read it has gone to 3%, + 2% more for our foreign guests. I was given no warning, when I called customer service they cheerfully responded that it was in the monthly newsletter, never saw it (chocked it up as my oversight).

As an owner of a rental property I use VRBO to help me manage it. As of 2/16/16, without direct notice to me (a paying customer of VRBO), they added on a service fee to my customers bookings. This is outrageous! Not only were not notified properly, we now have to explain detail what VRBO did to our customers. I already have less inquiries and past customers have indicated they will not use VRBO because of the fee. This is a direct hit to our business and revenue. We are now looking for options to pull away from VRBO and look for a company with more ethical practices.

We paid $1500 a year to VRBO to list our property with them. We entered this agreement in good faith, with the understanding that it is not like the competition: we merely list our property for the subscription, and then we can transact with guests with no other fees (unlike say Airbnb which is free for us to list but they charge a guest fee). Well now HALFWAY THROUGH MY SUBSCRIPTION and without any notice, they have introduced a service fee to my guests. These fees are 200, 300 or in some cases over $400! This is NOT what I purchased. I would never have given them my $1500 under these conditions and I have no way to get my money back.

I have been using VRBO's online listing service for the past 3 years with no complaints, but now they have instituted a "Service Fee" that adds 10% to my renters' totals. I did not agree to this when I renewed my VRBO subscription last October, and now it appears that I have to deal with it until my contract ends this October. I don't know how I'm going to make this work. I have gotten no inquiries since this was instituted, and it appears that I may have to reduce my rates to make up for it. VRBO/Homeaway is basically stealing from me. This must be illegal.

We have just lost a $7000 booking because VRBO has added a fraudulent "service fee" to my listing which is $390. My renters just emailed me and told me VRBO has refused to take off the fee and this is the reason why they won't be booking my unit. I have never agreed to the service fee, since I signed up and paid a $1300 listing fee for no booking fees! BAD BUSINESS!

I am also frustrated with added fees VRBO added to bookings last week. I have only used VRBO for one tourist season and I was happy with the booking process. By VRBO adding fees it cuts into the rental owner's profits. We will be forced to lower prices to attract guests. AND I found out from a future guest that VRBO added this fee. This particular guest booked with us before VRBO added fees, then they went in to add 2 extra nights to stay and were charged outrageous additional fee from VRBO. Frustrated that I found out from a guest and not VRBO.

As a multiyear user of VRBO from both sides of renting and to be charged a service fee for nothing has pushed me away from VRBO. I have always thought VRBO was justified in charging me for renting my house and condo's. But they have no right in charging a service fee to my customers for nothing, FULL l corporate greed. The open letter from the CEO Brian Sharples is a joke, nothing in his letter will be used by my customers.

I'm an owner and a renter on VRBO. The new customer service charges deters both renters and owners. The site explains to owners that this is a "small fee" of anywhere from 4% to 10% to my customers. I already pay VBRO for the privilege of advertising on their site and it's no small amount. The new service charges will run my customers away.

I have paid to advertise our rental property on HomeAway/VRBO for many years. Suddenly and without consent, HomeAway/VRBO has violated our contract by charging a service fee to renters who choose my home. This price gouging negatively impacts my business and provides no service to my renters. I chose HomeAway because I wanted a space to list our home. I did not contract with HomeAway to have them interfere in my owner/renter relationship by exploiting those who want to do business with me.

This month (February, 2016), the HomeAway.com group of companies started a new service fee to charge my guests. It is an insane new charge. I already pay an annual fee (which has consistently gone up dramatically, a 2.9% - shall we say 3%), to process credit cards, and NOW they charge the guest anywhere from 5-10% of the entire rental just to contact me. It is the perfect representation of Private Equity / Venture Capitalists taking what was a nice, easy concept and screwing the BOTH users: the traveling guest and vacation property owner...the "Wall Streeting" of a simple service.

Imagine my surprise when a fellow renter had to bring to my attention the new "service fee" that VRBO has sneakily added to our quotes for short term rentals. Where was the notice for that? And it is supposed to bring "added benefits." To what? As an owner/operator of two VRBO listings for over ten years now, I've never had a problem with inquiries/bookings. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This is just another way for VRBO to make more money. I will be switching to Airbnb in the future and other alternatives. If you don't put a disclaimer in your description, the "service fee" looks like it comes from the renter and not VRBO. Shame on you VRBO and your new owners. I am disgusted.

Outrageous. No notice to users, completely inflated rate. I paid them $400 last year, and this year they want to make $3000 off my customers? Customers are even more pissed, they are all asking if they can pay by check on the side. I was already not liking their changes without notice or consult, and this is the straw. Greedy is right. FYI - The customers are looking for alternatives. Great business opportunity for someone...or create your own website on something like GoDaddy (they have great templates, easy to do and cheap). You can easily add a payment system. Then make sure you have good tag words so if the customer queries "vacation rental (your location)," you come right up! You can pay a little extra to be on top. I will start my now so I can get my customers thinking outside the VRBO box.

I just noticed that VRBO is now charging the renter a service fee (up to 10% or $499) even though the owner is paying $1299 year for a subscription -- by far the most expensive in the industry! (AirBnB charges $0 to list your property and Flipkey/TripAdvisor charges $399). Worse yet, my listing is in a country that does not allow for integration between our bank account and VRBO, so we cannot accept automated bookings. The renter will be prompted to pay VRBO their service fee with a credit card, only to find they haven't made a booking, and will have to actually send us the funds via wire transfer! I find this absolutely outrageous. I'm a property manager who cares for multiple properties and I'm officially advising all my clients to switch to either AirBnB or Flipkey. Goodbye price gouging Homeaway/VRBO!

Prior to this, I would have given VRBO a 5-star rating. However, they have now sold out and the new owners have put in a huge service fee that will be several times what was being charged before. Even beyond the fact that there is a fee, they are charging it to customers that have already received a quote on a property. It makes us as property owners look like crooks. An individual inquires, we send them a quote. They decided to book and all of the sudden the charge is 10% more than what we quoted them. It's an unbelievable business practice. I used to recommend VRBO all the time to my friends.

Upset as I am? Like the old VRBO? How about we start a new website kinda like the old VRBO. Simple, efficient, no service fees. While we are at it. Let's not allow competing hotels to buy space while renters are looking at my condo. Who is with me?

I own a vacation condo & have listed with VRBO for two years. The service has been fine until I noticed on my recent bookings a service fee of almost 10 percent! I immediately emailed that renter & told her this was a mistake. (I had NEVER been notified.) Called VRBO & they explained that there will be this 'service charge' for every booking!!! They said it will help VRBO advertise better & if the renter couldn't get inside our property one night VRBO would handle that! WHAT??? I handle that. What a ripoff!!! My contract expires in June & I'm looking at other companies now to switch to, FlipKey or Airbnb. What a pain to deal with! I'm definitely in favor of a class action lawsuit!!!

The new fees by VRBO feel like a breach of contract. They claim to be providing better service with the new fees??? The wait times to speak with customer service are longer than ever before. It is always at least 30 minutes. Does anyone out there have any better options? I am sure we would all like to take our business elsewhere.

I joined VRBO last summer to rent our condo which we spent a lot of time and money renovating to make into a very comfortable and high-quality beach vacation retreat. I appreciated that VRBO had a one-time upfront option for the year, so I could list the property without additional fees and have contact information on my potential renters, allowing me to contact them and have a secure transaction for both parties.

I have paid for five platinum level listings costing around $1500 each for many years. I had been satisfied that was a fair subscription price to pay for the traffic and bookings I received. I even succumbed to being okay with running all the payments through you for the 3% fee. I have always tried to offer a great value to my guests, keeping prices affordable and offering great accommodations and service, keeping my customers happy and my calendar full. Thanks for totally ** up my hard work and business with your corporate greed. You have always offered little in terms of customer service and you will be easily replaceable. I will keep my eyes open for the next site to rise. I have two listings coming up for renewal in the next few weeks and that will not be happening.

Unbelievable! I see a class action lawsuit on the horizon... After using them for almost 5 years, they suddenly want to charge a booking fee when it is clear there in none on an annual contract! This is crazy that they can do that. I will moving to another site to list my properties.

I have been a HomeAway owner for the past 6 years and was extremely happy with the entire rental-by-owner concept and the way they took care of their subscribers and their customers. Now that Expedia has taken them over and immediately added this new service fee, I am ready to say goodbye when my subscription ends. When I saw they added a $500 fee to my best customer when he tried to book our vacation home for next year, I was appalled. I cannot believe they have the nerve to charge such an exorbitant fee for doing absolutely NOTHING!!! Shame on you, Expedia!!! I, for one, am ready to jump ship and look forward to hearing what others are planning?

This out of the blue added "service fee" is absurd. List your property elsewhere!!! Who knows what else they will try to pull. They have added a fee of 4-10% that goes directly into their pocket claiming they are the last property management company to add this fee. YOU ARE NOT A PROPERTY MANAGEMENT company! This fee comes out of the guests pocket but inevitably causes the property owner to lower their rates so guests can afford a stay at the property. Those of us who list on VRBO are the little people and this percentage is a huge chunk of money. And how do they decide what percentage fee gets applied to which reservation? When I paid my membership to join VRBO it did not include this "service fee." I look forward to joining the lawsuit.

