Vrbo Owner App Reviews

Used to be good.. In 2004, we listed our property with VRBO. At the time VRBO was a very simple website that brought together property owners with vacationer. Property owners were allowed to provide excellent personal service to their guests. Guests and owners could communicate freely, and make sure a potential rental agreement was a god fit for both parties. But with each passing year, VRBO & Homeaway have done everything possible to ruin the experience for both parties... VRBO has changed from a great service provider to the greediest organization I can think of. They introduce one rule after another with the goal of keeping the owner and vacationer isolated from each other so VRBO can charge their ridiculous and unfair service charges. So whereas they used to make their money with a straightforward listing fee, the now make money with a listing fee, a service charge to the renter, transaction/credit card fees and more. They will scour your listing looking for violations of recently changed and poorly communicated rules, and de-list your listing without telling you. For example, we for many years we had a “call us at such and such number if you have any questions” note in our listing. Then suddenly there was a rule against that... we were unaware. We wondered why we weren’t getting any inquiries. We called and were told that our listing was taken down because we were trying to bypass their service fees. That was insulting and 100% untrue. In fact we had many long term renters that tried to bypass the fees and we wouldn’t let them do it. This is just one of many, many frustrating experiences we had with VRBO. They don’t care about the property owners... that is for sure. I can’t stand this company.

Wanted to like it more than I do. Although I love the idea of it, I am disappointed in the owner app - at least the mobile version. I just spent a half hour trying to figure out how to look at pricing so I could tell a potential guest how much of a discount they get for an extended stay. Finally, I had to look at the quote and multiply it out. Also, I still haven’t found where to change pricing if I need to - even using help! I guess that’s the long way of saying it could be more intuitive - I have a hard time finding what I need to be responsive. I also really dislike the little note that pops up to tell me I lost a booking. Your company works hard to create a community of owners, and then you set us up as competitors who win or lose bookings. Not every property will be appropriate or desirable for every traveler, and a savvy individual will look at a number of properties before selecting one. To tell me I lost a booking makes me angry, when I suspect the intent is to cause me to look at how I could have “won” the booking. Maybe I could lower my price, maybe I could add a bedroom or put in a pool... The fact is, my house is what it is. I can’t change its location or the number of bedrooms. It is well appointed with every amenity I can add. But it will not be perfect for every traveler, so to say that I “lost” a booking to my neighbor implies failure that simply isn’t there. I think there must be a better way to offer helpful comparisons without pitting owners against each other.

Upgrade App Is Badly Flawed. The new app is greatly flawed. It allowed me inadvertently to up change a reservation that had been fulfilled 5 months ago. It caused me to thing that Home Away had charged those renters for the reservation for 2018. When I called tech support they walked me through how to refund my renters wrong charge and how to submit a quote. When they refunded the money I realized that they had not put the money into my account to begin with. Now after 2 hours on the phone they are liking into but don’t think they are willing to help me. The funds were sent to my past renters and Home Away says I need to reach out to them to get my money back. That is a huge flaw in the their system and they are not taking responsibility for. Now this morning I have someone trying to rent another week but the Home Away app won’t let me add a pet fee. Since they up graded their app recently it is riddle with flaws and very confusing. Worst of all Home Away takes no responsibility for the horribly upgrade which may cost $1,650!!!! HORRIBLY!!!!

Money grab.. Everything that you’ve heard about platforms like eBay, DoorDash, Uber, etc. applies to VRBO. In other words, VRBO heavily favors clients over the service providers. You would expect that if this were done in a fair and balanced way, it would be a win for everyone. However, it seems that it’s time goes on the services that made VRBO/Homeway appealing as a vacation rental platform are gradually disappearing. Want to easily share your calendar with your housekeepers? Don’t expect an easy solution. Need to cancel because of an accidental double booking? Property owners are punished with heavy fees and suspension of service. Want to book friends and family into your unit and have it appear on the calendar? Good luck. Changes in the platform make it difficult to easily manage, especially if you are doing property management on a smart phone. Don’t want to receive customer service from an overseas call center? That’s your problem. I could go on, but you’ve heard stories like this before. For the amount of money that VRBO collects in fees and subscriptions, you can do better. There are many free platforms out there and even things as basic as Facebook marketplace. Start there before you give VRBO a dime.

