Posted by Anonymous
This one key is horrible! I didn't ask to change to one key and now all my trip boards I spent hours creating are gone! NOT HAPPY! May decide to use a different service.........
VRBO customer service reviews
Read the reviews below to see the experience other people have had when dealing with customer service from VRBO.
24
Aug
24
Dec
05
Nov
Posted by Burgundy118
I booked several rentals in Hawaii and when I got the bill, to my surprise there was a $204 service charge. In all the 5 rentals I book I never heard or read anything that there would be an additional service charge. Two hundred dollars is not a trivial amount either.
Also, trying to find where to register a complaint was not easy.
I will think twice before using VRBO again.
02
Oct
Posted by [email protected]
This is the most convoluted and screwed up mess I have ever dealt with. I have called and done repeated chats with Sebastian and Juan in Columbia and now one in the Philippines. We had to cancel our booking due to COVID. The owner agreed to a full refund, however your company has made this beyond difficult. We received a partially and still trying to get the remainder. I WILL EVER USE VRBO AGAIN! Your customer service, convoluted website, and secrecy of location and in USA is ridiculous. I was told Texas, but that was all they would reveal despite repeated requests.
22
Jul
Posted by Booking France
The worst experience I ever had with booking online. The information about property on vrbo.com was not accurate, the owner asked for additional charges not mentioned on site and therefore a contract was not signed and reservation was cancelled. Deposit was refunded only partially and I am after a month still in debate between Vrbo customer relations and property owner that claims he has not received any money.
Case still open, outrageous and unprofessional behavior!
06
Apr
Posted by Nancy
I have rented through vrbo for several years with no issues. Now that I have an issue I have realized how unreliable they are. I had a canceled reservation from January 16, 2019. Vrbo charged my credit card $106 service fee. I have phoned six times and was told each time my money would be refunded. I have not spoken with an English speaking person at all. Finally, on my sixth call, I was told that I would have to contact the rental agent for the property and have them contact vrbo before I could get my refund. To say that I am frustrated and aggravated would be putting it very lightly! Still waiting for my refund!
12
Mar
Posted by Anonymous
I Don't Know Where To Start,i've Had Nothing But Trouble With My Vacation Planning Through Your Company! I Seriously Don't Know How You Stay In Business!! I Spent All Day Yesterday Trying To Book A Property In Buffalo Ny, And Finally, Thought I Did, When A Representative "chatted" With Me By Email Last Night And Went Over All The Details. I Gave Him A Great Review, But Everything Else In Your Leasing Process Was Unbelievably A Total Amateurish Wreak!! You Already Have My American Express Card, And I Was Waiting For The Owner Of The Property To Ok The Lease!! Now I'm Told I Didn't Finish My End Of The Lease Agreement?? I Am Not Calling Your 800 Numbers Again, Only To Get Another Middle Eastern "representative", That Can't Even Speak Or Understand The English Language And Be Expected To Finish The Process!! I Want To Speak To An American, In The U.s. Who Can, At Least, Speak And Understand English! Right Now, I'm Not A Happy Camper! I Emailed The Owner Of The Property Yesterday, And Gave Her My Telephone Number, And She Told Me, You Guys Audit Every Text Or Email Between Owner And Lessor And Blocked My Number Out!! Get A Human Being On The Phone Soon, And Have Them Call Me, In Person, And I Don't Want To Speak To A Friendly, But Incoherent Middle Eastern Company Representative, Because They Work Cheap!! The Property Number Is: 7263664ha. I Gave My Phone Number Several Times, But Here It Is Again...paul Buttino: 602-549-1203
11
Aug
12
Dec
Posted by Reservations Coordinator
VRBO has gone to MANDATORY "on line booking" for its owners. Our company had villas listed with VRBO for over 8 years, and because we have our own website, and reservation software, did not need VRBOs online booking. VRBO WAS terrific advertising for our owners and also helpful to potential guests wanting a vacation villa. NOW, we pay VRBO a fee to "advertise" on their site, and they charge the guest a "Service fee" of 4-9% of rent up to $399 that is supposed to cover any problems, kindof like vacation insurance. From reading reviews, it sounds like they don't practice what they promise. Now, to "advertise" on VRBO, any owner MUST commit to their on line booking. We have no choice and now need to decide where to go next. And from what I researched AirBNB also charges a "Service fee". We have our own website, but have a small market and therefore relied on VRBO to help us advertise villas. I tried to call VRBO support for the last 1/2 hour and keep getting a message about the agents being in "training". Its hard to accept that a company would have ALL their agents in "training" at the same time. The message said they would be back at the "top of the hour"; well, it's 11:15 and they still aren't "Back". Good luck to owners and travelers, not sure what the answer is other than someone needs to create a website for strictly advertising our villas like VRBO USED TO BE! Any entrepreneurs out there willing to give it a try??
