"Do not be fooled by the respectable eBay/Amazon look and feel! This website and its siblings (VRBO, etc.) are basically like craigslist with hugely inflated brokerage fees and VERY shady businesses practices. Listing details and "reviews" cannot be trusted, and the "book with confidence guarantee" protection plan is a sad joke. If you still plan on using these websites do yourself a HUGE favor and cut the middleman - pay the homeowner directly, and be aware of the risks!

Our personal experience involved a Paris apartment (#434088) that was as hot as a sauna due to lack of AC, despite being the ONLY search criterion we used, and a homeowner that decided to steal some of our "refundable deposit" just because she could. Trying to activate the "protection plan" was an "interesting" experience in the worst possible manner. It started with the fact that it is next to impossible to find out HOW to contact them, next they tire you with an extremely long and tedious process with multiple steps where you need to provide multiple documents from various sources (mostly useless info they already have), and then if you manage to survive thus far (as I'm sure very few do) they simply deny the claim with a boilerplate response that has zero to do with the case at hand and any of the facts presented. A complete charade and absolutely the worst online experience I have ever had!!!"

"I was looking for a cabin to stay at for a few day in Door County, Wisconsin. A search showed several places that were listed for accepting 2-night stays and had availability when I needed it. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line either with the property owners or the site design itself, every listing I contacted was wrong. Most didn't actually accept a booking of less than 1 week. Most didn't have an accurate availability calendar. I wasted almost a week trying to find some place by the time requests were answered. And then there is the booking fee of almost 10% that they add on for what they claim is "a safer and more secure booking experience". They tell the property owners it is to fund advertising and update their app. Want to contact HomeAway? Good luck finding an email or phone number on their site. Don't waste your time with this place."

"I have been looking for a rental in Provincetown MA and decided to give HomeAway.com a try and it has been nothing but frustrating and disappointing. HomeAway will list a property at a particular price and when it comes time to book the owner requests you contact them directly. After contacting them, the listing has either been unavailable or incorrectly listed, inevitably the quoted price has gone up, or they try and offer another property they have which is either more expensive or less appealing. Fraud? Scam? Bait and Switch? Not sure what is going on but be prepared for hours/days of wasted time and disappointed to weed through this tangled web. "

"Stayed at one of the place for 4 nights in June, but it was a scam. The owner lied about everything for the unit, turned out it was a filthy NY basement with no A/C. When I contacted the site, they claimed they were just a middle man and not liable for everything the owner did, but because the credit went through this company, it left no way for you to dispute the charge with the owner. This company is registered in Singapore, so you are basically screwed!"

"BEWARE – HOME AWAY ALLOWS SHADY COMPANIES/SCAMMERS ON THEIR SITE

We reserved an apartment in NYC for a week from Ideal Oasis through homeaway. When I walked into the Ideal Oasis lobby it was full of disgruntled people. There were several different parties waiting there for their apartments to become available. They were all being told that they were waiting on the cleaning people to bring the key back to them. It was already after 5pm and 2 hours after the apartments were supposed to be available for check in. While I was waiting, another person called and said their key didn’t work for the apartment they were trying to get into. After 2 employees did some looking around at their stash of keys, they discovered they had given him the wrong key.
I started my check in process and the first thing she asked me was if my sales person (Adam) told me that there was a weekend pick up fee of $40 that could only be paid in cash. She made sure to whisper it to me…guess she needed some extra spending money for the weekend. I did not pay it. Then it was time to pay my remaining balance of almost $600 (we only paid half before arrival). She again told me I could only pay in cash. I needed to pay on a business credit card as it was a business trip for my husband. She absolutely was refusing to take any payment other than cash. Then she tells me our apartment isn’t ready and she doesn’t know when it will be ready. My husband and twin 2 year olds were waiting in a taxi outside. I told her I needed to know when we would have a place to take our kids as we had a long travel day and were approaching dinner time and bed time soon after. She just kept saying we could wait there, but they had not been able to get in touch with the apartment cleaners so they didn’t even know if the apartment had been cleaned yet. They did try to give us a different apartment that required walking up 4 flights of stairs. The reason I chose our original apartment was because the sleeping arrangements would work for us where most apartments I looked at with 1 bedroom would not. And, we have twins with a large double stroller that is very heavy. We can not carry them and the stroller up 4 flights of stairs several times throughout the day. In addition, they could/would not show me any pictures of the apartment ahead of time or give me the address. They wanted me to blindly pay the other half of our balance (in cash) and make do with whatever apartment they could give us.
We waited for a bit longer and they still could not tell us when the apartment we booked would be ready. We finally had to leave and go check into a hotel. We disputed the credit card charge because these guys are just plain shady. They responded to our credit card company with a complete lie saying that we never showed up and therefore are not eligible for a refund of our deposit. I am continuing to fight this. I am so disappointed in home away for allowing shady companies like this to be on their site. The point of going through home away is to only deal with reputable businesses. That is not at all the case.
"

