HomeAway United Kingdom 

Due to covid we rescheduled a payment for a guest at our property. There was no guidance on the website and no phone support. So we cancelled the payment date and rescheduled the payment. The traveller was then able to travel on the Original date and subsequently made the payment. Now we learn Homevand Away have added a stealth fee of a whopping 8% of the payment. To add insult to injury this was not collected from the traveller but plundered from the damage deposit. Now we are unable refund the damage deposit as the funds have been basically stolen. We are going into the 3rd hour of debating this with their so called customer service team with someone who is unable to tell us exactly how much the additional fee was and why all of the £250 damage deposit has gone. They are refusing to allow us to escalate this or provide any form of sanity to resolve this.

Booked for over 20 years with this company but won't be using them again.
Villa booked to Majorca but due to high infection rate which is increasing daily and FCO advise against non essential travel we have asked owners to postpone our trip to Sept 2021. Refused our request best offer is for us to cancel and if they re-let the villa they pay us half of cost. Homeaway customer service non existent. Tried a few times not interested. Put me on hold as they said they would ring owner I ended up being put through without warning to the management company. Never heard from customer service again. We have had trips booked with other companies all of whom have issued credit notes or deferred holidays to next year. Appalling lack of empathy for people in the current Pandemic.

Response to Aamir homeaway:
What you state is incorrect. We can only get a partial refund if we cancel our villa AND the owners re-book our villa for the period we,were,travelling. So if we cancel and they don’t rebook they are offering nothing at all.

We made repeated requests to postpone our holiday until 2021 with the Management Company for Property no. 2052621 Campanet Majorca. Despite the homeaway COVID 19 Policy they refused. I am posting this so anyone else booking this villa is aware of the repercussions if COVID 19 (or indeed any other unforeseen circumstances) means that you have to cancel your booking.

Very poor experience. Thus is just 3rd party cover for other companies and they take no responsibilty for bookings made via their site. Booked a property back on Jnauary via their website but booking was passed to another company. Cancellation policy clearly stated 100% up 60 days in advance. We cancelled in plenty of time but no refund forthcoming and no help from Homeaway. Pretty pointless using them.

UPDATE
Finally received a refund from the property owning company after months of constant messaging and campaigning. PLEASE NOTE Had NO support from HomeAway to achieve this. Rest assured I'll never book through Home away again.

(12-Aug-20)
I submitted the following review to HomeAway, their response is a complete joke. Enjoy.

*** My review ***
Note: all my marks are solely since I had to give them in order to submit the review below, I did not take up my booking due to Covid)

Paid a deposit which was not repaid despite us being unable to take up our booking due to Covid. The property manager, Maria, said she would provide a credit note for the deposit we had paid for us to use towards a rebooking in the future but this has not been forthcoming.

We appreciate Northern Italy has been hit hard by Covid, as has the UK, but that still does not excuse the above behaviour. Given my experience I am not likely to ever visit this part of the world or use HomeAway ever again, unless they provide some redress.

Date of arrival - 28 July 2020
Review #56368999

*** HomeAway response ***

Your review needs some work

Thank you for submitting your review. Unfortunately, it needs a little bit of work before we can post it to our site. The reason we are currently unable to approve it is listed below. Please revise your review so that it meets our content guidelines, which you can see here. When you’re done you can resubmit it by clicking the button below.


There is no record that you have stayed at the property being reviewed.

The Olive Grove, a beautiful property on the Lake of Como

Star
Star
Star
Star
Star

*************************************************************
(13-Aug-20)

Following the above review, Aamir, from HomeAway has responded and asked for additional feedback at this URL:
https: // help. homeaway. co. uk/ articles/ How-do-I-submit-feedback

Below is my response:

Aamir,

How does your response here help me in any way at all? Are you just trying to waste my time or would you like to refund my deposit? In which case I will happily update this Trustpilot review.

Amarjit

After homeaway asking for all my details to resolve my holiday booking after I had an awful experience with the owner of the house I had rented! I have heard nothing more! You are disgusting and should be ashamed of yourselves.

WARNING, please read ALL the reviews. Do not use this company!

Let’s make it clear that my case Amar wasn’t resolved by you, it was resolved by my credit card company. Your last e.mail didn’t shed any more light on the situation but simply stated that your internal policies prevented you from helping us. I repeat, DO NOT TRUST HOMEAWAY!!

We have had to cancel a villa in portugal because of COVID 19. However, the terms and conditions of our booking allowed for free cancellation up to 19th August so should not be an issue. We cancelled on 2nd August and was told our deposit would be refunded within 5 working days. So far it has not. There is absolutely no way of us contacting them to chase this up - no email address - no facility on their website - it is very frustrating. We have contacted the owner of the villa and he has advised he no longer uses them because of this very issue which is of no help to us at the moment!

