HomeAway
Reviews and Complaints

Dear Peter,

I am sure you have other things to do than managing minor issues with your services but I do believe you should be aware.

After having rented several great places with Abritel, I am sorry having to express my deepest frustration and sense of injustice against Abritel services.

I rented an apartment for 5 adults and 1 kid for the period 23 May to 5 June – the apartment came up as it is advertised to fit 7 adults.

As mentioned before, the apartment contains 1 double bed and 4 kid sized beds (2 mattrasses of which are on the floor with a roof to ceiling height of 50 cm).

1 doubled bed + 4 kid sized mattrasses/beds does not fit 7 adults, this is an undeniable fact, yet not instantly visible on the photos.

I arrived late on 23 May, spent half a night in the apartment before leaving on the 24 May at 5h CET.

I called the owner to tell him about the issue ; the owner instantly got frustrated and asked me to leave the premisses immediately and suggested full reimbursement.

The owner mentioned his willingness to cancel the reservation and reimburse on several occasions to Abritel and myself (see attached).

Abritel mentioned that the money was already released and being paid to the owner – the owner denied having received the amount until today 10/5.

Abritel has played a toxic role in the reconciliation.

Abritel mentioned several times to the owner that he is in his right (despite his willingness to cancel and asking me to leave and to reimburse).

Abritel also looked at the pictures and wrongly concluded the size of the bed to be adequate.

So Abritel convinced the owner to go against our mutual agreement to cancel and refund – of course the owner is too tempted to keep the money as they are backed by Abritel.

Therefore ignoring 1) any of my arguments, and 2) a mutual willingness to cancel and reimburse the full amount by the owner and myself.

Abritel also mentioned to me to hold on to the keys until the owner processed the reimbursement, so Abritel visibly agreed with me, and agreed for me to dispute this reservation.

Still behind my back another advisor at Abritel is holding discussions with the owner advising him not to reimburse.

I am now holding the keys to his apartment waiting for reimbursement which will visibly never come from the owner.

From the reviews online, I don’t seem to be an exception complaining about Abritel and its services in France.

Many thanks

My owner account was blocked in march 2022 without any explanation. I called to support multiple times and absolutely no response. They taking information and never go further.

We stayed at a VRBO property 06/05/2021 - 06/12/21. The property number is 309956. The reservation number is HA-GKT12Z. HomeAway/VRBO will not help me resolve issues we have with the owners. I've reached out to them, and they will not respond to my complaint. The following link is my personal Website I set-up to detail my issues with the property and owners.

https://pjwhitesr.wixsite.com/my-site-2

Thank You

Property: #[protected]
Reservation ID : #HA-PB96GW

It's been 6 days since I made the money transfer. I send the payment receipt and I received no confirmation or information regarding the process of payment. All I got is an email mentioning that they have some problems and money will be refunded. The owner of property also not responding my emails. I have visa application in three days and still have no confirmation regarding my accommodation. I would recommend no one HomeAway. They might be having some technical problems but this is never an excuse for not keeping the tenant updated when especially they have urgency.

Hi,
I am Susithra Soundarapandian I made a reservation on 20th August 2020 Reservation ID HA-ierdb8g Property ID 10723923.
I initiated cancellation as I may not be able to travel on that date. Andrew the Property manager completely ignoring my cancellation request made by me and Home Away team and he is refusing to refund the initial amount paid £288.68 and another transaction he has made today for £866.04 having my debit card details.
Please speak to Andrew to return my money back asap. I am completely disappointed how Home Away has not taken enough steps to cancel my booking and my card details and allow Property Manager like Andrew to misuse the customers details.
I need Homeaway Legal team to take action immediately and return back my money £ 1154.72.

Thank You,
Regards,
Susithra
Mob:[protected]

Dear HomeAway
This matter is still not resolved.

I have, as you suggested, been in touch with the owner who has already returned the second installment and the Damage deposit. He also confirms that he never receives or holds the initial deposit (£115 paid 13/2/20) and obviously never receives the HA service fee (£28.80). He is therefore unable to refund the £143.80 which remains outstanding. Only HA can do so.

Reference to your own correspondence will confirm that you have tried various tactics to avoid repaying the outstanding amount. Dont bother to try any of these again.

I will give you a further 3 days (ie until Thursday 27th August) in which to confirm that you will make the refund before making a formal complaint through your own procedures, joining the many dissatisfied customers on TrustPilot and involving Anna Timms of the Observer.