12
Oct
Posted by Anonymous
I want to look up certain homes for rent in Naples Florida but there is no way to put their listing number so I can go straight to them instead of looking through all millions of listings. The other couple who is going with us gave us a list of houses they like with the listing numbers but we can't find them. Please help
08
May
Posted by [email protected]
The agents are overseas and have no idea what is going on
I have tried to accept a payment and I have worked on in it since 9:30 AM It is now 5:50 pm
It is easier not to even bother anymore. If you want to compete with AIRBNB, figure your stuff out
I have over 70 reviews and I am at the bottom of the all the available apartments in my building, because, I can't accept your payments? Seriously?? This is killing my business
17
Apr
Posted by Linda Williams
Be aware, VRBO is now adding their own considerable fee to rentals. I have used the VRBO site for years, but not anymore! Condo at beach was advertised at "Average $260" a night, but turned out to be $335 a night after cleaning fee, taxes, and VRBO" fee "was added on. No explanation of what the fee was for. I am aware the owners are paying a fee to advertise also, so why tack this on to the rental fee?? Pure greed! I will NOT use VRBO any longer. They have lost my business. Renter---beware!!
11
Apr
Posted by VRBO_Review
Stay away. They collect a fee for doing nothing. I recently rented a cabin from HomeAway (VRBO), but it turns out the property was completely trashed
HomeAway basically collected a fee from me and yet it did not provide any extra services. I had a problem with the cabin, and VRBO didn't do anything to assist me and completely ignored my request. When I reached out to HomeAway, they just send me back to owner of property.
Below was my rental experience.
Never again. This company sucks and will not back you up when you have a problem with the property.
We ended up staying in tiny motel room instead of the three bedroom two bath vacation cabin we booked in Tahoe..
After driving 5 hours, we arrived at the property around 9 PM, and were appalled by how unlivable the unit was. There was trash everywhere; the sheets were clearly not washed with bodily debris all over the pillowcases and sheets. Old car parts in living room, open alcohol bottles in the kitchen / dining area, full think of dirty dishes. There were socks and clothing from the previous renter all over
when we reached out to customer services; they couldn't help with emergency rebooking assistance what they advertise on their website (https://www.vrbo.com/info/ha- guarantee/travel-with- confidence)
The place was so dirty, we left it and found a random motel to spend the night which was 30 minutes from the cabin. It was a busy weekend in Tahoe so nothing closer was available.
When I requested VRBO to refund my money it took me multiple call and many hours over the phone. I still haven't received my refund and have resorted to filing a charge back from my credit card.
In short, you are basically taking your chances with this booking service. If you run to problems like I had, don't expect this company to make it right for you. At this point, I am taking this as a learning experience and will not work with them again.
09
Jan
Posted by Anonymous
If you are a homeowner and use this service be prepared to pay a huge amount of money, be locked out of your account often, have your site disabled for no reason, have a recorded message telling you that homeowners have a 20 minute wait to be served, but if you are a prospective renter, your call is taken within 60 seconds. Be prepared to look for your listing and not find it Be prepared to speak with customer service people, when you finally do reach them, who just answer from a script but who can't and won't really be able to provide you any information other than what is on their script. Be prepared to be told that you're on Homeaway when you are on VRBO, and vice versa. Be prepared, if you receive a fraudulent text, as I did, that your account is being de-activated, to have your customer service people have no concern, and when finally urged to transfer you to "security and criminal activity" departments, to be put on hold indefinitely. There has to be a better alternative to this site, which continues to raise its rates and lower its standards and customer service.
22
Dec
Posted by Anonymous
We rented a home in Holland Michigan for Christmas which advertised 5 bedrooms which we need. Moving in only to discover 4 bedrooms and a pull out sofa. The owner claims Vrbo says they must list as 5 bedrooms. So if I live in a one bedroom apartment with 2 pullout sofas, I have a 3 bedroom apartment. That is crazy. Why would you not just tell the truth? How is this possible?
15
Nov
Posted by Anonymous
What an extraordinarily frustrating experience. I am a homeowner trying to block out dates for a guest and am not allowed to log in to my account due to a periodic authentication verification. I am not home, where my authorization code will be sent, and cannot change it to be sent to my cellphone BECAUSE I CAN'T LOG IN TO CHANGE IT! Called customer service. Spoke with Maya. Got a verification code to use that will be good for 20 minutes. Attempted to log in at both vrbo.com and homeaway.com. Vrbo would not even allow me to get to a login page. HomeAway says that an error has occurred. Called customer service back only to be told that, due to a training session, no calls would be accepted. This was minutes after I had spoken to a rep. I have wasted nearly an hour of my time simply trying to update my calendar only to be thwarted by my listing hosts and I still have to try to contact customer service AGAIN. Sorry way to do business and treat customers.