Like thousands pay a subscription fee of over $1200 a year to list my vacation rental property. Over the last year they have done everything possible to try to get subscribers to have direct bookings go through them. I refused as I am unable to as I forward my leads to my management co. The result is that they first started penalizing those that do not sign up for direct booking by bad listing placement and on their site warn possible renters not to rent directly as they cannot support the booking. The result is from successful results -- I am getting no bookings. Additionally they just started renters a fee of up to almost 10% for absolutely doing nothing. An absolute disgrace and possibly illegal.

Very disappointed in the new "service fee" being added to each reservation. Owners pay an annual subscription, which is supposed to avoid having the Guest have to pay. Now, both Owner and Guest are paying. The new fee seems to be for "blue sky" because little/nothing is guaranteed for that fee.

I am extremely upset with the addition of a service fee for our renters. I just discovered it yesterday and called immediately. Obviously you do not get anywhere but how it will benefit us! I have been a fan of HomeAway and VRBO for many years and highly recommended it. I just got some more information today that I thought I should pass on. If you do not use the book online feature (disable it) your placement will fall! I could not believe it! Talk about adding insult to injury! I paid extra to upgrade, I have great reviews and I have been a loyal customer. They just don't care. This fee is suppose to help our renters? If anyone has a suggestion in what we should do please let me know. I am past mad. You had better check out this lower placement for not using their online booking. They really get you by doing this.

I was never given warning that my guests will now be charged a service fee for something VRBO always provided as part of my yearly fee. The way they unrolled this new fee is sneaky and I am completely disappointed in their lack of transparency to third customers, property owners. There are other devices out there and I will be investigating them.

VRBO claimed to never charge the guest - that's why the subscription fees are so expensive. When I discovered the "service fee" addition I called to see if my subscription rate will be lowered. NO I was gruffly told. Well, let's act together and change this ridiculous action. We have 14 properties, and by my math VRBO will make about $35K from my bookings. Really?

VRBO's new service fee is a greedy example of arbitrary price gouging and double dipping. We've already paid a subscription fee for the year and now we are paying a newly introduced 9% TAX on every rental transaction which has no basis other than "the other guys are doing it" and greed. They are taking a page out of the Government's book with this taxation. Soon we'll be unable to justify the investment that we make in the property to continue renting and employing help to manage, clean, and maintain the property. VRBO is doing its part to kill investment, employment, and the economy. We'll be looking for a way to get out of VRBO...

We own several vacation rental properties that we list on VRBO. Up until now we have been very happy with VRBO. That changed this morning when someone booked a week stay in our home and they were charged a $400 service fee by VRBO! Yes, you heard correctly - VRBO has charged an EXTRA fee of $400 for simply booking and paying for the week at our home on their site. We already pay VRBO over $1000 a year and that is how they have always made their money. Now they are screwing our renters who use their site. We are outraged and we will be advising our rental customers to avoid booking on VRBO because of this ridiculous, excessive fee.

As of Feb 2016, VRBO began adding a service fee to all quotes for bookings made through VRBO. The way I discovered this was my numbers in the quote were not adding up to match what I previously quoted this potential guest. I then saw the text VRBO added to the top of my dashboard indicating: "We've officially begun rolling out a service fee for travelers that allows us to invest more in both marketing efforts to drive increased visitors to our sites, and in features to help make travelers more likely to book."

VRBO/HomeAway has started charging between 4% & 10% for booking online!!! If you don't book online you are thrown to the bottom of the listings. When I called and complained, I was told it was because they are doubling their marketing and support services. I already pay about $600 for my listing, now they want another $3000 - $5000 for this BS 'Service Fee'. I think this is total BS. As soon as I find another site OR create my own, I will get out of VRBO. It was a great company and service several years ago. But now that it has 'grown' with HomeAway, they are just looking for the almighty $$$. Greedy is what I call it.

I am writing in protest of the implementation of the new service fee being charged to my potential clients. I have been a satisfied customer with VRBO faithfully for over four years now; now having two properties listed, without too many issues. However, this time I am very discouraged and upset with this recent shift in policy. It is unclear at this point whether or not I will notice a significant decrease in my reservations, but my gut feeling tells me that this will not sit well with prospective travelers.

I am totally appalled by VRBO's new customer fee. I am paying an annual fee to advertise my properties and the guest is paying a booking fee as well! The fact that VRBO now charges user fees to guests is a ridiculous sign of greed. I PAY 899US per year for each subscription so that the guest doesn't have to pay a user fee! VRBO says that it's standard practice which is rubbish! Airbnb charges a fee because they don't charge me!!! And the other sites I use (alluraDirect) charge me and do not charge fees to the guest as well. I would welcome any chance to discover alternate ways to receive payment because I can hardly believe how we, the owners and the guests, are being gouged.

Like many others, I was surprised to see my guests charged a "service fee" on top of the annual subscription I pay. They have no right to add a fee until my annual contract is up for renewal. Thanks to all the other unhappy people's suggestions, I will take out the automatic renewal fee tonight. There is a new site called Home Escape that does not charge a fee. I will be going there. VRBO is about profit maximization - not better customer service.

Two years ago my guests and I paid VRBO/HomeAway a little over 2% of my gross income for their service. Their fee is now 12%. That's right. My guests and I will pay VRBO nearly $8000 this year for advertising our two bedroom condo. I just turned off auto renew and am looking forward to finding a company who can compete with this monopoly.

As owner I pay a nice sum of money to VRBO and this service fee charged to my customers is outrageous. I am setup to auto renew but that is changing real fast. The fee ranges from 4%-10% of booking. I am losing customers as other vacation for rent websites are better deal.

I am a VRBO customer that rents his property each year in the winter months. I had an inquiry this year and the person was interested in my property for 3 months. I sent them a quote which they seemed to like and then when VRBO sent the invoice they added a service fee of $499 of which neither my tenant or I was aware of. I called VRBO and they said it was a new renter fee. I cannot go back and add $499 to my future tenant and expect them to pay it, so I will probably lose a renter. VRBO is getting very greedy and when people realize this fee they will lose a lot of customers.

I've been a client of Homeaway/VRBO since 2011. They were purchased by Expedia last year and now have imposed a 4-10% service fee on new bookings which will be paid by clients. They "rolled" out the service charge, but are only implementing it to Owner's with the "Book it Now Button." So my clients have to pay the service charge but other Owners who do not have the "Book it Now Button" won't have the service. There is no rhyme or reason to their madness. How is that helping me make money? I am sure that clients will prefer not to pay the service charge and end up booking with an owner that does that have it listed in their prices. The people at Homeaway/VRBO could care less. It's all about making more money for themselves.

DO NOT LIST WITH VRBO. For those of you thinking about listing your vacation property with VRBO read this. I've been a loyal 5 star client for over 5 years. I had a guest pay through book it now. I set the payment settings correctly but due to a Coding error by the tech department I was not paid correctly and VRBO is holding $500 of my money after sending me an email acknowledging that I would get the full amount, which I did not. After 2 weeks of contacting customer support, and over 6 hours on the phone or on hold I was told today by the Resolution Department that even though it was their error there was nothing they can do to help me and I would not be getting the $500 payable to me.

I have been an owner of two properties listed on VRBO.com for 6 years. When I began posting, the fee was $250/year to list on their site. Over the years the fee has gradually increased to $399 annually. Because they have added some features over the years and because I received a good number of rentals from the site, I believed it was worth it. Then they added a 3% fee per rental, which I still thought was worth it, because that included a new credit card service that made things easier for both the user and the owner. Then I received an email from VRBO a few months ago, saying that they were adding a "small" service fee to the users, and they were using this fee to enhance the services that they were offering the users and the owners.

VRBO recently added a service fee. I have a contract with them until July 2016. This service fee can be as much as 10% for my customers. This fee is excessive for what the company is providing. How did they notify their customers they sent an email one month before the change? Not even a letter. They sent constant emails did not even know it changed until I saw the service fee. When I pay +$1500 for their service and then they make a change like this I feel it is a breach of our contract (regardless of whatever legal loopholes they have in their contract). When I called and asked to speak to a manager about this they refused to let me talk to a manager. I have never had that type of response from a company.

VRBO just added a 10% guest booking fee. This is on top of my $1300/yr. listing fee. VRBO owners... please disable "auto renewal" in the "settings" section. If enough of us do this they MAY change their policy. Expedia just bought the company and is sucking the life out of the golden goose.

I have seen a drop in rental inquiries and have attributed most of it to the fact that VRBO is now adding a service fee charged to the consumer that makes the bottom line prices of our rental go sky high. The added service fee is from 4% to 10% in addition to the almost 3% that they charge for taking the credit cards, the $79 for the damage protection and the almost $1,500 that they charge for the advertising each year. If I calculate the total that they will be collecting from all the fees it will be somewhere between $7,000 and $9,000 per year that goes into their pockets. I beg that all current listers and all listers that are considering a listing with VRBO reconsider. It is very doubtful that I will be renewing my listing with this company and will use other means to list my property.

