HomeAway United Kingdom 

One star is too high a mark for these guys. They are selling villas as 'instant confirmation' and instant payment that, according to HomeAway does not result in any contract whatsoever with them directly. The villa owner can then, as was my experience, follow up weeks later with very different T&Cs and cancellation terms on an unacknowledged email. I didn't notice until it came to cancel and the advert had said 90-days canx. By the time you want to cancel there is no record of the web-site or what it said. Customer service non-existent and mostly non-English speakers on the phone-lines, which I have used many, many times to no successful conclusion. If you absolutely must use this company then take screen shots of what was offered and have them witnessed by someone in a legal capacity. Preferably, just try and approach the villa owner directly....they normally advertise on the web as well. Save yourself some real heart-ache and a lot of cash. It's cost me £800 and HomeAway refusing to admit they have played any part in this at all.

Customer Service leaves a lot to be desired.

Booked a villa in Cyprus for 10 days and had a few concerns that it wasn't legitimate, advised I felt I was being taken for a scam.

I contacted Home Away to try and get some peace of mind on the online chat, the first agent just ended the chat when I was asking them questions.
I then immediately called and the second agent was really helpful, and said they'd setup a case and get back to me within 72hrs.
Having not heard anything for 6 days I called again and there was no confidence given, nor any clarification of any of my points.

What they did do, instead of answering my concerns about the "manager of the property" being potentially fraudulent, was, with no warning, placed me on hold and then transferred me straight to the manager of the property for an awkward conversation.

They state "Peace of mind
Our Book with Confidence Guarantee gives you 24/7 support" - but they have not given me Peace of Mind or Support.

Cannot stress how much I want others to avoid this company as don't want others falling into their trap of false promises.
This company has left me with no confidence, and a fear that I will be left stranded in Cyprus with a small child and no support.

Avoid at all cost booked a villa in Ibiza,flights got cancelled due to COVID-19 paid in full months before the pandemic.all for it to be cancelled with no refund or change of dates offered.i have sent countless emails to the owner and home away to have no reply.i feel like they have took my hard earned money and fobbed me off.i book 2 to 3 times a year with Home away all to be treated like this.dont think I will recommend or use ever again.

Having had a dispute with an owner of a property that I had visited, over damage which seemingly occurred to it, I immediately contacted Homeaway customer services to report this. Initially the response from Homeaway was good. The owner agreed that the whole deposit should be paid back to me.
What I didn't appreciate given that this had been a dispute was that Homeaway paid the owner the entire amount including all the damage deposit. In other words the owner has complete control. What a stupid system ??!!! Surely Homeaway would retain the damage deposit until the dispute is resolved ? And that Homeaway would pay this to either the owner or the holidaymaker? No this is not the case.
I was then mucked around by the owner as I tried to get my money back. As a result I wont be booking with this company again. Not a good experience at all..

We booked a very expensive property, a barn conversion, in Hook Norton for my 70th birthday family celebration which I then had to cancel, just pre lockdown, because of government advice not to meet socially especially for older folk.
HA 'allows' owners not to fully refund even during a pandemic and this particular owner 'chose' to keep about £800 of our money in line with her ts and cs despite being unable to provide the service advertised. I have reported HA and the property owner to the CMA who are conducting investigations and are inviting submissions. Please report HA and any owners who are acting unfairly.

I booked a 2 bed apartment in Exeter and 6 days after and only a week before arrival I received an email from the owner saying she had double booked.
Nothing else was available by the time we received the email for the same size and budget.

I complained to HomeAway but all they said was have a look on the website to see if anything else, I advised them I already had and received nothing back. I chased up today after returning from my holiday and having to book thru hotels.com only to be told there was nothing they could do!!

What I object to is if I had cancelled I would have lost ALL my money as within 2 weeks of arrival but the hosts don't get charged anything if they cancel.

I will never use this site again and do not believe the 'book with confidence' as it is total rubbish and will be telling anyone who listens that they should not use this site either

Update after response below: all I can say is it is rubbish, you say one thing and do another. You kept saying we will provide something but you had NOTHING and my main point on why we can be charged if we cancel but owners don't get any charges is totally wrong and extremely bad customer service

I will never book through this company again. I booked a villa for July 2021 and paid a deposit of almost 2 grand. The next day, the owner cancelled without any explanation or reason. I waited patiently for my refund which arrived back on my Barclaycard today, only to find it's £87 short because of changes to the exchange rate! So basically I'm out of pocket through absolutely no fault of my own, and have paid 87 quid for absolutely nothing! Customer service were utterly useless and unhelpful. I'm fuming! As far as they were concerned, the full amount in Euros had been refunded and there was nothing else they were prepared to do about it.
Avoid like plague!