11
Nov
Posted by Kelly Balaban
DO NOT BOOK WITH VRBO!!!! They are shady and not trustworthy! The only way to reserve a house is by giving them money, and since the website is NEVER updated, you think that the house is available but it's NOT! The owners contact you and tell you that the house isn't available, and they cancel the reservation but VRBO holds your money for days!!!! The only way to reserve the next house is by giving money, so I did and the same thing happened, they held almost $4000.00
I tried to contact someone at VRBO and they hung up on me, the woman's name is Lynn, she is in the processing department. I have dealt with VRBO for 10 years, but the last time was 4 years ago, so something must have changed, but they are NO LONGER a reputable company to deal with!! Try to deal directly with the owners!
Kelly
20
Sep
18
Aug
Posted by Anonymous
I made the down payment back in March on a cabin in the Smokies for Labor Day week-end. The final payment is due and I went to the site to make the payment. I got the message that 'sorry they could not process at this time; please try again later". I did try again numerous times and continued to get this same message. I need to pay this final payment but don't know how. Please help!
19
Jul
Posted by Nobody cares
Your services are horrible during peak season. When I call to reserve a house on 5 separate occasions the prices were higher by $600 MINIMUM!!!! Why don't you let your customers post accurate numbers on your sight? Or on your Email services? It feels like a bait and switch con job. I can't and won't use VRBO. This site has waisted valuable time in my life. Upgrade your services and stop waisting people's time!!!
13
May
Posted by Anonymous
I'm not sure what company bought out VRBO, I hear Expedia.com was the buyer. Whoever it is you have destroyed what was a user friendly site. Nothing works consistently. Very annoying and deceptive to use. My advise--buy up all the small companies that are forming using the old VRBO format as your business will migrate to those sites quickly. I have been using VRBO for over 10 years and am done with it ---I don't have time or patience for this type of crap!!!
08
Apr
Posted by Anonymous
I cancelled a home today and was told there was a service fee of 70.65 additionally. We paid the 39.95 in the beginning to be able to cancel. This service fee was no in the contract. I expect a full,refund go unit 288489. Ref H If we do not get full refund check I'm going to thr Better Business Bureau and my attorney.
21
Mar
Posted by rosyink
I'm thoroughly annoyed to learn of VRBO's new service fee to renters. I didn't find out about this till today - and had been wondering why I hadn't gotten the inquires I usually do by this time of year for my Cape Cod rental.
As a property owner, I never liked the VRBO website. It's glitchy, it isn't intuitive (on the owner side, through the "owner dashboard"), and it's been the cause of a lot of confusion for my renters (repeat/multiple emails being automatically sent requesting payment through the website, for example, when my renters and I had agreed to alternative methods of payment). I only paid to have the VRBO account because of the traffic the website got.
With this new development, however, I will be emailing my return renters and letting them know that I'll be taking our listing off of VRBO and setting up on a competing site. My philosophy is we are trying to give renters a vacation they'll enjoy and will remember fondly. We establish a rate for the rental that is in line with the market, and aside from the cleaning fee and perhaps a small tax, that should be it. Assessing the renter an additional fee on top of that I find exploitative and misleading - when I send them the quote, the rate that I had set seems like a trick I used to reel them in because now there's an additional 4-9% fee on top of it that they weren't aware of. From the renter's perspective, it feels like they're being taken advantage of, and that's not a nice foot to start off on.
As others have said, VRBO is double-dipping - they already charge the owners a fee (annual subscription); there is no need to assess renters a 4-9% fee as well. A small, flat booking fee I could understand. There's been no explanation of why the fee is on a scale and where they came up with the range. It feels arbitrary and, again, exploitative.
18
Mar
Posted by Trixie
I was in the middle of reviewing a property through a link you emailed me. I wanted to check something before finalizing the review so went to another site (( did not exit my review) and when I came back it had disappeared. The only thing remaining was the star rating. Feeling very frustrated as the review was very long and detailed. Fix your system. I'm sure the owner of the property I'm reviewing would also be upset to learn that an excellent review was deleted before I even had a chance to post it. I've read that you are putting up fees to owners. Perhaps you should fix you system first.
15
Mar
Posted by Paulette Lambert Weiss
Hi,
I have been an owner on vrbo for several years. The new service fee is terrible because it increases the cost of the stay too much on top of my quotes.
I suggest you make a flat fee of $59 but nothing more. Your service fee has no explanation of its offerings. I was going to add another property this week but will now go to Air BnB and create My own listing. You will lose me and several owners in the future by making our properties too expensive for our guests with no explanation for improved service between a high rent property versus a lower priced one. I am completely dissatisfied with your program and intend not to renew if you don't decrease the cost to a flat fee under $100. Your tactic to take a percentage of owner rent for yourself is not in line with the concept of vacation rental BY OWNER. Please cut the high percentage based service fee or I will post complaints on the web like other owners.