As an owner on VRBO for the last 5 years, this is GREED. VRBO charging customers 4-10% to book on VRBO. This is a complete money grab. I am the one managing my booking and assisting guest. Last time I check, I paid a yearly fee for my listing. Plus you take a percentage of when the customers pays online. You have NO RIGHT in charging customers a fee. WAY TO LOSE CUSTOMERS!!! GREED! P.S., VRBO, you said the 4-10% is for 24/7 customer support. My guest was quoted a $298.00 fee for this. Is that right???

I just discovered (by accident) that VRBO is apparently now charging my guests a service fee of 4-10% to help operate their website. I can't even begin to express how angry I am by this. As an owner we pay VRBO plenty to cover their expenses not to mention how much business HomeAway has. We have used VRBO for 5 different properties over the years but now we may have to look for another site to advertise our properties as this is outrageous. Our guests pay enough as it is with room tax, cleaning fees, and credit card fees (which VRBO makes money on) and now you want to add on another 4-10%?! Has a guest with a total bill of $1059 that was charge $84 service fee by VRBO. And we WEREN'T EVEN NOTIFIED OF THIS CHANGE!

I was shocked to find that VRBO is now charging my renters a 10% service fee even though I am paying for an annual account. My current cost was $499/yr but now the service fee on $20M in rental will represent a charge of $2000.yr with no notice whatsoever. My choice is to lower my rental rates or lose business. I will be looking for alternative sites and yes a class action suit would be great.

I have 3 properties listed with VRBO.com. I'm appalled with VRBO and how they added this 10% service fee to pay online on top of many other fees renters have to pay to rent vacation property. I'm asking my vacation renters to pay via Paypal or check to avoid this service fee. I am not planning to renew my annual subscription listings for VRBO and I'm looking for an alternative advertising and booking tool to use that protects the interests of the owners and the renters and would still make a huge profit from the annual listings but not require booking fees.

I am a homeowner that has listed 2 properties on VRBO for 4 years and have rented vacation properties through them in the past. I am also disgusted with how they have instituted a 4-10% service charge to guests. They changed the contract that we had in effect and by doing so have hurt my business and lost my trust. I will not renew or rent through them again. Beware.

I received an inquiry today on my vacation rental listed with VRBO and was surprised to learn VRBO is now adding a service fee on top of my quoted rental rates. I've been a loyal customer with VRBO since 2002 and I am disgusted with their business practices. I started using FlipKey/TripAdvisor in 2012 and in the last few years notice most of my inquiries come from TripAdvisor. I receive so few inquiries from VRBO. I just figured they were going out of business for sure. I was floored when I received the inquiry today with the service fee. Needless to say I will not be renewing any ads with VRBO/HomeAway or any of their spin-off companies. I don't think they will be around much longer away is my guess!

It is absolutely disgusting that VRBO now has instituted a "service fee" to our guests. I have 3 listings with VRBO and on top of the yearly listing fee they make a percentage on the credit card transaction and now are charging anywhere from 3%-10% service fee to our guests. When asked how the amount is calculated I was told it is derived from an algorithm. I cannot cancel my listings apparently in the contract it is their right to do this. Essentially, I feel they have me over a barrel and will be cancelling all future business with them!

I have two properties listed with VRBO and pay over $1,200 per year. I process over $40,000 through the VRBO reservation system each year. I don't understand their new service fee. Maybe I missed an email, but I was unaware of the change until the last three reservations when I was shocked to see this "add-on." Wonder if they thought we wouldn't notice (as it's just more money charged to our guests). For owners, you can no longer mark the first payment as "paid" as the VRBO system now controls it to make sure they get their money. If no money is paid on a reservation it's not confirmed through their system so their system is useless to us if we plan to use it for keeping up with our calendars. I also tried to discount a payment to $0 and they will not allow that either. They have taken precautions to make sure we have no way to avoid those fees unless we start keeping manual records of our calendars. Anyone know a way around it???

EXTREMELY unhappy with the new VRBO "Service Fee". This new fee charges my clients up to 10% of the entire stay. I already pay a yearly fee to be on the site, PLUS a percentage of my bookings for them to take payment, but this is a huge increase for my clients. I can't imagine how much VRBO is making off of this, but a quick calculation has them going from my $399 annual fee (plus cc charges) to over $3000 income from MY rental house per year. I like the class action lawsuit idea suggested below. I feel like I'm stuck! My clients don't use AIRBnB. Ack! I've been trying to call for three days and can't get through, due to an "extremely high call volume". I'll bet there is!

Been with VRBO for 4 years paying their outrageous fee for both VRBO and Homeaway.. They are unbelievable. First they fix it to do the auto booking so they can steal the 2.5% credit card fee and now they decide to add a outrageous fee to each guest.. didn't even know it happened. When I saw it I searched and searched VRBO's communication and I found the email where on the bottom they mentioned they were thinking about it. We are moving away from them as much as we can. Gonna get our own website and get a bank to do the credit cards for about 1.5% - a 1% savings and we will book all our guests there to avoid the fee.. I hate dealing with this greedy company and will do anything to get unhitched completely from them. Also called them and was very dissatisfied with the girl answered the phone.. Would not even talk about it or let me talk to a supervisor.

I am also disgusted with the recently introduced fee that the renter has to pay. I already paid over C$1400 to list my property and now they are charging another fee to the renter for no reason. I do all my own contracts, collect the money, etc. so what do they charge for. Since they sold to Expedia they just want money from every angle possible to make more $$$$. I just listed on TripAdvisor and Airbnb, will avoid VRBO and Expedia at all cost. They other downside is that all prices are in US$ no matter what country your listed property is in, this causes a lot of confusion with renters.

The big issue I see is they will put forth just as much time and energy servicing my cabin as they would servicing one that charged half as much. So the only difference I see is the capital investment I have put into my vacation rental and how successful I am at close the sale. Therefore they are profiting from the amount of capital I am willing to put at risk, and my skills as a salesman. I believe if enough owners banded together a lawsuit could be successfully made. And at worst if enough owners banded together this service fee would be eliminated. There is a limited amount of money available to the vacation rental business, and through brute force they are taking a portion of this money because they can. They are in the service business, they do not own, maintain, or close the sale on any vacation rental properties.

I have been using VRBO for over 10 years and they have been great. Now so many changes have been made, but the worst is the new service fee they charge renters. They levied this fee without notifying me and I recently lost a rental due to the increased price of the rental period. I already pay a fee for listing and now they want to charge the renter a fee for renting. I don't think it's legal but it certainly is not ethical. I am going to find another company. No one can answer my question for a reason for this change except for greed. They went from being a great company to a horrible company overnight. BOO.

As an owner of two vacation properties for years and already paying over $2,000/year to use VRBO to attract bookings, I am astonished and so disappointed that they now want to gouge our guests who book with us on VRBO. Many of our guests are repeat clients, so there is no added value for their NEW service fee that supposedly protects guests from potential fraudulent bookings. Unfortunately, the service fee is not optional, so guests are paying for something that they neither need nor want. VRBO also did not appraise us of the exact date that the service fee would go into effect, thus we lost a recent Christmas holiday booking today when the service fee went into effect before our potential guests had a chance to book with us. They were very upset to learn that their holiday booking would cost an additional $450 today, as compared to 4 days ago, for a no-service 'service' fee.

VRBO added a significant service fee for the travelers with no tangible benefit. As an VRBO owner and traveler I'm disgusted at the money grab. I asked the customer service and they said the fee was asked for by customers and that all owners she spoke with were happy that they were now charging a service fee to the renters/guests. Ha! I have lost trust and patience with VRBO. I will look for another company to step up and take VRBO's place. All they need is a good interface for the customer like VRBO. Google has been considering the marketplace and I know they will have more integrity if they do get into it and do a better job. At this point it wouldn't be hard.

Vrbo.com tacked on a 8.16% service fee to my renter. No notice if such action was ever sent to me about this new service fee. Is there a class action lawsuit I can join against them?

I have rented three different beachfront condos through VRBO for some ten years. I have always paid a flat fee and paid extra to be at the top of the search results for the complex. One of my listings is Platinum and the other listing is Gold. For January and February of 2016, my page views have declined 80% or more from the same period in 2015 and I have only booked a single reservation during that span. I do not understand why there is this sudden decrease in page views to my listing. I continue to maintain my premium listing and placement in search results. I am very concerned as I do not know what is going on.

I am both an homeowner and a renter on VRBO and am disgusted by the new service fee VRBO is charging to renters. As a homeowner, I already pay a fee to list on VRBO and now VRBO is also charging the renter 4-10%. This fee is added on automatically. We received no notice that this was going into effect. I am very disappointed in VRBO/HomeAway and will be looking for other means of renting in the future.

I just noticed that VRBO tacked on a $143 service fee to my quote to a customer inquiry. It is a percentage of my rental rate. This unfairly inflates my price and should not be associated with my quote. If VRBO wants to charge people for using their site I don't care but to tack it on to my quote is unfairly inflating my price. It is greedy and directly impacts how many inquiries I will receive. I have 3 houses and am a platinum subscriber but unless this changes I will not renew.