VRBO poor customer service, terrible app. when you call customer service you have to wait a minimum of 20 minutes. It even alert you that it will take at least 15 minutes for someone to get with you. I assume that so you won’t wait and you’ll just hang up and I won’t have to deal with you I can’t imagine why it’s the same message every time you call that you’ll have to wait a minimum of 15 minutes. Customer service sends you to India, which would be fine except that their accent is so heavy. It’s difficult to understand what they’re saying. Today I got hung up on by the representative after waiting 15 minutes and spending only one minute on the phone with the rep. You can’t communicate with the potential renters you can’t get notifications that you even have Rental’s coming. There’s no hey, your renter will be here in two days Notification. VRBO only tells you once that you have a guest that has booked your property. It will never alert you again so if your potential renter plans ahead and rents in April for a June stay, VRBO will never tell you again that you have a potential renter. Yesterday the app was down for hours. When I signed up, nothing sent me to any forms that I needed to fill out for taxes or otherwise. After my second Rental, I noticed I had not received funds from Vrbo after searching for nearly 30 minutes I found a tiny red dot next to the tax form listed deep into the listing app. no warning, no emails new text messages nothing that I needed to fill out these two forms and correct this. Any form that I needed to correct or add two or finish on Airbnb I got an email and a text message. Airbnb is a far better service than Vrbo. As soon as I get paid, I am deleting this app, and will no longer be using Vrbo. I caution anyone to not use Vrbo.

The whole system is flawed & costs the owners grief.. Just had an altercation with a guest because Expedia doesn’t have a pet box when booking. Regardless of being pet friendly owners have a right to know before arrival in case specific information is needed. VRBO has one off in space somewhere, because rarely do people find it. So when they bring a pet it becomes an issue because the owner is not aware even though it’s in the contract. This happens constantly. I called about it & 3 cs service ppl started calling me opening 2 cases over it. I had to explain repeatedly to each one what the problem was. Not printer friendly. Printing is frustrating to make a copy of a deposit notice as the name of the guest is grayed out so you can’t read it & a reservation takes 2 pages. Even reports. It needs to be reformatted. Oh I could make a list. Since the original HOMEAWAY format they have junked it up confusing owners & guests while both pay more & more fees to have this service. Owners now pay the taxes on their reservations/banking fees they keep. Owners do the work. With Expedia who bought VRBO, it’s worse, seems the stock holders are not satisfied yet. Thinking of leaving.

Vrbo is painful as an owner. Allow me to recount a recent experience. Guest inquires to book Thanksgiving. I’m not comfortable with his request to checkout Saturday of holiday weekend so I try to reject the inquiry. Vrbo says that will be a penalty against my discoverability but suggests I should respond with an adjusted booking so send back an adjustment to guest that includes Saturday night. He says he can’t do that. So we agree to not move forward. But somehow VRBO platform decides this is now a confirmed booking (despite neither of us confirming anything). Guest calls support and after being on hold 30 minutes is assured it’s just temporary hold that will get automatically cancelled in 72 hours. 4 days go by and “booking” is still there blocking my calendar for Thanksgiving so I try chat support. After a 45 minute back and forth chat with someone who is obviously not US based, I’m told to give it another 24 hours and it will clear. Now it’s a week later and the phantom booking is still there. Call support again and once again dealing with staff somewhere in the world that doesn’t seem to understand the issue. airbnb is not perfect but never had this kind of frustration and potential lost revenue with them. Steer clear of Vrbo if at all possible.

App never works. This app never works. It wants me to sign in every time but then it started saying my password is wrong. I tried to reset it and it says its wrong! 3 times of this. I gave up. I have to use a basic website to see messages, in which the password does work. Today I clicked on the email link for a message and it brought me to the app to download on my phone, only I already have it so nowhere to go other than write a review. Not to mention on an inquiry I was told fees would be one amount on a stay if accepted. Once the booking was accepted they charged $30 more and put it in a separate thread. I called up and said that now my payout is much less and they said that there was some kind of glitch and I would be paid out the correct amount and a call if I’m not for some reason. Once the reservation came and I was paid, it was for the lesser amount. When I called to complain they said that the person asked the host a question on the inquiry but booked it through instant booking once they decided to book. This happened in the same day. But VRBO is saying that because they click the instant book, I got paid less. That makes no sense whatsoever. if a guest is presented to me in an inquiry and I am told that this is how much I would make, and I answer questions for this guest, and she books, it should automatically appear in the thread as the same person. The rent amount was exactly the same, no other charges changed except for their fees. I said that this is a bait and switch and said I wanted to speak to a supervisor and no one ever called or contacted me. Scam and unethical business practices.

