HomeAway

Property #******* Grand Marinas Angeles Gilmore accepted our payment in full in March 2024 for a rental for one month starting in Feb 2025. Jan 19 Angeles sent an email stating at first there had been a natural disaster which was a lie then followed by an email giving us notice our rental was only available for 3 weeks due to unforeseen circumstance and we needed to answer within a few hours or it would be cancelled. We did not see the email and found the credit on our mastercard not ever 24 hr notice. She has never responded to our emails. Of course her new rental rate has increased considerably and obviously they found someone to pay more. Be very leery of dealing with these people. Of course all of our flights have been booked for months. The lack of integrity and greed not to mention the stress & anxiety they created has been unbelievable! DO NOT DEAL WITH ANGELES GILMORE! NOT TRUSTWORTHY!

Management was rude and deserted her position and left friends in charge. She made jokes about homelessness. I had a sewage water causeway to leak into my room and into others. There were stains even on entrance ceiling. I wasn't aware of leak at first but tossed snd turned all night, itching badly, to find out next day that everything in room was wet snd water dripping from ceiling. No management but "friend" left in charge, opened other rooms to find 3" of water in floor snd one room smelled of mold bad. I opted at this point to try to sleep in car with swollen blistered legs propped over steering wheel as I was too sick snd tired to drive…waiting on management to return. Finally "CJ" who was with manager viewed my room and the others and told me that I would get reimbursed for entire stay, but while CJ went to get repairs in order, I had to pack up all my wet items into my car and so I went to get refund, but lady manager refused to give me full refund, even though I never got to sleep in room snd all my paperwork, clothing and foodstuffs were wet. She argued that CJ never said anything about a refund, even though she was right there when he said it. I went back while the main owner was there, a Mr Hassitt, snd he listened and took her side and both of them accused me of lying about the first two nights'. So I told them that God has his own set of cams and he knows what really happened and that I will seek legal help snd keep complaining against what kind of experience there. It was very dirty, poorly built, against code and very poorly run. If that was HOME AWAY…I'd never want to go home…I would RUN AWAY, screaming!.

We stayed at 10 Old Dock Road in Plattsburgh NY! Never stay there! The place was a complete rib off! The AC didn't work and our family of three sweated there for four nights and couldn't sleep! The worst of it is when we left they charged us $200 for damages that were not true! They stayed complete lies! In fact they should have refunded our money for that stay not charged us more! Avoid at all costs! Wanted to add that the water smelled horrible too! And that my sister Ona Belser paid for this for me her brother so that this review has nothing to do with her!

I booked a home and once I got there, owner would not leave for hours. Then had me sign a contract ( her own) stating all these ridiculous stipulations, cannot go into living room, cannot use pool without paying an extra fee, no opening windows, and the list goes on and that we cannot post reviews of our stay there was no recourse as I had no where else to stay after flying there. Do not use this company. They do not vet their homeowners and this one was literally crazy.

My contract was with HomeAway. HomeAway Property Case ******* [ ref:_00D1aZzRr._5001P13hpQs: ref]
Supplier cancelled my booking after I paid and won't repay / has given me the runaround straight away and ever since. HomeAway are aware of the whole scenario from the start when initially the supplier cancelled (because they changed their mind) and then said they didn't receive my money. Then said they were going to provide a much reduced refund - cleaners fees etc, (but didn't). HomeAway / BookaBach have returned the booking fee only, and say they cannot help me further due to "data protection".
HomeAway offered no advice or help to assist me in recovering the rest of my money.
Supplier has now sold their rental property for over 1.4million nzd but won't reply / repay me!
https://www.bayleys.co.nz/*******
Its a strange world where data protection is used as an excuse for cheating someone out of their money. It should not be against the law to provide someone with enough information to take someone to court who has cheated them out of money. The primary thief - (Debra Taylor if that is her real name), *******@gmail.com has kept the money and I cannot take forward through the courts as I don't have her primary address / details.
The NZ authorities and UK authorities in NZ can't help either!

I have been a commercial owner renting 6 homes in the Black Hills of South Dakota through VRBO for three years now. This company does not treat the property owners well. The customer service is overseas and good luck getting any help or understanding what they are saying. Last week I had over $1000 removed from my bank account by VRBO because a renter never showed up during the 2020 Sturgis Bike Rally and wanted a refund. I told the renter no because I could not rent the house back out on such short notice and my company policy did not allow for it (I have a 30-day cancelation refund policy). In the end the traveler disputed the charge and won so VRBO refunded them directly from my bank account and I was out an entire week rent during the busiest time of the year. These guys are just a bunch of crooks taking advantage of the property owners who have made massive investments into this business. VRBO uses every excuse in the book to pass the blame off, See attached photo of the email from them.

Booked through HomeAway almost 2 months ago.
First booking didn't go through - although payment did.
Call center assured me that it was an Internet fault. Payment would bounce back to my account and to use a different card for booking.
I did - paying $454.05 again.
After a week payment had not bounced back and bank told me both payments had been cleared by HomeAway.
It has been 2 months, many unanswered emails, then automated emails asking for the same information again and again, repetitive phone conversations and STILL NO REFUND.
DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY.

We've been renting through VRBO/HOME AWAY for years with pretty good luck. HOWEVER everything has changed this year! It seems I not only have ahouse for our vacation in 9 days but our 1,800 will not be returned it will be held! We did change our dates due to COVID and we DID recieve a confirmaiton of the new dates!

HOME AWAY has told us its our problem and we need to work with FLORIDA PROPERTIES who 1. Has disconnected thier office number. 2. The person who is suyppose to help us told us we have no house ansd he is not giving us back our money. He will keep should we want to rebook in the future.