T. Ward

[protected]@yahoo.co.uk

We booked a London apartment in February 2020. We were going to be staying from June 27-july 4. We would board a cruise ship on July 4 in London. Due to Covid 19, our trip (flights, cruise, etc) were all cancelled. We live in Mexico in a border town to USA. The entry into USA was also closed, we cannot cross the border at this time. On March 25, we wrote to the apartment management company, CB Platinum Apartments explaining that we were trying to cancel Through the HomeAway website but were not able too. ( we still had more than 90 days till the trip). We contacted HA and they gave us a phone number telling us the PM were the ones that could cancel. NOBODY ever answered our phone call. We again called HA and they tried calling with no answer so they gave me an email for CB platinum and told us to send an email requesting the cancellation. In April we got a response saying that they couldn't cancel, that HA had to cancel. So, we've been calling HA for many many times trying to cancel and nobody has helped. We keep being thrown back and forth and nobody has cancelled our reservation. This is not a trip we don't WANT to make... this is a trip we CANNOT IN ANY WAY make because we had everything cancelled and cannot cross the border! We need to cancel our trip and thought that by going through HA, we would have the peace of mind that we would receive help if needed and all we get is people saying they will try to help and contact the PM and another month goes by and nobody at HA has EVER taken the time to let me know of anything concerning my case! I am very disappointed and have never felt so frustrated in my life!
If anybody can help me with my cancellation I would really appreciate it.
My number is [protected]
THANK YOU!
Ana Vega

RE: Reservation ID HA-RPQJKR

Dear HomeAway/Vrbo,

This owner of this property was EXTREMELY rude, intimidating and aggressive. I rented this cabin for 5 days as the listing indicated a minimum stay of 2-7 days. I reserved from 7/3/21 to 7/7/21 which is WELL within the 2 to 7 day rental requirements on the website. I also paid the $1600 security deposit for the cabin. And I did this a "year in advance" so that I could get the vacation spot that I have really wanted for my children and grandchildren and we could celebrate the Fourth of July together in the mountains. This location was the perfect spot. I have been looking for months and booked it a year in advance just to be sure I got the exact place I wanted.
So then I received a very intimidating call from Scott Russell, the owner, asking if I had received his email reply (which I had not) and stating that he would NOT approve the days I requested and that if I wanted to keep the reservation I had to do 7 days from Saturday to Saturday because times were hard and he could not have 'holes" in his calendar. He also mentioned that he has a very high mortgage to pay (Which my rental would have helped out with I'm sure. I told him that I did not wish to do that as I would like to get back home in Florida before and have a couple of days rest before returning to work the following Monday. He said since I refused to extend my stay then I needed to cancel it. He then informed me that if HE had to cancel it that it would lower HIS rating so I needed to do it. He also stated that if I had did not have it done by 7:00 PM that evening then he would cancel it himself at 7:03 PM. I did not cancel it as I was unsure what to do. He texted me again on 6/22/20 to once again pressure me into canceling. I let my husband speak to him to explain our plight and he threatened to call his Lawyer on US. I was floored!
At any rate...he has now canceled it himself and I now have to start the process all over again. Only now, many of the homes that I would have chosen have ALREADY BEEN BOOKED.

Below are the emails and texts from him:

Email*********

Bobbi,

While I do appreciate your interest, my cabin rents by the week in July, from Saturday to Saturday. Would you be willing to extend your reservation through July 9th, checking out July 10th? Otherwise, I will have to cancel your reservation. I apologize for the problem but this was a complete surprise, since we never have guests reserving over a year in advance.

If you want to extend your reservation, please do so by 7:00 PM EDST this evening. Otherwise, I will cancel it at 7:30 PM EDST this evening. My apologies. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

Scott Russell, lakecabin4you
Waters Edge Owner

******Text

Bobbi,

I do not believe I have seen the cancellation for my cabin we discussed Saturday. Are you still intending to do it? Please let me know at your earliest convenience. Thank you.

Scott Russell

******That is when my husband called him and he threatened to call his lawyer. For what reason I am unsure.******

This behavior should not be tolerated by such a great company as HomeAway/Vrbo. I have booked other trips that were AWESOME with your company and I actually have one scheduled this July 17th for my Grandson's birthday weekend in Lake Placid. We are really looking forward to that. I will still use your service to book all of my vacation stays because it is so accurate and easy. But please make Mr. Russell aware that I was greatly upset by his behavior and intimidation. And that should not be tolerated by your company...ever.