All a facade. You break things that work (tax settings) you don’t communicate major changes that drastically impact owner cash flow (payments) and you consistently raise fees that you say the traveler pays (service fee) that should come to us. Furthermore you’ve turned listing position into a game (boost pts) instead of using things that matter like response time over guest experience etc etc. You justify these added fees and costs by stating we’ll have better marketing and feature but I’ve got a market place fees in my app that’s been down for almost two months and we are down 20% in revenue meanwhile still a top listing in the mkt. you also now want to report to the tax man but the figures you have aren’t even close to accurate on your site. You don’t calculate a return accurately. The greed continues as you watch your competition out clas our shine and our feature a software that won’t even allow me to add a decimal pt in for the additional payment request so only while dollars can be charged.

VRBO horrible customer service. 1. If there is a problem they always go with guests side not the host . ( even though there is not host mistake or problem ) 2. You can never solve a problem when you call customer service as the associate who pick up the call can do NOTHING. 3 . You can NOT communicate with email effectively. because if you are very right on the any matter but the agent knows they can’t do anything except supervisors only , so they don’t reply or make that email DO NOT REPLY. so you will receive an automated email saying “ We're no longer monitoring this email……) 4. They have a lot of problems but just need to improve customer service and educate them to solve the problem the guest or host facing and be natural when dealing with a case . I am a host on their site long night 8 years to know these The application is not functional and not user-friendly. Plus their customer service is horrible horrible when you face issues they do not help you like customers stay at your property and later make false claim to the credit cards to their bank, chargebacks you more then you got and the money goes out from your bank . I personally called Customer Service six times past couple weeks, they never help but say “ we gonna escalate the case to the higher department and they will contact you” . However, no one contact me yet. Sep 1st 2024. Horrible and horrible

Super slow and behind competition. Forget that Airbnb is bigger and better in every way. This is about this app and the lack of experience anyone part of the product team has with being a host on either platform. When I open the app, I should see every current or upcom de ing guest stay. There should be an overview/all view or a filtered view by property. I should be able to easily toggle into editing each property an viewing the listing for each live INSIDE the app. Financial reporting is atrocious and not easy sto understand or filter by property or see everything overall. I normally just export the raw data to a CSV database file because the insights and reporting in the app don’t exist and when I’m on desktop they’re not useful at all. The inbox is wildly confusing and slow with response time. Overall VRBO gives no incentive to guests to review properties after their stay to help build trust in the properties new guests are researching. Conversely I can’t see any reviews of guests from past hosts and it’s not really helpful the info provided to me overall.

System glitches and EXTREMELY SLOW TECH SUPPORT. Periodic glitches (can’t accept inquiries or pages time out while loading), spams messages galore and the response time for tech to address your case is unbearably sloowwwwwwwwww!!!!!!! Remember those old dial-up commercials where you could bake a cake while waiting for your computer to connect to the internet ? Well…that’s LIGHTENING FAST compared to techs ability to ”swiftly” resolve case issues. SEVENTEEN times my property was randomly deactivated and it took FOUR MONTHS for tech to FINALLY resolve the issue (I am NOT exaggerating). And yes all SEVENTEEN times during this painstaking long four months that I called VRBO, EACH rep confirmed all required information was stated on my listing (that had already been established for almost a year when these random deactivations started happening). And there’s no way to actually speak to tech…you just have to sit back and wait for them to email you. Also, they provide the option to sync your calendar from other platforms, but it’s doesn’t always work…so a rep said to still MANUALLY block your dates even if you have your calendar synced. What’s the point of having that option for hosts if it’s not reliable?! I have a love/hate relationship with VRBO. Im really cheering for them but COME ON GET IT TOGETHER WE’RE TRYING TO RUN A BUSINESS HERE AND SEND SOME PROFITS YOUR WAY!! Yes this review isn’t entirely about the app but about VRBO in general.

I try to avoid VRBO bookings bc of this app. VRBO has definitely not kept up with the times of technology. This app can barely do anything for me as an owner. I have 3 listings on this site, I could potentially have 6 but I don’t even want to take the time to create a listing bc I try and push all my business to Airbnb. In order to do what I can do with a push of a button on Airbnb apps I have to log onto the main browser for VRBO. I can’t do the 2 main things that I do as an active STR owner which is add/remove blocked dates or adjust rates. This app is worthless to me. Maybe I’m missing some steps, but bc Airbnb is so user friendly as an app I set all my listings to “book now” on Airbnb and only “request to book” on vrbo. Plus the way vrbo pays you out as an owner is not straight forward. They don’t collect or pay any of the taxes on my behalf which is also a nice perk that Airbnb does. Regardless, I’ll keep my listings on here but have to jack up the price an additional 10% of my Airbnb listing price since they charge a higher commissions as well as charge me back the credit card transaction fee if the guest pays with a credit card! Sorry VRBO, you are not my first choice!!