When you pay, although the price on the website is quoted in local currency (£ for me), you're actually paying a US company in dollars - consequently, I paid an extra £10 in bank charges.

Then our proprietor cancelled our stay at 24 hours notice because her husband was admitted to hospital with late-stage cancer - can't complain about that. But when I received a refund, because of the changing exchange rates in £ it was £18 less than I paid. With the bank charges, I ended up £28 out of pocket.

To make matters worth, when I was trying to sort out this mess, every time I called it was a customer service representative in a different country - very pleasant, but they generally didn't do what they promised nor noted the call, so every time I had to explain it from scratch, and had massive stress trying to sort out my holiday at the last minute. Although Homeaway offer one nights free accommodation if your host cancels, they had nothing else in the area and in the end I booked through someone else, so couldn't get the free night. One Homeaway agent said they'd send me an email about claiming the cost of the first night of that accommodation, but I never got it. I now can't face sitting in call-waiting for ages just to be fobbed off again. £28 out of pocket and 3 stressful phone calls to Homeaway the night before we went away, just to not be helped.

Terrible customer service. They're just an American multinational trying to take your money. Avoid like the plague.

Communication with property owner poor and customer services rubbish when trying to sort things out .I mean the communication between yourselves and the property owner you confirmed my booking when the property was not available but still took my money 2 days after you were made aware of this and a nightmare to get back I cannot book another holiday because you still have my money .

We booked a villa through this company to travel in may 2020 but due to Covid 19 our flights being canceled and government advising not to travel to the USA we contacted them who advised us to contact the villa owner to change dates. we took the advice and after so dialogue the villa owner reluctantly changed dates to November. Unfortunately our flights were then cancelled again and government advice remaining the same for the USA however both this company and the villa owner have refused to refund any money over £2000 !! we have tried to contact the owner who has relisted our villa for the same dates 26th October -4th November without any luck. Although we adhered to his T/C he has totally refused to answer any emails ,calls or texts. Homeaway have also refused any refund or helping getting in contact with the villa owner.
avoid using homeaway and DO NOT BOOK a villa owned by DON ZHU. the villa sleep 12 and is in windsor hills resort kissimee Florida. This man and this company are a disgrace and should not be trusted..

Dire. Avoid unless you want to pay astronomical fees in return for a lot of frustration and weeks and weeks of hassle. Book direct.

we booked to go to florida in May but due to COVID 19 were unable to go (flights cancelled). The agents were unhelpful and advised to contact the owner directly, sharing his contavt telephone number.

Hence no response from
him to calls, emails etc. We are owed un excess of £2000.

Advise dont use this company and give the ville owned by DON ZHU sleeps 12 in Windsor hills resort Kissimess a very wide berth. Looks beautiful but owner is deceitful

I responded to Home
and Away response below but they haven’t taken any action or contacted me.

My apologies to the owners of Villa Verde but I assumed this was a review site and not a forum. Little did I realise that my honest account would land in the middle of a long standing dispute with HomeAway (since 2015 judging by your own reviews). You clearly have no current rental business with HomeAway. Why are you even allowed on this review site when your own website mentions your Facebook campaign against 'the lying and cheating ways of HomeAway'. As stated, all of my guests who decided to cancel have RECEIVED A FULL REFUND OF THEIR DEPOSIT from HomeAway. All of my other guests (so far) have RECEIVED THEIR FULL REFUNDABLE DAMAGE DEPOSIT from HomeAway and posted 5* reviews for my property. On that basis I've raised my review to 5 stars. If you continue to embroil me in your squabble I will contact all of my past guests and ask the to review HomeAway on this site. All of my reviews have been 5* and so I imagine my guests were also satisfied with HomeAway.
Regarding one of the points you made, please see the complaint regarding HomeAway acting as a 3rd party for James Villas (which is a company when I last looked). Your entry on booking.com shows your property as an apart-hotel so you can't possibly have had this if you were ever listed on HomeAway because, as you say, HomeAway only deals home owners.
Your comments on this site place yourselves firmly at the top of the moral high ground and yet your web page shows you decided to stop receiving guests because of your own health worries with Covid 19.

Our experience with HomeAway service has been very poor to the extent I will never use them again. We had issues with the Villa booked so we did not move in - HomeAway have made the problem worse, not better and have meant we have little or no chance of getting any money back.