"This year we stayed at the same HomeAway residence as we did last year; Stover Condos in Charlevoix MI. This year we added a week because we enjoyed ourselves so much. However, this year we were very disappointed in the same unit we rented last year.
1. The unit was dirty; the carpet had spots as did the couch facing the television.
2. Last year we had 2 televisions, I understand the reason for only one because the cable company charges extra for an additional television.
3. There was only 1 almost empty roll of toilet paper in one of the bathrooms.
4. There were NO paper towels.
5. There was only enough bathroom towels for 3 people, good thing we brought our own.
6. There were only 3 face clothes.
7. In the hall closet there are labels clearly state there are 4 each HAND, FACE and BATH TOWELS, 4 PILLOW CASES and 3 PILLOWS, there were none.
8. On the top shelf was 2 DIRTY BLANKETS, that I needed to wash before we could use them.

To say the least I’m very disappointed with this HomeAway location and will not be returning next year to Stover Condos in Charlevoix MI. This has left us with a very bad taste in our mouths regarding HomeAway.

Susanne Johnson
***-***-****

"

"First I want to clarify that this is not a review of a particular property but a review oh Homeaway.com. If their customer service is any indication of what I can expect during my vacation, it will be pure hell. I really hope my rental will not will mirror my experience with Home away. Following is a short summary of my experience with Homeaway.com

1st attempt to get anyone to assist over the phone
I would warn people to carefully research before booking a property through this company. For the last 2 hours I have called their "customer service number," which by the way offers no customer service. The reps are rude and incompetent, they refuse to transfer call to someone to another rep that may be more helpful and knowledgeable, supervisors refuse to come to the phone and reps refuse to disclose where the call center is, they refuse to solve any issues or answer questions with a solution; meanwhile my $700 are in limbo. I just left a message for the CEO in hope he may be interested in learning the type of work his outsourced companies are doing but I am not holding my breath.... BEWARE!


2nd set of attempts
Horrible customer service and absolute lack of company response:
1. Called ***-***-**** Did not ask for name; slammed call 1:03p
2. Called ***-***-****; slammed call; refused to provide ID number, refused to transfer to a supervisor, refused to say where call center is, refused to give name of supervisor, refused to say when supervisor will call back just as soon as possible (or whenever they feel like it), refuse to take a breath of air and listen to customer’s needs.1:18p
3. Called ***-***-****. Spoke with Sherry, refused to provide ID number, refused to transfer to a supervisor, refused to say where call center is, refused to give name of supervisor, refused to say when supervisor will call back just as soon as possible (or whenever they feel like it). What are they there for then? 1:39
4. Left message for Home Away CEO Brian Sharples ***-***-**** x 51510 1:52p
5. Spoke with BEA insolent; slammed phone at 4:31p EST. Reservation number XX-XXXXXX. Rude and incompetent.
6. Abby for security purposes not allowed to provide ID number (company policy) so they cannot be accountable for horrible performance. 5:12p
Case #13256330, #13256123, #13259306.
I was no able to communicate a single time with anyone, anywhere in this company that at least "pretended" to appreciate the business I did through them. I will never ever do business with this company again!
"

"VRBO and Homeaway are owned by the same company and share the same customer service telephone system. I am a homeowner with a rental property and it is from this perspective that I write this review.

First of all, if you need to contact customer service for anything, plan on a long, long wait on the telephone. It is like entering a black hole. You might need to call because your site needs renewal, or to problem solve their search engine (which does not use Key Words, despite its claim) or a variety of other unexpected reasons. When you do reach someone they are very nice and can be helpful, but should you need higher level support, you need to hope they call you back (usually they don't call back unless you send multiple e-mails, and even then it is questionable. If if they do, hope you are available, because the only way back to them is through the endless waiting on the phone line. They do not provide any direct way to reach the person who called you. They say, "feel free to call us back if your issue is not resolved. They really should be advertising that they guarantee a long wait for customer service no matter when you call, 24 hours per day.

I actually switched to VRBO from Homeaway due to their terrible customer service (for two weels before my listing was scheduled to expire I had sent e-mails asking for assistance (they promise 24 hour turnaround - HA!. It was not until after the listing expired that I received a call. Only after I switched to VRBO did I realize that they used the same support phone line.

So seller beware if you plan to use VRBO or Homeaway."