No good for Owners. This app and overall website is not good or user friendly for Owners. When you receive an inquiry and go to read it you have to log in every time, there is no user id memory function. It also takes you to screens of the latest tools rather than taking your directly to the inquiry. Lastly VRBO does NOT let the owner communicate directly with the potential renter. I want to vet my potential renters and see if they are good people and/or validate they have as many guests coming that they message through VRBO. VRBO does absolutely no background check. The site also gives the person, making the inquiry, the impression that they’ve locked in the property. Again, we want to make sure that our home will be in good hands. I’ve tried sending my phone number and email address and VRBO xxx it out. Earlier this summer I was on holiday and did not respond to an inquiry. Without notification, VRBO put my account on inactive status so potential renters could not see it. Even though I paid my $500 annual fee and I lost 3 months of active advertising. This site is unethical. The fees are ridiculous for the service rendered. If I were a website developer I would definitely create some competition for VRBO & Home Away.

Decent. It’s a little clunky and hard to navigate, sometimes it boots you out and you have to sign back in, and it’s generally pretty slow to load, as well as notify you of inquiry’s/bookings/guest questions (which you’re graded on by response time)... but, overall, it’s improving in all of these areas. You’re also able to do more and more from the app w/o having to go to the website, which is nice, thanks for updating those features. Generally you’re able to manage your property from the app w/o having to be tied to a computer, which is pretty remarkable. Please bring back the owner payout breakdown and make it easier to modify guest length of stay. It now shows the total that the guest is paying but not how much goes to the owner, which is a pain and somewhat misleading. Also, please change the font for “price change suggestions” when in night mode (iPhone), it’s currently unreadable at night.

Nice app, not my favorite hosting service. The vrbo app works smooth and does what it is designed to do. It’s very user friendly and I can use it for all of my hosting needs. I’m just not as happy with the hosting process on vrbo compared to Airbnb. There are a couple of features that I do like about vrbo but overall the hosting process is much better with Airbnb. One feature I really wish was available with vrbo is to only allow well rated guests to “instant book”. I’m not as comfortable letting just anyone “instant book” my place without any prior reviews or knowledge of the person. The other issues are a bit more minor. I like that the calendar syncs between apps. I like the communication process on vrbo, the only thing lacking there is the option to have more automated messages sent to my guests. It saves you a lot of time when Airbnb automatically sends a prepared message to my guests at the times I have set. Keep working on your features vrbo but overall I like the experience on your app.

More Owner Protections. We have mostly had wonderful guests book our home through VRBO. However, we have had a few bad apples & would not have accepted their booking if VRBO required written responses from hosts instead of just the star rating. The fact that VRBO allows for guests to write a written review for hosts, but hosts just give a star rating, shows how heavily your favor towards guests is. We as owners have a lot more to lose if something goes wrong, it is our property after all. For this reason, we stopped allowing instant booking since we had no ability to filter any potential issues beforehand. Our last guests had no star ratings on VRBO yet they had booked on VRBO before. They ended up arriving 3 hours before check in, had 3 extra guests that they did not pay or book for, & it was a huge hassle to try & resolve it while they were in our home. If VRBO allows hosts to give a detailed, written review for guests, it would allow hosts to have a better idea of who the guests are & we could choose if they were a good fit or not. I can only think VRBO gives more power to the guests as it means more money for VRBO, that’s not good business. Thankfully there are far more wonderful guests than not, giving the owners the ability to give a detailed rating would not harm the amount of bookings VRBO gets, rather it would help filter out the disrespectful guests who owners have the right to be warned about. Keep the system that both owner & guest have to write a review before they are allowed to view their review, it keeps the reviews unbiased. I know many other hosts who have this same grievance with VRBO, it’s a simple fix. Please remember owners are why you have a business

If you have an issue, customer service is Third World. Do not start listening this property thinking it’s going to function like Airbnb. It does not. Just getting a hold of customer service and then pulling up your bank account takes 9 1/2 minutes once they have answered the phone they struggle with everything they ask for your email and then they pass for 45 seconds. They ask you for your property ID, which is not easily found. They keep asking you question after question and then they ask you if they have permission to access your dashboard and then they ask you if you have deposits turned on why can’t they see that themselves? Why do I have to tell them if I have deposits turned on. Also, the deposit is only for damages. Not if they owe you money for extra guests or extra fees that were agreed-upon. You are basically in charge of collecting your own money. They just process it for you so the customer service that you can provide is going to be low as far as the trust in the customer because you have no recourse….