Thank you for your time,

Bobbi Jo Forman

We normally book mostly UK Guests and it was convenient for us to accept payment in £UK through our UK Bank Account.

Because of Covid restrictions all of our Guests this year are French and want to pay in Euros. This is O with us as we run a Franch Bank account.

BUT Homeaway are crazy difficult to deal with.

All our Guests have had quotes in Euros and have booked accordingly.
All our Guests have been asked to pay in £UK at amounts that bear little or no resemblance to the Euro amount they have been quoted.

We requested that our Guests be allowed to pay in Euros into our French accoutn and were told this was possible we just had to change our Bank details.

Having done this our Guests are still being sent payment requests in £UK.

This is driving our Customers nuts and ruining our business at a difficult time for eveyone because of Covid.

How do I get to talk to someone in Homeaway that at least understands the bad image this is giving Customers and the damage it is doing to all our businesses.

I have had three weeks trying to get a resolution to a long running (4 years) error HomeAway Uk have made with my listing.
They have been totally unhelpful and I have had to make a complaint to the European Commission.The unique reference 2020/116571
This would be easily resolved if you had a Management or Customer service team who read the emails and addressed the issue sympathetically but this has not happened and I have been told they will do nothing and I have been forced to make a complaint.
I can provide an email thread of conversation to explain if you can allow a PDF to be sent to you.
I hope you can help resolve this situation .
kind regards
David

Below are the last emails we had earlier today

Dear David,

Thank you for contacting HomeAway.

As mentioned in my previous email, this is not something up for discussion and the matter is considered closed.

Thank you for your understanding. If you have any other questions unrelated to this subject, we will be happy to assist you. Otherwise the case will remain closed.

Visit homeaway.co.uk for answers to frequently asked questions.

Sincerely
Jules
HomeAway UK Customer Support

Dear Jules,

I received your response to my complaint, and I do not accept that you cannot help in some way.

This is a quote from the Act directly:

"The Consumer Rights Act 2015 says that services must be provided with reasonable care and skill."

In my opinion, you did not use reasonable care and skill when you provided this service.

I want you to fix the problem/give me a price reduction."

1. I did not chose to be classed as a "Unit" when paying you almost £300 to change from being a "Unit" 4 years ago.
2. I chose the exact opposite; I had been a unit and found it to be a poor service and I chose to pay for the increased amount to be an Individual Listing. I told your representative at the time and they should have organised this. (with quote "reasonable care and skill" )
3. For the next 4 years and a total of around £1200 annual fees and around the same as the 3% commission you charge I wanted to be an Individual Listing and paid accordingly. (you did not alert me at each renewal that I was not on the Individual Unit listing I was paying for, (not "reasonable care and skill" just simply accepting the money with no care.
4. There is no place I can find on any of your advertised tarrifs where I could chose the strange middle ground you have put me on where I am paying to be an Individual Listing but actually allocated the status of a "Unit". This was your doing, not my doing and not my choosing, so you have taken this £2500 over the years for something I did not choose. (this was done without my authorisation and you took the money without telling me ...not "reasonable care and skill ")
5. To correct your mistake I have no choice but to be dis-advantaged, according to you each option you give me has a problem for me of your making.

a/ If I choose to move to "Pay per Listing" and pay you the 8% I will be dis-advantaged because I will have to chase all of my guests existing and former potential repeat guests who know my property number to tell them I have a new listing. This will mean a lot of un-necessary work for me as these guests are all over the world, have been coming for 6 years and I will need to trace each and every one of them from old emails. I will also lose my matrix for the past 4 years of good service

b/ If I chose to pay the £300 fee plus the 3% for the coming year I will simply be perpetuating the error you made by putting me an the wrong type of listing and I will not, as I chose, be able to move to "Pay per Listing"

c/ If I chose to pay £300 fee plus the 3% to get a new listing with another number, so I am truly on an Individual Listing, I will have the disadvantage of having to start from the beginning with my listing, have no history of trading, thus making me less attractive to guests. I will have to contact all my guests new and past to let them know I have been forced to change listing references as noted above.