By booking through this type of site rather than direct with a Villa owner you think you have a level of security. My experience with this booking suggests not, so be aware.

On the day of the issue with the Villa (08 August) we contacted HomeAway to raise a complaint. We have phoned regularly since then (I think it is now 7 calls) - on each occasion we were told they could not help until there was a response from the Villa manager. I finally spoke directly to the Villa manager today (15 August) who confirmed he had responded to HomeAway within 24 hours. This is significant as if we had been told this on the 4 occasions we phoned during last week we could have met the Villa manager to go through our concerns. We have now returned home so cannot meet and he has rejected our claim for a refund / partial refund.

I have been promised calls back from Supervisors - the last one was due 3 hours ago. There has been nothing. I will keep chasing - however have little confidence. I will soon need to revert to an alternative trade organisation / UK Trading Standards if I don't get a response.

A final and also interesting point is that my post booking review as requested by HomeAway (in which I gave a 1 star review) was blocked by HomeAway as it contained "customer service issues".

HomeAway team - I have included by complaint reference below.

Good for booking but did nothing to support us regarding covid cancellation. Have lost 90% of cost of accommodation due to how close to departure our flight was cancelled.
Under normal circumstances their cancellation policy seems to be fair, but under these circumstances I would have expected some discretionary good will on the part of the property owner which I feel home away should have supported us on.

I wish i had read this before i booked a villa through these scammers. i have paid deposit of 967.20 euro for a weeks rental of villa in maderia for a very special birthday. jet2 email said flights are cancelled. i got in touch with owner who assured me flights from uk have been flying to maderia easy jet tui and british airways. i have checked the flights for the dates the villa is booked tui no flights till 2021 easyjet flights from gatwick not on them dates british airways from heathrow not them dates. i got back to owner and said unless villa is rented out no deposit will be returned. i have just spoken with homeawy they told me they dont pay the villa owners until after the dau you check in. i have been told that if villa gets rented that week can have deposit back but they dont seem to understand thats not going to happen. they have offered me next year but it was a special birthday so not really what i want. i asked where my money is also 75 euro for cleaning when i have not been or going just got told no refund policy thats it. how can someone take nearly a £1000 pound from our hard earnt savings that we had saved for over two years to go somehwhere nice they are rip off merchants and i will be taking this much further.

Sorry I mistakenly reviews the wrong company

I booked a house in Normandy several weeks ago and have paid in full. We travel this Saturday (in less than 48 hours). I have tried to contact the owner on multiple occasions but have not received any response. I still have no details about check-in procedure or answers to my other questions. HomeAway advertise 24 hour customer support but I have tried phoning them many times this evening and just get a recorded message “We are unable to take your call...Please try again later.” Very dissatisfied.

I am a property owner and have only been paid £85 by HomeAway since my first guest stay on 21st July, despite the property being booked out constantly since that date.
Either HomeAway has HUGE cash flow issue, or it’s an equally monumental staffing issue.
It is illegal to carry on trading if you know you are trading insolvently. HomeAway is owned by Expedia but i am not clear on the legal setup and whether Expedia are ultimately responsible for the debts of HomeAway (I suspect not).
I am worried that I will not receive any payments, as they are in breach of their payment terms, having taken the guests money, and not passed on any payments.
I AM EXTREMELY CONCERNED AS AN OWNER.
HomeAway state they only provide a platform - It is not true that HomeAway only provide a platform- they also facilitate a payment service (Almost banking facility between guests and owners).
TREAD WITH CAUTION - I am considering pulling all future bookings and moving to another provider.
I called HomeAway twice chasing payment - I was told last weekend that 5 payments would be made on 13th August NO REMITTANCE ADVICE OR PAYMENT ARRIVED.

The BBC Watchdog, newspapers, ombudsman and possibly regulators would take a dim view.

Update: I see their standard stock response below, after two telephone calls to them, still no payment despite being told it would arrive yesterday.

ZERO STARS rating
Update from my previous reviews in July 2020.
Agree totally with the previous reviewer, our booking was in Majorca also and the exact same scenario. No refund (due to Covid 19), told I would get the Service Fee refunded, it's weeks now and 3 phone calls and still nothing. They're now trying to say that because we got no refund from the villa owner then they're not due to give us anything back, watch this space. AVOID THEM AT ALL COSTS.

UPDATE-They have asked for more info which I have given again, although this is only a generic reply from them. I have just phoned them again (13 Aug) & am advised a refund reminder (for the Service Fee 523.20€) has been sent to the appropriate person & will take 5-7 business days to come through. More delaying.........