I also have had it with this RIP OFF company! They jacked up the rate when I renewed last November telling me that the site had improved SO MUCH and that the service would be faster, etc... NOT! What is it with these greedy goons?!? I'm switching to AirBnB and am going to have my guest pay me through PayPal. We have to stand together and let them know that they can't just rip people off! Fair incremental increases with letting us know ahead of time - FINE - just jacking up rates and creating new income for them without our input - NO WAY!

I am thoroughly appalled to discover the new "Service Fee" Expedia has implemented. As an owner I was not notified of this new fee when renewing my account in January. I am an owner who provides a quality property and experience for a fair rental rate. All 16 reviews during the past 2 years rate our property 5 stars, I now learn that VRBO's way of saying "thank you" for providing a quality experience to travelers is to gauge our guests for the shortcomings of other properties. I look forward to finding another business with greater integrity to support in the future. I also look for award to the class action lawsuits that will challenge the unethical greed of Expedia/HomeAway/VRBO. I was on hold for 45 minutes this evening in an effort to speak with support services. Practices that used to revolve around customer relations and customer satisfaction have clearly derailed - this company is now a train wreck.

VRBO has done a switch and bait with their new service fee. I purchased a subscription that was explicitly NOT pay as you go. I paid the annual subscription fee and was also paying 3% for foreign transactions. Now this past week, in the midst of my subscription and for the first time since my last booking made at the start of Feb, VRBO charged a whopping 9% service fee to my guest. I waited 25 min on the phone to speak with VRBO. They denied that there were any other complaints due to the new service as I asked if the long wait time was due to this fee.

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 $550 for a 12 month subscription and for it to be a "feature listing" for 7 of the 12 months. I am only 5 months into my subscription and they just added a service fee, 10% per listing, that will cost $5,000 a year!!! What? How about that for a mid-contract price increase!!!

I own 3 homes listed with VRBO for the past 5 years and out of the blue they just added an outrageous "Service Fee" to all my guests of 8% to 10% for all bookings. This will result in hurting my business and is totally unfair to the guests. This increases my yearly payments to VRBO by 1,000% ($1,800 a year to $18,600 a year). VRBO's "service fee" is going to kill the golden goose as homeowners like myself will leave them (as I'm doing) and renters will go to other sites. Shame on you VRBO for gouging your own loyal clients and supporters.

I have listed my property with VRBO for many years. This morning I attempted to create a reservation request and I noticed that the quote that VRBO created for the listing did not fall into the rate parameters that I have set for my property. For simplicity sake, I list my property rates in increments of $100. The quote generated was some crazy number that was $116.42 OVER what my base rate is... And this did not include the fee that they are now charging the guests. In addition to this nonsensical rate that they imputed, there were additional fees that raised the rate by several hundred dollars. This makes my property less attractive to renters and it is NOT what I agreed to when I signed up for VRBO.

VRBO just began charging a 4 to 10% fee to all that book thru them. This is outrageous! They say for services for guests, what a crock. This is another fee on top of the very expensive annual fee owners currently pay. I too will suggest my renter's pay via PayPal and will move my listing elsewhere.

I have a vacation rental and work hard to keep costs down for our guests. Previously we had an account through VRBO and paid about $400/year for the service. They now have been bought by Expedia which tacks on about 10% onto the booking for each guest. This will result in about $4,000/year income for Expedia, a 1,000% increase. There is nothing we can do other than start our own website. They were very clever in encouraging VRBO owners to book through their service, which we did. Now, they can charge whatever they want because the money goes through them. I have no trouble paying a fee, but this seems ridiculously high!

I have subscribed with VRBO for my vacation rentals since 2005. The annual rates have continued to rise which can be expected but since January 2016 VRBO.com has really taken their rates to the extreme. I renewed my 2015 subscription and agreed to the terms to the subscription. However, VRBO has changed the terms in the middle of 2015 subscription and is now charging the guest a fee of more than 10%!!

We have been vacation home owners and run our vacation home business through VRBO exclusively since 2011. We have recommended VRBO to others as we continually felt we were working with staff who wants us to succeed and wants our clients to have the best possible experiences. This has changed dramatically since the merger with Expedia. We recently had what we thought was a one phone call situation to resolve an issue. When we called to explain the situation - expecting VRBO to resolve it - we were met with rudeness. We were quite surprised the VRBO representative did not take what we said as the truth (this was new - and quite uncomfortable to be treated this way), so we then gave her permission to look at our account to see the actual correspondences we were referring to. In other words, we felt defensive and felt we needed to prove to VRBO we are honest people.

I have been a platinum member of VRBO for 3 years. I have a 10 week "season" in the summer when my house is in the most demand. Typically we start getting inquiries around 6 months before the season starts. I have had 4 inquiries on a highly rated property. I paid for the 30 day upgrade to be listed in the top 5 and had 1 inquiry. The performance for the price of this site has dropped dramatically. I removed the auto renewal for the service and am going to investigate other options for finding customers for our vacation rental. With the competition from Airbnb it would seem that VRBO's service should be better... not worse.

Rented two homes in Memphis, TN from VRBO. 4.8 stars out of 5. Seemed great... right? To be fair... it rained REALLY hard while we were there. However, their RESPONSE to the rain was my issue. One of the two houses flooded... literally. Water coming under the door. For two straight days the entire family had to walk out of the house with no shoes or socks, dry our feet off with towels in the car and then put socks and shoes on. We (the renter keep in mind) found a broom and tried to sweep water away from the home but to no avail. The other house that we rented was supposed to be a "getaway". The homeowner lived right next door and every day... multiple times a day drove up our driveway to do work in the garage behind our house. The internet worked less than 1/2 of the time that we were there. 3 of 4 TV remote controls didn't work. 2 out of 3 TV's didn't work. Not much of a getaway...

We put a deposit on the wrong rental, and immediately called the owner who told us she would take care of the mistake. The next day, we found a charge of $2977.50 on our Chase Credit Card. We asked the owner why she put the charge through, and she said her page stated no refunds! She then stated to my husband that she would give him half of the money back. Her Florida condo was listed as Barefoot Beach vacation rentals. We soon learned it is far from that. We had a friend take photos and we were shocked to see the exterior of the place. There were only interior photos on her page. We think this is a scam. WE repeatedly called VRBO who in return led us to believe we would be getting a refund. In the end they were just taking up our time with pat answers read from a laminated sheet.

I have 3 properties listed with VRBO.com. I'm disgusted with VRBO and how they added this service fee on top of many other fees. I'm asking my vacation renters to pay via paypal to avoid this service fee. I also listed all my properties on Trip Advisor. I will not renew my listings with VRBO. GREED GREED GREED!!!

As an owner I am appalled at the new "service fee" VRBO is charging customers. What has always been a great site for people to rent vacation rentals is now charging customers 4-10% just to book. And they cannot disclose to the owners that pay to use their site the range for the charges??? This is a fee charged by VRBO. So not only are they getting the fees I pay to post my property the renters are paying also and they are not small fees!! I have quotes out and out of the blue my quotes are changed, not by me but by a new fee added without my knowledge. Beware renters!! I will be looking at other places to post my property when they renew.

I have been a Platinum VRBO member for 6 years and in the last few months their systems have changed. I am normally very busy with inquiries on my condo rental the first of the year and on this year I had almost no inquiries. Upon checking with VRBO they confirmed that in January 2015 I had 731 page views compared to 353 page views in January 2016. In February 2015 I had 646 page views compared to 92 for the first half of February 2016. If you don't get enough page views you will not get the inquires. After many phone calls to VRBO and finally speaking with a "lead" person they could not give me a reason for the changes even after commenting that everything looked great with my listing ad.

Upon reviewing my credit card statement for the month, I noticed a charge to a company called "homeaway Us".. Since I was not aware of making such a charge I called the phone number on my credit card statement alongside the charge. The company is associated with VRBO. a seller rental agency for vacation homes. I did use this company last year, but did not have a contract with them for the current year. Also I did not charge this amount.

They continue to place my property in the wrong $$$ category... In Feb the system averages the month of March (one month only) and ignores the CURRENT Feb. rate which is $115 and ignores April. All my rates {Except two nights (at 145) out of 31} are 105, 115 and 130. They continue to advertise me at $134.00 avg. VRBO has a filter for price thresholds which happens to be under or over $125 per night. No wonder Airbnb is booking more for me... Airbnb all the way. ** keystone colorado they advertise me at $119.00.

I reserved this property in St. Lucia for the week of March 22-29th 2016 and paid vrbo/property owner a total of 1085.00 USD. I actually paid the second installment earlier than required. This property owner has an unusually long 60 day cancellation requirement. When I returned from a very good VRBO property in Florida the Canadian government had issued a travel warning with respect to the international health crisis with the Zika virus. I contacted the property owner to discuss cancelling -- 50 days before reservation. I am a medically susceptible disabled senior who cannot be exposed to Zika, mosquito repellants or the pesticide spray bombings that are taking place.