6. You have denied me the ability to contact the guests I have coming this year and next since you de-activated my listing on the 2nd of May against my wishes.

a/ I have lost a potential booking from a guest who wanted to re-book for next year at the point of cancelling for this year. I could not contact them and I lost the booking.

b/ A guest who wanted to move the booking to later in the year, but had not made the changes, was made to look as if they had actually arrived for their holiday between 6th and 11th of May and the system has now refunded their £300 security deposit and is asking me to review them. I have not been able to contact them.

c/ I cannot contact other guests who have booked during the time my listing was live, and who came to reserve a house when we were paying you both the fee and the commission. This is a breach of our trading agreement.

d/ No new guests can see my listing as you have de-activated it depite my written requests for you not to do this .

e/ It has now been 20 days of de-activated listing and inconvenience.

I would like you to reconsider the response you made to this complaint and come up with a solution, possibly by way of some compensation for this poor service so we can have a compromise to allow me to move forward with our relationship and get back on-line.

If this is not done I will have no option but to make a case to Trading Standards both for the failure of the past 4 years and another for the failure to honour your obligations to the guests we have sitting in limbo, having paid for their holiday with no way for me to contact them.

I will also write an article detailing the quality of service you have been providing in these difficult times for small businesses such as myself and will be sending this to the Consumer Magazine "Which?" and to all of the daily Newspapers to see if they have an interest in the story.

I hope that we can come to some sort of compromise on this as I have spent too much time already simply asking to get what you have provided to all other customers at the click of a button.

Regards,
David

On Thursday, 21 May 2020, 15:42:50 BST, HomeAway UK Customer Support wrote:

Dear David,

Thank you for contacting HomeAway. My name is Jules, and I am one of the Team Leads here at the HomeAway Customer Support department. We can confirm your complaint was forwarded to myself by Alex.

Please note that I will only comment on the complaint related to a listing which is a multi-unit (albeit not used as a multi-unit any more) and the issue with transferring it over to pay per booking.

We are sorry if you feel this should be possible, and whilst we understand and will note down your feedback, the fact of the matter is that pay-per-booking is not a product suitable for Multi-unit listings. That listing was a multi-unit listing, and we cannot remove units from the actual listing. Please note that whilst I understand your concern, no exception can or will be made on this.

It is possible that our team transferred over your multi-unit to separate listings while keeping one listing on the original listing. Whilst I do not see such a request in our files, and thus I have to assume that you have created these yourself, it wouldn't however change the situation we are in. Even in the case where our team has provided you with this service, we would always keep one listing on the original listing as owners prefer to keep the original listing.

I understand the nature of the Multi-unit listings has already been explained to you by my colleagues, and I can confirm that whilst we take on board feedback, the nature of Multi-unit listings and the use of pay per booking will not be changed, nor will there be the option to delete units from a listing. Please note that whilst I understand you would like to see this resolved, I am afraid this listing is not eligible for pay-per-booking and will not be eligible in the future either.

We can only offer you to transfer your listing to a new listing, however this would mean you will loose your premier partner status as a new listing is created. Also this is a policy that no exceptions can be made on I am afraid.

Please also note that we cannot put a listing online for free. If you do not wish to have us transfer the listing to a new listing, the only option would be to renew by purchasing an annual subscription.

We understand these are difficult times, but I am afraid no exceptions can be made on this particular matter.

Should you have any other questions, we would be more than happy to assist you, however based on the times this issue has been discussed with my colleagues, we consider this particular matter now closed.

Thank you for your understanding.

Visit homeaway.co.uk for answers to frequently asked questions.

Sincerely
Jules
HomeAway UK Customer Support

I booked property #9428654 in LBI New Jersey. After the booking and my credit card was charged, Paulina (the property owner) sent a message that the amount should have been triple what I had paid for the week. Even with the "Book with Confidence" that Home Away has, there was nothing they would do for me. The property owner was able to cancel the reservation and I am now told it will take 3-4 weeks for my refund. I am still trying to get my Trip Cancellation Protection fee returned. I have booked in the past with VRBO and HomeAway and never had an issue, but the response from them to this problem was very disappointing.

Reservation ID - HA-TXTPB2 / Property ID - 8300531 / Refund: €626.55
Hello HomeAway,
I have cancelled my reservation on 14/04 and customer service is saying it will take 4 weeks to get my money refunded.
I don't agree with that. Another reservation with lower price level was refunded within one day.
Before I put a very bad review to HomeAway (Now VRBO), I am giving you the chance to respond to my request.