Terrible App and Customer Service. Use Airbnb.. If you are a new host and considering STR platforms, turn around and go download Airbnb instead. This app is super glitchy and less user-friendly than Airbnb. When I started writing my unpublished listing before getting my photos done, some support guy kept calling me to try to coerce me to get my listing up as soon as possible, despite me explaining that I could not take my photos until finishing a renovation. I legitimately thought he was was actually a hacker trying to get me to upload more information because I could barely understand what he was saying, and then when I finally understood, it did not make sense considering he wanted me to upload photos of an unfinished property. Additionally, despite the fact that many hosts are property managers for external owners, there is no way to upload a PDF of the required W9 tax form that the owners have filled out. They just tell you to sign the owner’s name on the auto-generated form. How hard is it to add an upload button to avoid forgery??? On top of the unhelpful outsourced customer support, the app randomly logs you out frequently, gives you “something went wrong” errors constantly, and does not let you easily scroll up to reference messages while you are typing a new message to a guest. And finally, the fact that so many of the five star reviews are actually critical makes it seem like these reviews are rigged.

Another failure by Homeaway!. I listed my home with Homeaway and linked calendars with another popular rental website. On the first day, a Homeaway customer sent a reservation request for dates that were unavailable. I called home away and they apologized seeing that those dates should not have been available to he Homeaway customer. They didn’t have any explanation, but were very apologetic. However, this is a terrible customer experience for me and my customer. So now several weeks later, after my anger subsided, I listed again with home away yesterday. Today I get a request for a one-week rental checking in tomorrow. Sure enough the Homeaway system will not allow me to accept the booking request, on my PC or on my phone app. Just keep getting error messages. I called for support and they see the error and they said they will try to fix it. Two hours later still can’t accept and still have no answers. I called Homeaway and they tell me NO it’s not excepted. Five minutes later I get a call and they assure me it is accepted. I see nothing to prove this. Total chaos.

Terrible for owners, 2 hour wait for customer service. App is buggy and slow. I've been a Homeaway/VRBO user as a vacation home owner since 2007. Since Homeaway became VRBO, its customer service is almost impossible to reach. It can take literal hours (HOURS!) to get connected and all conversations are run through a digital translation service, which means much of the communication will be lost. Once you do get connected, be prepared to be disappointed. I recently was trying to get help with a guest who wanted to extend her stay by an extra night. When I tried add the extra night to her reservation, there was no clear way to also charge her for that evening (it's not added on automatically). Therefore, I needed to open up that night as well as the nightly minimum, so that she could book her extra evening herself. When I opened up the night for her to accept, in just a few minutes, two parties tried to book before the existing guest could secure the additional night. I asked for help via customer service, was on hold for 2 hours, and was hung up on by the agent. I ultimately had to decline these two people and was penalized by VRBO for declining. I then spent another hour and a half with customer service trying to get the penalty removed but “they couldn’t because of their rules.” I am shutting my account down. VRBO triple dips in fees, charging an annual fee for owners, and service charges to both owners and guests for each rental. The company does not support owners and you cannot get timely support. No thanks.

VRBO is the Worst. VRBO is hands-down, the most difficult booking platform of the big three. It is super difficult to get even the most simple function accomplished that you would expect to be able to do on a booking platform for either a host or a guest. You end up spending hours on the phone with Customer Support to do what you would very easily be able to do on other platforms. Their interface is outdated and it's very difficult to edit anything when you're in the messaging portion. Then they have options that are only available in the browser version or on your laptop that should be available in the app since most people are using their phones for everything. They also need better training for their support reps as their customer service skills are not on par with other platforms. Their agents are sometimes so rude that you have to escalate to get good service. I hope that management reads these comments and will take heed to the concerns that both Hosts and Guests are having about the platform and will take steps to try to address their concerns before they completely lose business to their competitors.