I usually use Airbnb to list and rent out my house and one day decided to try VRBO. Had someone book the last 15 days of the month which was a total payout of about $7500. Story gets better. First off, VRBO has NO infrastructure in place to protect you. They are just as good (or bad) as a Craigslist platform. No insurance is good enough so do not buy into theirs or trust theirs. Airbnb covers listers with a million dollar policy and VRBO has none. They make you send your own rental agreement out so it's very dangerous unless you have a good attorney reviewing your docs.

1/29/16 thought I had booked a reservation with Park City condo owner 111719 for week of 3/18/16. Morning of 2/8/16 received an e-mail from owner informing me he was returning my money via Paypal because he had never received a signed contract and that he had already rented the condo for the weekend we needed. After checking with fax machine I did discover contract never sent because line was busy. Do you think it would have been nice to send an email informing of the problem that would have taken 5 minutes to fix before cut and run?

I wrote an email of complaint to the property manager more than a week ago and so have not heard back. I wrote a water downed review of the unit for VRBO, but not recommending the unit. That was over a week ago and again no response nor was it on the unit's web page. Back in April 2015, my wife, grown daughter and I checked out the unit and were very happy with it. When we moved in on December 16th, 2015 the condition was very poor. Had we viewed the unit in its current condition we would not have rented it.

Tedious, to say the least, just entering the information to create an account for my vacation rental. In the meantime, I have easily set up Airbnb, TripAdvisor, Vacation Home Rentals (which is NOT VRBO), a Facebook page, so much!!! However, this VRBO is terrible!! The page would never complete to post and list. I wrote emails which never were returned to try to resolve the issue!! Finally, I called, spent over 30 minutes on hold, only to have the representative come on and tell me that the listing is from 2009??? UM NO! I only entered it the first time in 2015. I do NOT, NOT, NOT recommend this site for listing any vacation home rental. Maybe one day I won't be perturbed enough to try again, but I don't think so. I get plenty of business with Airbnb and TripAdvisor.

I have been working with VRBO with my home for over 10 years and this year they have changed the search method. I can no longer find my house in search even though I upgraded to Gold and my inquiries are WAY down. I have called 3 times and they explain that they are doing me a favor by not having wasted inquiries. I will be the judge of that. Thank you. I think AirBnB is kicking their butt and they don't know how to respond to it.. However, I am not keen on AirBnB because of the type of renter. I guess all good things must come to an end but I will be searching for a new rental opportunity.

VRBO clearly advertised this property as being available on a 5-day rental. When I hesitated in finalizing the 5-day booking of the property right away, VRBO forwarding an email stating, "Don't forget to finish your booking" based on as 5 day rental as noted in item their breakdown. They also emailed me "Don't miss out on the perfect vacation rental, book it now". Being interested in the property I decided to book the property with the financial details as per the noted 5 day rental. After filling out the paperwork and paying with my credit card, VRBO notified me the next day that there was a minimum 7-day rental, but VRBO never once suggested through multiple emails that there was a min 7-day rental, in fact 5 days was shown on multiple emails and quotes.

We have a wonderful group of friends that travel somewhere to meet for a New Year's get together and we have been doing this for thirty plus years. We are all (but one) in our sixties now and the partying is rather subdued. So, to welcome in 2016, we rented a VRBO at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. Our first impression was fine but it was not exactly pristine.

Starting in 2016 VRBO now offers two methods to collect fees: 1) yearly subscription or 2) pay per booking. The most expensive yearly subscription option is Platinum which cost $1300/year. Pay per booking option fees = %10 per booking but are scheduled to drop to 8%. What that means to me the yearly subscription holder: Until pay per booking option was implemented, my house was in the top 10 on the search page. Now, my house is listed between #30 and #40 on the page... because the Pay Per Booking houses are listed in front of mine.

I am new to the vacation rental market. I signed up with VRBO - paid a $400 subscription for the right to use their services and imagine my surprise when I opened my rental link today to find a huge advertisement for bathtubs (BATHTUBS!) on the top banner. What vacationer is looking to purchase a BATHTUB??? Scrolling down the page they were hawking some kind of lunch meats. Being a Vegan I find this advertising totally offensive and against my values. I am considering cancelling my subscription immediately!

Rental in Haleiwa, North Shore - I have rented from VRBO many many times, all over the world and this was the worst rental ever. The pictures were very deceiving... the house was run-down and dirty. The walls and ceilings had holes in them... the sheets and towels were old and the sofa, chairs and outside furniture almost not usable. Aside from the ocean being beautiful, I think this house would not be licensed. In fact the owner asked me to say I was a guest/friend of the owner... not a renter. ADDRESS: **... Are these places vetted??? Advertised as the Balinese House.

Property #489772 - In an attempt to book this property for a summer 2016 family vacation things went South quickly! I received an email that the property was available for our large family on the dates we needed it, a Monday-Friday booking. Perfect! Only some of the pictures were a bit strange, close-ups of the hood, fan and countertop in the kitchen but no actual kitchen pics, only 4 bedrooms out of 11. When I asked to see more I was told that the owner could not send pics through the site. I then requested them sent to my email, but no response.

Where to start? The bottom line, VRBO has no idea how to write software. They've hard coded many options (like deposit amounts) and they don't allow for sliding scale prices. They make assumptions about properties that might be good for some, but not all. Simply writing their software with tables that are user configurable would save me a lot of frustration, and save them a lot of maintenance. I'm ready to find a different solution. So frustrating.

I booked a house in Portland, OR for my best friend's bachelorette this past summer in August 28th-31st. I booked it well in advance to secure the spot and to give the girls notice to book it off work. The homeowner I booked with was fine at first, nothing special. During this time my Mom, who had been previously diagnosed with breast cancer, had her cancer come back and it had metastasized to other organs. 10 days before we were set to leave, her doctor told us she only had days left. She passed away on August 23rd. My friend immediately took over all planning for me and contacted the homeowner ASAP to see if we could reschedule for the fall. The homeowner then told us that he is actually selling his property, and he wont have it come fall. He said he will have another property, just couldn't guarantee when.

Home Away has sold out the owners of properties listed. They do nothing for the owners benefit and everything for the guest benefit. They misplaced my listing on 2 of the 3 websites and only offered me a one month extension for my listing. My property suffered because the listings were not under the condominium complex as where the others were listed. Customer service told me basically it was my responsibility to make sure the listings were correct. This is how they run their site and by the way they charge a lot of money to list our home! Can't believe a company this large has no respect for the owners who make them possible. Hate this company.

We rented a property that was NOT as described, not even close!!! We were so upset. We tried to work it out with the property manager to no avail. We tried to go through the VRBO/Homeaway for help in getting our money back and they did NOTHING. The property manager gets off scot free, VRBO took no responsibility and did nothing by way of punishment to the property manager and told us if we wanted to pursue it we'd have to go get an attorney (for this rental!!!). We are so sick by all of this. How they manage to get away with this is beyond us. We will NEVER use them again!!!

We paid a $200 deposit for rental of a home in Paso Robles from November 3 to November 7, 2015. On September 28th, about 1 month before the trip, my husband broke his ankle. He had to have surgery and was not allowed to put any weight on the foot, possibly for up to 6 months. I emailed VRBO immediately. They said because it was more than 30 days before the rental period, I could apply the deposit to another rental as long as it was by December 31st. They would not extend the time even though it was a medical situation over which we had not control.

I have been a platinum customer with VRBO for close to 3 years now. I have a premium property with over 30 reviews (all 5 star except 1 4 star). We do the 2 week advertisements once in a while. We have every amenity you could think of. We respond within an hour. Pretty much once we get a legitimate inquiry, we are pretty good at getting a booking. Suddenly in December, our page views dropped 70%. And therefore, our inquiries dropped and our bookings dropped.

We were charged E110 for deposit in Aug. 2014 for reservation (ID: **) at this property (Bed Ragois, the Richelieu, #1272000) by credit card. The cancellation was accepted following with full refund agreed. However the refund has never been made despite promises by Ms. ** (the owner). This payment is yet to be received after 17 month as of today, Jan. 09, 2016. VRBO and HomeAway both presented with ZERO help, nor possible for me to post a review to get attention!

I have rented houses for years through VRBO and have never run into this issue before. Last year I rented an Oceanside cottage in Montauk NY and dealt directly with the owner who was very helpful. We paid the price of the rental plus $99 as a security fee through the VRBO site. I recently realized that we had not received our security deposit back and emailed the owner to ask if we had damaged anything in the cottage during our stay, explaining that I had not received the deposit. He wrote back that the fee is issued through VRBO and that he had not reported any damage at the end of our stay. He advised me to contact VRBO, however, as with most websites these days, that is not possible. There is no direct contact with a human person on the site that I have been able to find.

I listed my Daytona property with VRBO on a pay per booking basis until I was able to afford the annual subscription. I had 2 small rental bookings, of the many inquiries I had received. My pay per booking account was blocked because I received more inquiries than bookings. I have one pending long term booking for Feb 1-April 16. This is Daytona's busiest time of the year, with Daytona 500 and Bike week as the main events with all kinds of other smaller events in between. Most of the inquiries I received were for these dates and I had to obviously deny the requests, using the default "Not available" reply on the platform.