Best Regards.
Renato

Buyer Beware when renting from HomeAway and Michel Saumonneau

Buyer Beware... if you are considering booking a rental listed below.

Michel Saumonneau

www.luxury villas world.com

Rental Vacation Homes

Property ID - 506895

My family booked this house for a trip to Disney world and had paid in full.

When Disney closed their doors due the CV pandemic, I contacted HomeAway regarding my options in cancelling due to these unforeseen conditions. Mr. Saumonneau has a no refund policy, however, due to the circumstances, I was hoping they would relax the policy. Shortly after I contacted HA, they contacted Mr.

Saumonneau and told him that I wanted to cancel my reservation... This was not the case at all as I was only inquiring what my options were. I could have cancelled myself if I wanted to. Despite my request for a full refund, my reservation was canceled without my authorization and Mr.

Saumonneau would not issue a refund. My advice would be to stay away from this property and any property that does not offer a full refund. HomeAway offers the renters zero protection when people such as these pull such stunts. I personally will steer far away from HomeAway.

It is not worth the $1500 of stupid tax that I paid.

FYI...

We did purchase the travel insurance, however, it appears that we are only covered if one of the travelers becomes ill with CV. I have tried to contact CSA, however, I have not had any luck.

User's recommendation:
None...not a chance

Monetary Loss: $1500.

Preferred solution: Full refund.

HomeAway Cons: Would not offer a refund.

Disgusting homeaway
We stayed in the property in dunsborough western australia on the 12 march 2020 I am still waiting for the bond back of $500.00 was told I would not be getting it back for up to 3 weeks... Hate to tell you but I would like to before then with the virus we have lost our money as well!

Two weeks ago I canceled my reservation, nr XA-XHLV3K, property10268474 (Cork. Ireland).

I am eligible for a full refund. AFTER TWO WEEKS I STILL DON'T HAVE MY ONEY BACK!

I called your service department three times now, and each time I get a different answer. Yes, the refund has been booked to my credit card, and yes, only a few days, Sir. Next call: we are busy, it may take two weeks. And today's call: there is a technical problem with your system I now have to wait until 6 April.

And the technical people who have to solve the problem: they don't work on Sunday, Sir.

WHAT A GREAT SENSE OF URGENCY! And in the meantime I am waiting...

I WANT MY MONEY BACK NOW!

No more excuses about large volumes of cancelations, or systems that have a problem.

FIX YOUR [censored] AND PAY ME MY MONEY!

The property we rented was not at all as depicted in pictures, rented via homeaway and ended up managed via vacasa, sent vacasa several emails with pictures while I was there to no avail and no easy way to complain on homeaway. We stayed there from 3/7-3/14/2020 and were charged $3800. It was filthy inside and out, poorly maintained and just plain run down. I want something refunded! Property ID is 1380382 and is located at 4717 N 32nd Way, Phoenix, AZ 85018

i received an email from Jeff at homeaway that they are asking that customers receive 100 percent refunds due to the virus and national threat and warnings but when you call on hold over 2 hours they refer you to Vacasa who states they dont work for them and because i did not buy the stay direct through Vacasa they will not honlr the refund and only give part i paid homeawaay and they are the ones that should take care of this and make sure the refunds are 100 percent refunded this is a game and 3 calls later noone is taking the responsibility to make this right i did not cancel due to my schedule or change of mind the goverment said dont travel people are dieing and places are closed this is an American and world wide problem and many other companies are doing the right thing but not homeaway or Vacasa.
If this is how you do business you have no care for consumers and or the goverment warnings Who would ever use a compay like this again?

Need to cancel reservation ID # [protected]
Forgot password---no help--no email sent to my email to aid my signing in; 03-15-20 8:45p.m. tried to get into the system and could not remember my password. Most systems, if you put in your id, if you don't get the password correctly, it gives you a box to enter your email address, then it tells you to check your email for further help.

Booked a holiday in villa 3 malva 29 in lanzarote for stay over xmas.Was told small clean on 5th day and complete clean with change of towels and sheets on day 7. None of these were completed.Have complained to manager on many occasions and said i woulds accept £100.00 gbp as compensation.To date all i received are automated replies.Can you please expedite on my behalf.Thank you jean hadaway