I was due to go to France in June staying at a property listed on the HomeAway site. Due to Covid 19 I had to cancel the trip. The owner of the property failed to reply to 2 of my messages requesting a flexible credit to be used against the property at a later date. As such I contacted HomeAway. I had 8 telephone conversations and 2 on line chats with HomeAway staff attempting to get a response from the owners of the property.
On a number of occasions HomeAway could not find any record of my telephone conversations with them or emails that they told me that they had sent to the owner.
HomeAway eventually informed me that failure of owners to reply to messages from holidaymakers and/or HomeAway was not acceptable and as such the property would be removed from there site.
The property in question was large house in Cancale, Brittany, listed as The house of 4 seasons, Property ID 6556664.
The property is still however on the HomeAway site and is listed as a Premier Partner. Furthermore I wrote a very critical review of the owner on the HomeAway site 11 days ago and suprise suprise it has not been published.
I will never use HomeAway again they show no concern for there holidaymakers.

BEWARE!
The government stopped travel to Spain so cancellation of the rental property had to occur. This is when we found out HomeAway shamelessly washed their hands of the booking and passed it to the villa owners. Call after call to HomeAway Indian call centre did nothing to help so we lost all the money we paid.
They state "HomeAway, a world leader in the vacation rental industry" I say they're world leader at fobbing customers off.

Totally disgusted with Homeaway and their partner Belita. We booked an apartment in Spain (Ancora at Llafranc) and it said on website cancellation 14 days 100% refund, Belita said no as their contract overides it (what a scam) and as FCO advice is now is dont travel / isolate for 14 days we cancelled with 21 days to go but refund has been denied. They insist payment is by bank transfer so you cant even do a chargeback. The Apartment itself is in on these scammers as they wont answer the emails i sent (3 in total) (I'm assuming they are running clock down to less than 14 days)
Don't trust Belita or Homeaway or Ancora apartments. you got me once but never again.Ha just jad a reply from homeaway got a link to got to give more information.what a joke Amir. your link doesnt work and when typed in manually goes to your questions page. Only received reply to save your blushes all the ingo you need is in review if you a tually read it

Contacted home away, the company they are representing and the property manager as the property I am staying in is not as advertised. No air con, no tv that works and the patio doors are broken making it not secure!!!!!
Unfortunately no response from anyone. Will be taking further action on my return to the uk.

although i have had two successful breaks away through homeaway, i have attempted to book several different properties this year using their “ instant confirmation” properties only, to ensure i know straight away that the jobs done...... apparently this mean nothing, as the property owners then send a message (or sometimes dont!!!) cancelling the booking you have had confirmation for , saying it’s not available.... or we only do whole week bookings... etc etc...... the site is useless... use someone else!!!! im now waiting . yet again, for the deposit i paid to be refunded.... i dont need the hassle!!!

Avoid.
We booked an apartment near Whitby and paid 100% up front. A week later the owner emailed us to tell us that they’d double booked and had to cancel our booking (and that we’d receive a full refund immediately). About three days later we got a refund of the rental but not the £81 service fee. Ten days later and we’re still chasing our refund for this. THEY CANCELLED on us and somehow we’re left out of pocket!
Why should we have to spend hours on app messages “chats”, email and phone to get our own money back after they cancelled.

Appalling.

EDIT - Homeaway now suggesting that they are not responsible for refunding a booking made through their site that is cancelled by the accommodation owner. The CMA will be very interested in that.

I previously posted a review as a homeowner that was owed £5000 and hadn’t received a penny. HomeAway customer service was shambolic but I’m pleased to report that after a very stressful couple weeks with countless emails and phone calls, they finally paid out. I won’t use them again!

Case Number 28142966
I booked a villa in Sardinia in November 2019 for a stay in August 2020 and paid the required deposit accordingly. The flight was cancelled due to the current world situation so unfortunately I had to cancel the holiday but this was done 3 days within their 100 % refund guarantee period. This cancellation was done on 27/05/2020 and as yet despite numerous phone calls and e mails I have received nothing. I am still waiting after 2 weeks the courtesy of a reply to my formal complaint which has been given a case number. I followed their rules and instructions to the letter and their guidance and advice throughout. At this moment in time I feel a theft has taken place

Had a wonderful stay in Villa Maria. However 2 weeks on still waiting security deposit to be returned. Know that I left the property in perfect order. No response to email.

Totally outraged that we did not receive a full refund for having had to cancel our holiday due to COVID19.

Will actively be discouraging ANYONE to book through HomeAway ever.

Update on my previous review: Logged on this morning and found a coloured banner on their Covid Help page saying:
'The system error regarding reservation pay outs has been resolved and any pending disbursements should arrive within 5-7 working days.'
I ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT HOLD MY BREATH! But I have diarised 5th August for another mammoth beonholdforeverthengetcutoff session if the money isn't there.

AND GUESS WHAT??? NO REFUND OR CONTACT! WHO IS SURPRISED AT THAT?????

HomeAway don’t care about the customer once they have your money! Our holiday was cancelled in May due to Covid and like many others the emails started that were contradicting and unclear. After constant back and forth the owner cancelled the villa - under these terms and conditions we should then get 100% refund but no. We are still owed over £1200 with HomeAway saying it’s with the owner and the owner saying they can’t issue any further credit as it’s with HomeAway. Sadly looking like I will have to go down the legal path to get what we are owed as neither are responding to emails now! I wouldn’t recommend anyone uses this company.

Be very careful when you book. When you source a villa with your required dates nearly every villa that comes up home away says its available so don't delay book now and they then request payment. Do not pay instead click the contact owner button and asked if your dates are available. Out of the 7 villas that were available were not. Don't give home and away your hard earned cash for you to request a refund.