VRBO/HomeAway does not safeguard the private and confidential contact information of its owners. You can elect not to share the exact property location on your site listing, and you can conceal your phone number, and use the secure dashboard to communicate with potential renters where they can't see your actual email address. BUT if some Joe Blow from Kokomo just calls up VRBO and says he is interested in renting your house and wants to TALK to the owner, THEY GIVE HIM YOUR UNLISTED CELL NUMBER AND NAME! That stranger can then go online and search county tax records and get the address of your home, drive by, scope it out for a robbery.

I usually list my condo out on Airbnb so I thought I would give VRBO a try to pump up my advertising. Big mistake! Their website is clunky and their phone app even more so. I booked a couple for two nights and they made the request same-day. I had added a $59 damage policy requirement at the time of booking, but what VRBO failed to tell me is that if a booking is made within 24 hours of check-in, it's just not added on. No heads-up, no notice that this very important item wasn't added... Nothing, but the booking went through. So then I had a couple people in my condo and I was totally unprotected.

I booked a rental via the VRBO website. The owner emailed me the next day to confirm the booking and that information to access the property will follow. The day before we left I wrote the owner asking for access information. She called me to let me know the property was not available and had been booked by someone else.

I paid a 50% deposit $1334 on a vacation rental on 18th December after confirming with the property owner that it would be suitable. To secure the booking, had to pay deposit. The property owner then cancelled the booking within a few hours and HomeAway VRBO says it will take 5-7 working days to return the deposit. It is an absolute joke, I had to make the deposit to secure the booking and then the owner did not accept. It is Christmas and due to all the holidays, my money will actually take 16 days to be returned. Contact with HomeAway, less than satisfactory. First they said they had refunded, then when it still did not appear on my credit card. I contacted them again then they came back with their standard time frame. If they take the 7 working days, I will not be refunded until 4th January. Meantime I am paying pro rata 20.99% interest on these fund. It is a sham.

I tried to post a negative review on a property on VRBO.com. They originally rejected it for reasons that did not seem valid to me. I edited the review and then they rejected it because they claimed there was no proof I stayed there. I called HomeAway (parent company) customer service which put me on hold constantly after every question I asked. Then the call was cut off. I believe they want as many referrals as possible and negative reviews cut down on referrals. Not a trustworthy company.

I pay a lot of money for multiple VRBO listings. They have switched to a silly system where I, the paying customer, have to logon frequently to click a random button in order to make sure my calendar is visible. Obviously it is imperative that my calendar be visible 100% of the time and I (did I mention I paid a lot of money?) do not want to have to logon arbitrarily to ensure it is visible. The simple solution is to make the calendar visible interval configurable. All I wanted to do is tell Tech Support about this simple and obvious and easy change. Customer Service blocked me from contacting Tech Support and sent me to a futile feedback page. Very dissatisfied and I feel ripped off. Also I was told there are absolutely no refunds. This is the worst commercial web page experience I've ever had.

I made a reservation and included the two protection plans that they make you feel you "better" purchase to protect yourself. They immediately put a hold on my funds. Turns out the calendar was incorrect and although I did Instant Book, it was not available. It took me almost a week to get the reservation money refunded, then finally reversed. The $39 for Carefree Rental was refunded, but they never refunded the $79 for the booking insurance. It was truly the most frustrating and unprofessional booking experience I have ever experienced. NEVER AGAIN, Airbnb is so much better.

If there was a way I could rank VRBO minus 5 stars I would. Not sure what has happened but in the last few weeks my home, a top 5 rental in my area constantly appearing in the top 5 in searches, has now dropped to 16th. I am a platinum member, with online booking, very fast response times and 23 5 star reviews. The number one spot is take by a home with no reviews and is new this year. A house ranked ahead of me is 3 stars. I asked for an explanation and they just cut and paste some meaningless waffle saying I should sign up for a better subscription level, when I'm already platinum (?!?). Completely useless. Someone should bring a class action suit against them.

For two years in, have been Host in Miami Fl using VRBO. At first they told me for have a better position and more booking, I'd have to pay the platinum level, more than a thousand. For about 16 month my apt were on the first page. I work very hard to collect 28 review, the most of them 5-star from my guest. Since months ago I noted the number of my enquiries were markedly reduced. One example. On November of 2014 I received 36 enquiries and in November 2015 only 3. When I called to HomeAway (VRBO) they told me everything changed and don't have any control about the position of the property. Now after so much sacrifice my apt is at the end of the page 11, where any guests want to check because are bored of seeing so many properties. I don't recommend to any host spend the money here.

I don't post reviews often but I had to post this because what happened here was so egregious. I stayed at a VRBO place in Big Bear for $170 + $80 deposit in October 2015 for one night expecting a somewhat luxurious getaway. The place looked as advertised, but as it got colder at night (40 degrees) I realized that the heater wasn't working. I called the owner and she tried to troubleshoot by phone, but she couldn't fix it. She apologized and said that she lived far away and could not get it fixed that night. She offered space heaters that I pulled from the attic, one of which didn't work, and the other was WAY too loud to sleep with. So we slept in our jackets.

I have experienced VRBO's policy changes becoming more invasive, "forcing" property owners to fall in line with their system or have their compliance score be adversely affected. We pay a premium - every year $700 and that used to mean something. Now if we choose to not use the credit card program or their automated mailings - both of which were activated without our permission, then we are downgraded on the page. There ought to be a class action suit brought against this company for what they're are doing to the property owners.

We had rented a property over Thanksgiving thru VRBO. The property ended up being a scam and we canceled. The owner of the property told us we forfeited our damaged deposit of $350. We told the owner that his property description was a scam and we wanted no part of it. He then threatened to come to our house, as he had our address, and will deal with us personally. He wrote this on the VRBO email system. We immediately contacted VRBO and all we got was blather. They wrote long scripted messages saying they would look into the wrongdoing and get back to us. They told us their "security" people were looking into the situation and would soon ban the property owner from VRBO until he returned our damage deposit. All that happened was that the property owner changed the description of his property and to date we still have not got our damage deposit back. Very disappointed with VRBO in particular since we were threatened.

I liked the ease of booking a house without having to deal with the owners. BUT... we stayed in several different cabins in Big Bear Lake, and the last one through VRBO. We liked the interior, but had to close all the shutters and blinds to avoid the intrusive crack-head neighbors whose car alarm went off repeatedly and gang bangers arrived thumping their sound systems for hours, coming and going as if they were getting drugs from a meth lab next door.

I wish I never would have signed up with VRBO. It has been a disaster from the get go. Today I receive an email stating that I was charged $25 for a guest cancelling their reservation! This is on money that I never received, that VRBO has been floating! Unethical, bad business model, powerless customer service.

I received a review that said exactly where I live. Even though it is part of VRBO's guidelines tenants can't reveal where you live. Because they didn't give my exact address instead described exactly where I live, it doesn't count. Plus you can go to Airbnb and get membership for FREE!! Plus I have received 3 times the amount of booking from Airbnb.... btw it's FREE! VRBO is $349, ug!

We tried to book this property for 2 weeks. We received a quote and emailed a few questions about viewing the property and our intentions. We decided to put down our card to make a reservation even though we were unable to view the property due to it being currently occupied. We then received an email stating that the rate quoted was based on a monthly rate and since we only needed 2 weeks the price over doubled, but then offered us a smaller unit for less time for still more than originally quoted. When we called to talk to them about this issue they tried to explain that this was a monthly rental. After a lot of double talk they kept pushing the other property and we found that the one that we tried to reserve wasn't even available for a whole month. Total bait and switch. They kept pushing their alternate property and I can't help but wonder if that is the one they are trying to rent all along. Totally shady.

Stay far away from VRBO! We "reserved" a property through their website. Subsequent correspondence was intercepted by a spoofer through a flaw in their security with the owner. We are out more than $3000, and VRBO declines to respond.

After many years working with vrbo, they recently were bought by expedia, and have changed their whole system to no longer be fair or ethical with home owners. Instead they pushing hotel stays which their company now controls and they are pushing houses that they take 10% of booking listings with instead of following the rules of the system which we signed up for. We have been paying for platinum listings and keeping a 100% success rate with guests and the company for years. All of that $ and work equaled us in the top 15 listings for our area. Now that the company has been acquired by big business they have changed the system to not allow platinum house owners any real benefit. Now the cost it costs to keep these spots with the company doesn't even get covered by the rental amount they are bringing in for us. It's too bad because this company used to be the best out there. Beware if you're thinking of listing with vrbo.

I'm writing hoping others will follow. I have been a member/property owner since 2008 with VRBO. This time their changes have put my unit from second to 50 something placement in our building alone on their site. I paid for platinum and also paid another $300.00 and followed all their guidelines to make sure I stayed in my place that I have secured. They are not consistent and I find their latest changes to be very hurtful to our income. We count on the revenue to help pay for our unit. They have given us no real answers when we have contacted them. I wish we could file a class action lawsuit against them. They have also let management companies take over the site and I believe VRBO stands for vacation rental by OWNERS!!! Not management companies. I believe there are many other unhappy VRBO subscribers who were blindsided by these changes. Sincerely, owner of a VRBO site.