Now I sit here with 9 plane tickets, 18 disney tickets and NO HOUSE! Oh and did Im mention that HOME AWAY COSTUMER SERVICE HUNG UP ON ME TODAY!

DO NOT BOOK THIS VILLA- ORLANDO

HA-6T57KM
#*******

I would like to make other travellers aware of the very strict cancellation policy of this property owner. During the COVID-19 epidemic, we were naturally forced to cancel our Florida holiday in Easter 2020. The property owner refused to reimburse us any of the money apart from the damage deposit of $750, which left us $2574. 40 out of pocket. I assume we would have been receiving this damage deposit after our stay regardless. The property owner even kept the money for heating the pool. Ridiculous! HomeAway urged all their property owners to reimburse their customers as this was unforeseen circumstances, however, HomeAway cannot force the homeowners to reimburse any money. I have spoken to five different people at HomeAway who have all tried to contact the property owner regarding our refund but the property owner has not replied to any of their emails or phone calls. The property owner was informed that our travel insurance was not covering our expenses but she showed no sympathy to our predicament. I would not recommend this property owner to any travellers as I don't want anybody to find themselves in the same situation as it has been very time-consuming and stressful. Do not book this villa!

We chose a cottage yesterday and were told it would cost £1180 approx with an immediate deposit of £396 approx. Gave c/c details for deposit. Showed kids the house; everyone happy and excited for next years holiday.

Then, later in the evening the owner emailed me saying the house would cost £800 MORE than the first price to reflect next years fees.

With HomeAway, all communication is faceless and there is no redress or person to complain to, no emails, no way of raising the issue! The owner has the upper hand entirely.

This is the perfect platform to scam people. We won't be paying the extra £800 however, I'm sure some people would do so believing they're in some sort of contract.

By the way, should you still want to use them, avoid ‘WOODGATE' farmhouse (near Crackington Haven, near Bude), as this is the house the owner tried to scam us out of £800 extra.

I booked a terrible house in Tellaro, Italy through HomeAway. When we got to the house, there were electrical wires hanging out of sockets including over the children's bed, mould growing up the walls, a loose banister, rickety furniture that looked as though it would collapse at any moment. The entire place was a health hazard. I made repeated calls to HomeAway pleading with them to move us to somewhere else but Home Away did not want to know. They were not interested in helping once they had my money despite the fact they knew that they had place my family and young children in hazardous conditions. Even worse, they continued to advertise the property in question even after I sent them photographic evidence of the dangerous state of the property and did not publish my review. Disgusting company. Do not book with them

Don't stay at Durham house apartment
Shocking customer service. I booked Durham House apartment in Beer we left early due to how dirty it was.
With covid we had expected it to be clean but the state of it was disgusting - we took photos and contacted The owner Sue Wesley she was rude and very nasty and HomeAway was hopeless.
Really to listen to all these bad reviews. Don't stay at Durham House apartment in Beer and don't use homeaway

FOTINI VILLA AGIOS NIKOLAOS WEST MANI GREECE
BOOKED AND PAID FOR 8th to 22nd August 2020
After travelling from the UK our party of 4 arrived at a Villa in Greece booked through HomeAway to begin our holiday. We found the Villa locked up, no one to greet us, the gardens were overgrown and unkempt and the pool was drained and dirty. Impossible to gain entry or stay at the property we immediately rang Homeaway but they were less than useless asking us to raise a complaint via email! - I made it clear that we were stranded and we needed to be offered comparable accommodation immediately for our 2 week stay in Greece. In all I made 20 calls to the Homeaway number in the uk from Greece Desperate for help and assistance, and they did not phone me back once, despite requesting to speak with a Supervisor/Manager or anyone with authority as a matter of urgency as we felt totally abandoned. They came up with nothing other than a Conference hotel 100km from our booking location, no pool with rooms overlooking a car park.
Ultimately we had no choice but to take matters into our own hands and book into a local Hotel.
I had to spend over 3k in addition to the original cost of the Villa and since returning home Homeaway have failed to apologise, have refused to refund my out of pocket expenditure, are hiding behind small print and have not even reimbursed the cost of the Villa which should never have been advertised. (We subsequently discovered this property has not been open at all this season due to COVID restrictions). HomeAway showed complete disregard for me being stranded due to their incompetence, allowing me to travel from the UK to Greece to a villa advertised and purchased on their website.
This Company is run by crooks STAY AWAY.

Terrible experience with them and their book with confidence guarantee is a joke. When you get into the terms and conditions of the guarantee it's actually all very vague with loopholes so beware. In our case the owner cancelled the booking the night before we were due to check in claiming a "double booking" on the homeaway app. We'd booked a couple of months prior and been trying to get in touch with the owner for a couple of weeks to confirm the details - the owner had ignored all our messages.

Due to the short notice cancellation we should have been covered by the "book with confidence guarantee". Homeaway first tried to weasel out of it despite the cancellation was less than 24 hours before we were due to check in. After multiple phone calls they finally said they'd look for alternative accommodation on their listings - the only available one was too expensive for them to uphold the guarantee and said that they'd refund our money and we'd have to find our own accommodation. We luckily found another property on another site - it was twice the cost and after more phone calls to Homeaway they said that they MIGHT pay the difference if we sent them the booking details of the new property and associated proof of purchase. Four weeks later we are still waiting for a resolution - they keep giving us the run around by requesting the same information again and again. They only deal with the "book with confidence guarantee" claims by email so you can't actually speak to someone. I will never use these guys again.