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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.


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