After one and one half years of VRBO I have had a few situations you are not told about in the contract. You have no control over the reviews which are written about your property and the guest is more important to VRBO than your business. This itself may not mean a lot since we have had 38 five star and one four star review. The four star was an excellent review with the exception of the hide-a-bed mattress which we replace the following week. We were able to response to the review with the fact had you simply called us we would have replaced the mattress the next day. Quest don't understand a homeowner cannot read their mind and fix anything until they are told. We recently had a family of eight with six children who created some damage which required less than a thousand dollars to repair.

In October of 2014 I inquired of vacation homes in the Central Coast on VRBO website. Without my knowledge a booking was made through Seaside Real Estate in Morro Bay California. I first noticed the charge the end of July 2015 on my credit card bill for the week of July 4 for 3,600.00. I am being charged for a home I never stayed at and with no record of a booking by VRBO. Seaside Real Estate refuses to even have a conversation of this transaction forcing me to seek a lawyer. VRBO continue to deny a booking took place; however, I am in fact being charged almost 3,600.00

After paying >$1500/yr to have the platinum advertisement with vrbo.com plus the Home Away ads (charged before the two merged), our position was moved to 34th place, sometimes 50th, even though we've been advertising through them for 7 years, have had a history of many yearly bookings, have professional pictures, respond within hours of an inquiry, have generated >1,000/yr of payment processing fees, have had over 66 reviews, yet they put us in 34th or later placement. Ahead of our home, are chains and many homes without as many ratings/bookings/all higher prices/fewer amenities etc.

I am an owner who has been listing several properties with Homeaway and VRBO since 2009. We have now stopped due to several problems and do not recommend going through them for renting out your property or renting a property from others. We paid for a gold subscription level (899 dollars) instead of the classic at 399 dollars. The results in page views and inquiries were exactly the same, a fact even confirmed by their customer care team! They are refusing to refund us for the excess paid for a service they have not rendered. We have had much better results using other companies to advertise. Also, we have had clients contact us after having booked a fake apartment through their system. They were never refunded. The first client which came to us with this was back in 2011, and obviously this is still happening.

For years I had listings on VRBO when it actually meant something. Vacation Rental By Owner. Today I have grown and for the past few years have listed up to 30 properties on HomeAway and VRBO. I have never been more frustrated with the greedy company than I am today. I probably pay an average of $1600 per listing. Every day, as we all know who list on this site, we are thrown a new hoop to just through. For years I have jumped. And what good does it do. Nothing. I pay for platinum. I use the stupid "book it now" which I don't want nor does the traveler. I update calendars just for the sake of updating calendars . And what do I get? I slide further and further down in the rankings.

We rented online through VRBO (HomeAway) a vacation rental for Boston and paid $1140 plus $425 damage deposit. The full amount was charged to our credit card at the time of booking (Sept 17, 2015). We tried starting October 10 to contact the owner both independently and through VRBO and he never responded to our attempts, thus we had no way to access the rental or any information.

Okay. I'm going to try to make this short. We booked a trip on VRBO for a condo. 8 business days later my mother was hospitalized. She had an appendicitis and they also found cancer. I called the owner of the property immediately. Told her my whole story and I did not request a refund but just to reschedule our trip for a later date. They would not work with me! We had already paid $1,100. And they wanted another $800 to reschedule!

A tenant, who told us, "The house is great," and who added an extra week, and then also asked to reserve for next year, wrote a bad review, after we (the home owners) told him about some damage. And get this - we didn't even charge him to fix that damage. In good faith we absorbed the cost and sent him money back. The tenant also did not pay the house cleaner which he was supposed to do in the contract, sticking us with the cost. The tenant also said something out of context in one of his negative attacks. He said, "The owners were swimming in the pool," when he arrived. Well he FORGOT to mention that he arrived 7-8 hours too early and that we ALLOWED him to stay. That's right, we gave him an extra day and we left immediately.

I had a bad experience with VRBO. In trying to organize a trip I tendered my payment for the week. I next got an email saying the transaction was canceled. On following up with the property owner she blamed the VRBO technology but expressly told me she would work it out and save those dates for me. A week before my trip she canceled it. Lesson learned. Always keep a backup plan with VRBO. Sadly VRBO would do nothing to help and would not allow me to post a review for other travelers. I found a company called Airbnb that seems to have better offerings. Hopefully that will pan out.

Booked an oceanfront suite with a private balcony. We got room 217 @ DBR and Conference Center. It was ocean front but the roof of the cabana bar was directly in front of our balcony! The suite (Room), it was not a suite. Was supposed to be fully equipped, it only had a few assorted cups, plates, pans, etc. We booked the stay through VRBO.com and paid what I thought was a premium price for 8 nights, $1512.75 which I thought was high. Then when we checked out, was charged $135.04 and was told that was the condo fee $15.88 per night, that nobody had mentioned! Total $1647.79 for a under equipped room with a bad view! Oh, did I mention the bathroom was so small you almost had to stand in the bathtub to close or open the bathroom door? P.S. A friend went to Cancun for 4 days and spent less than half of what we did, including airfare. Just saying.

VRBO is the worst site ever. They don't let hosts review guests so since there's no qualifying who's staying at your house, our first guest was a woman who traded sex for the fare with her taxi cab driver as she had no money. They also accidentally booked her in for a longer period of time than she paid for. They synced my calendar with the wrong property, so they had space blocked out on my one listing instead of the correct listing. We have a bedroom suite and they won't let you list the pricing separately so every quote they send out for a booking is incorrect. I edited the quote they sent tonight and they figured their commission wrong. I called to question it and the rep said it was a "rarity in the algorithm" that computed it incorrectly and couldn't be fixed. They can't figure 10% incorrectly? And of course, it's in their favor.

I wanted to rent an apartment advertised by VRBO HOMEAWAY. Owner asked for a security deposit/damages of 1,300 euros more than what rental payments would be each month. Money was sent to Giacinto ** as requested 4 months prior to my arrival in Florence. Once he received my money, HE cancelled my contract for no reason. I was stunned! I asked that my money be returned either to my friend who lives in Florence, either the euros I sent him or the $1,904.60 in Canadian funds that came out of my account. At first his response was OK then he came up with some excuse why he could not do this. One month later he sent a money transfer to Canada which was neither in euros or Canadian funds owing. My bank sent him a letter stating that the amount owing to me was still $228.15.

Does not report your actual comments. Homeowners try and scam you out of deposits and whatever else they can do! Website is no help. Take your money and run!

We are regular people who have traveled for many years and stayed in vacation rental homes listed by either VRBO or Home Away from Michigan all the way to Florida. We found every home we stayed in was exactly as advertised, clean and the owners we talked to were all very pleasant people to deal with. We liked the experience so much that we decided to buy a vacation home of our own in Florida and listed the home with VRBO. Other than a few minor format changes they made, we have found that they have been an excellent resource to list our home. We get many happy renters who leave great reviews of their stay. VRBO/HomeAway handles everything from the listing to booking and refunds. They are very responsive to both owners and renters and are a professional company made up of many vacation homeowners themselves.

I paid over $1,000 for a year's subscription to VRBO.com, and I just noticed that they have ads for competing rentals within my ad! That is like a TV station charging Coke to air a Coke ad and then the TV station inserts a Pepsi ad within the Coke ad to "show them a multitude of choices so they find their best match". I'm not kidding, that is what VRBO told me in an email that basically said "too bad, if you do not like it, take your business elsewhere" which I am certainly doing when my ad expires. The practice may be legal, but it sure is unethical.

I've had listings on VRBO for 10 years and before they were bought out by Homeaway, they were great. After the buyout, there was a huge rate increase. When I first listed with VRBO, I was told that the earlier listing would be first to show up on their listing level (gold, platinum, etc). In the middle of the year I had paid for, they stopped doing this and had different rules about the listing order (if you took credit cards, how many pictures, how fast you answered emails). Also, without telling us, if we didn't click on out calendar enough to suit them, they would just block our property out and nobody would see it.

I used VRBO for many years with great success. The company was purchased a couple of years ago by a holding company that is simply ruining this business both for people trying to rent a place and for people doing the renting. The fees are outrageous now, the service is nondescript to awful. It is almost as if they bought the company to wring every last nickel out of it short term. And they will then undoubtedly sell it to some unsuspecting person who will have just bought a hornet's nest. VRBO owners hate them with a passion but don't really have any choice. Instead of taking their enviable position in the marketplace and using it to grow they have decided to use their position to rip off and degrade their clients. This is a disgusting example of corporate greed and shortsightedness. I am confident they will ultimately fail because they treat everyone they interact with abusively.

We clicked a button that said "Request a Reservation," expecting to hear back from the owner about availability. Instead he charged our credit card as if we had clicked a "Reserve Now" button and when we communicated immediately that we had made other plans while we were waiting to hear about availability, he said that he had just turned someone else down for our reservation and we were locked in. I requested that he just contact the other party and give them the reservation but he never responded. We disputed the credit card charge, but the credit card company said we have to work it out with the vendor, who said to work it out with the owner, who referred us to Homeaway.

I've been listed with both VRBO & Airbnb for about 8 months. After getting a $2400 booking and only receiving $2000 after booking and transfer fees, I decided to pay for their 1-yr membership. That was 3 months ago, and I've gotten not a single booking since. I made the colossal mistake of listing a client's property at the end of July. Just found out that the first booking was made with a stolen credit card. I do not check ID or anything as I assume the entity taking the booking has done their due diligence. Turns out the name on the credit card and the name on the book was different - how did they miss that?? I stated that to VRBO/Homeaway.

VRBO decided to cancel my account because a portion of the property was sold. They decided early on that this was a full transfer of ownership and would not listen to any comments that I had to the contrary. They also decided not to refund the roughly $500 spent for the subscription price. On top of that, their customer service was quite misleading, with each person quoting a different situation. In the end when they started talking in a more consistent voice, they became very condescending (for example, when I asked to speak to a manager receptionist Haley declined several times, then put me on hold for ten minutes only to come back on the line to say "Ok, I will ALLOW you (emphasis mine) to speak to a manager" and then stated the manager was just going to say the same thing. She then put me on hold again and I was disconnected).

We rented a condo in NH. Two charges to HomeAway on our credit card - $450 for the rental and a $1,500 security deposit. We never got the security deposit back. Called, on hold for hours, filled out a complaint form, etc. All they say is "We are attempting to contact owner," read: "We forwarded your complaint." When I asked "What happens if they do not respond?" I am told they will not be able to post on their website anymore. What? "How about my $1,500???” “Yeah, sorry, that is between you and the owner.” “Can I have her phone number?” "No." “Her email?” "No." “So, you can collect my money but you can't refund it?” "Yes." Total garbage. They will do NOTHING to help you get your money back. BEWARE. AVOID THESE CHARLATANS AT ALL COST.

I've been w/ VRBO since 2004 and up until about 2 years ago, they were doing a good job for me. They have become a disaster for my renters and for me. My most recent issue is their calendar, which they admitted to me recently had been changed. My response was that every time their webmaster makes a change, it's a disaster for my renters and for me. Their Customer Service Reps are rude and have been trained to begin a non-stop sentence in order to keep me from saying anything. I can't get a word in edgewise. They won't even acknowledge that I'm speaking. They interrupt and go into non-stop sentences, which have nothing to do w/ the problem I need to describe. I've lost so much money due to renters' inability to book w/ me. I cancelled my listing and moved on due to complete frustration.

In January 2015 we paid VRBO in full for a top floor condo facing Okanagan Lake, for one week. In mid July they confirmed our requested reservation. We arrived July 30, 2015 to hear that our unit had an air conditioning problem, and it was not useable. In exchange we were given an inferior ground floor unit facing a hotel entrance and their garbage area. We were advised that we would be compensated for the considerable downgrade, and we would be moved after the weekend. We discovered that a couple with at least one child were staying in our reserved unit that weekend. On August 4 we were moved to a slightly better unit, not facing the Lake. We have been promised at least 5 times that we are owed a refund, but after each request we are stonewalled. Don't know what to do, but try and contact the authorities.

I've been renting with HomeAway and VRBO for at least ten years. They were my go-to place and I never even thought about using another company. However, my last beach rental through them was super disappointing, so for my August of 2015 I purchased insurance through them. This is something I've never done in 30 years of travel but I thought I was being smart. Well, this beach house was also not as described so I left the house and went home and made my carefree claim. SURPRISE! It was rejected immediately. Now I wonder if anyone out there ever received carefree rental insurance coverage from HomeAway or VRBO without having to jump through hoops.

Reviewed a VRBO rental a few weeks. It was a OK place but was lacking items like Cable (1 "iffy" station came in) and had bugs. They (VRBO) didn't post it, people should know. All negative reviews never get posted.

I've booked locally and internationally through VRBO and sister company HomeAway in the past and have had great experiences. After spending the past week spinning my wheels searching and emailing hosts to secure an apartment rental in Manhattan I am feeling hesitant to use the company in the future. Every single inquiry I've made was turned down stating that the listing was not available for my dates. After entering my dates and other filters into the search, I would expect to get an accurate representation of available rentals. Not the case. Every single listing that came up, had my dates open on the calendar with a note to the side that the calendar had been updated either the same day or the day before.

We rented a house through VRBO.com and our $500 was not refunded to us. When I attempted to write a negative review to warn other renters about the owner of the house, VRBO refused to publish my reviews. I subsequently discovered this is standard practice with VRBO. They DO NOT accept negative reviews, and therefore their reviews are not accurate at all.

My family rented a property using VRBO as the rental agent. The property owners decided 10 days after our rental was complete to keep our $500.00 security deposit. The accusations were unfounded and I asked the owners 3 times for dated before and after pictures. This fell on deaf ears as we left the home as we found it. VRBO property nbr 506783. I wrote 7 reviews and submitted them to VRBO, each time I was told what I was writing wasn't relevant. Each time I changed making it shorter and shorter to meet their criteria (which I met even on the 1st writing).

Home Away (VRBO) has been persistently trying to sell their Online Booking and pushing it on customers. As a property owner I refused to even consider it for many reasons. It's not enough that they are taking almost $400.00 for an annual membership but now they want to tell us how to collect our money as well. Since my yearly membership expired and I already had my property booked for the season, I thought maybe I'd try the new Pay Per Booking option which they had been pushing. I figured I'd have nothing to lose.

Property 67655 - We rented a property through VRBO (treat retreat in North Carolina near Smokies). The renter accepted our payment and then failed to give us any arrival information. We made many attempts to contact owner as did VRBO. At 3:00 pm on the day of arrival we found another cabin. We thought VRBO was a respectable company and we would get our money back on first property. Even though we paid VRBO, they said we needed to work it out with owner. Owner did not budge and won't return money. VRBO has been no help. Beware using this site for your rental needs!!!

The Falls-15th Floor Luxury Condo, Inner Harbour/Fairmont Empress - So disappointing! We come to Victoria every year. This year we tried VRBO instead of our favorite hotel because we wanted to stay together. There are 2 couples. We were to arrive today however had to cancel. We had a family emergency - a family member had 3 seizures w/in 12 hours last weekend. He is on medicine that needed observation for 5 days. I immediately sent the owner a note letting them know this & if there is anything we can do. She stated their policy was a 6 week cancellation. I then asked if we could pick another date & of course pay a fee so no money would be lost & in fact could make a little more for the inconvenience.

VRBO #576828 in Sechelt, BC, Canada - Upon arrival the owners showed us around the musty-smelling apartment, all-the-while complaining about the previous renters and how they left messes in the kitchen or left wet things on wood surfaces. Then we were presented with a two-page list of rules that must be obeyed. These rules were extremely petty and arbitrary. We had prepaid for three nights, but on the second day, we were informed by the owners that we had run afoul of one of their rules that didn't even appear on the aforementioned list. In spite of our apologies and the fact that we had caused no harm or damage to the property, they insisted that we leave immediately without a refund for the last night of our stay.

I am a professional property manager in the Vail Valley, Colorado. I had superb lead generation on my listings until the company was purchased by the current holding company. I've seen my listing prices for from $345 per property for a platinum listing, to over $1500 for each property - with no placement guarantee. Now, in order to get preferred placement, I have to run payments through VRBO, for which I'm certain they also get a nice kickback on their "Book Now" feature.

Anyone can give a review on VRBO/Homeaway anonymously. All one needs is an email address to create an acct. with these sites. Recently had a bad experience with a vacation rental. At first VRBO would not submit my negative review. My review was not verbally abusive in any way. I just listed the problems we had with misleading location, lack of cleanliness and unresponsive homeowner. I went back and forth via emails and phone with VRBO regarding their refusal to publish my review. They finally agreed when I raised my star rating from a 1 to a 3. I made NO changes to the review wording.

I had a very thorough and almost neutral review to a cabin I rented on VRBO.com. The owners of the cabin responded very negatively, and I responded back. My review was very indicative of the stay, the cabin and the owners. I went back to check a couple months later and my review, and the other negative review on the cabin were gone. I started to realize that this cabin had been in business for 2 1/2 years and only had 4 reviews that were all 4-5 stars. VRBO.com is removing negative reviews. If you think about the business model, negative reviews can kill a rental, and VRBO only makes money if a cabin makes money, so why wouldn't they remove them? But then what are you to believe as a customer? It's deceptive at best. I will no longer be using this deceptive and negative service.

VRBO #661265 at shores of panama - This man took our deposit. He was supposed to return it. But, he lied, lied, and lied some more. He is apparently in the habit of ripping people off to pay for a condo he cannot afford. The transactions are done over the phone using your credit card. So, you are never guaranteed a refund. Stupid on my part, but lesson learned. I hope to help others from falling into his trap!