Many Scam Inquiries. I have had one legit booking, and that was good. She didn’t get the address from Vrbo before check in and I had to message it to her on the day of arrival. I just received my third fraud inquiry like this but they all end with the numbers being typed out funny, trying to reduce the price, and getting off the site for payment (claiming cashier’s check). This reminds me of the scams that used to be on Craigslist. Owners BEWARE! Vrbo, please fix. They select our days and if we are connected to other platforms then they are selected until their non payment kicks them off. Here’s my recent scam that was in my inbox: “ Hello, Thanks for your response, I have discuss with my wife and we are both interested in your property. I will be coming with my wife, no kids and no pet for the vacation. It seems there a glitch with the vrbo app because the dates I inquired was June 2 through June 20 pls correct that and confirm the availability. My company will be taking care of the vacation so I can only make the payment by sending you a cashier check for it due to unsecured use of credit cards and other online payments, kindly get back to me with the mailing information and total quote for the night via my direct email onepeterhawkins G mail and you can also send the mailing information to my cell phone at #four #one #four #five #zero #two #nine #six #six #two, so we can further discuss this Thanks “

Glitchiest App I’ve Ever Used. I am an owner/manager and love VRBO as a service, but the app is incredibly glitchy and annoying to use. It’s been glitchy for a while now and not getting any better, hence the review. Often, parts of the app simply won’t load- whether it’s the inbox, calendar, reviews, or reservation details. Sometimes I just go to the website in my phone’s browser so I can actually conduct business and it works way better than the app. The notifications seem unreliable as I have gone to the app and found a message sitting there, unbeknownst to me. I am also randomly logged out of the app without me knowing so I definitely miss notifications and messages in those cases. I have taken to just manually going to the app daily to make sure I’m logged in and didn’t miss any messages. Owners should not have to do that. In addition to the fixing the constant glitches, it would be nice if the app was a little more user friendly and effective for owners. The calendar is cumbersome to edit. It would also be nice if there was a quick way to see a list of upcoming reservations in chronological order. And a quick way to check reviews, or notifications of reviews within the app. I’ve seen other similar reviews and hope the company works out these kinks- you are too big of a company with too many users to have a crappy app. We love being hosts but the technology needs an overhaul!

Frustrating but others are worse I hear.... Very frustrating app. I have been complaining for three years to customer service as an owner using this app and find it very frustrating that the changes I recommended are never made. I have a rental property that has two additional flipping spaces that I use only ad out on options for the main house and I never rent them separately but the app and the website do not accommodate away for a guest to select which units they want and obtain a price quote applicable to only those units. Additionally the app is limited with function I have to go to a laptop or computer to be able to edit my guests’ quotes so it completely defeats the ability for me to respond to the auto request to pay feature and then I get a negative score for not responding promptly simply because I could not accept the reservation because the request for the reservation was given the wrong price quote. I have put all of this explanation and instructions right in the top of my property description but the guests never read anything and they constantly select an auto request to pay but then they actually want to add the other studio units on which means their payment quote is inaccurate. VRBO also charges fees to the owner even when a guest cancels and so you get no money and have to pay a fee for money that was sent back to the customer. VRBO also uses another vendor for your actual payments that you make as an owner and this vendor fails to ever send you a tax statement at the end of the year so you can see how much out-of-pocket expense you paid to VRBO home away for credit card fees and rental fees. I’ve complained for years and this company does nothing to fix it.

The exposure is great BUT. The exposure you get is great. My property stays rented out consistently. The website is good, sometimes a little confusing. The app on the other hand is extremely quirky with a lot of bugs. Most of the time you’ll have to refresh it multiple times trying to accomplish one single task. Also, when you need to call customer service the agents try to be as helpful as they possibly can. But they are very limited as to what they can do and the information they can give to you regarding your account. I’ve been waiting for an answer on a payout that is being held by the accounting department as to how much or why for three days now. Every time I call they say you have to wait for an email from the accounting department for the answer to your question. Well I’ve been waiting for three days. And I cannot talk to the accounting department personally. And this is not the first time this is happened. Also the customer service representatives can be a little difficult to understand as all of them have a foreign accent. Some of them too strong of an accent to understand.

App is nearly useless. We’re long time property owners on VRBO and I’ve reported this before — The current version of the app simply does not work on iPhone 10. What gives? We can’t reliably work from this app, which means we cannot continue doing business here, as we depend on mobile support. And we’ve certainly paid for it, what with 11 property listings. The inbox often does not load, the calendar spins and fails not load nearly every time, when we’re finally able to access a message thread, we receive “bad request” when we attempt to send a response. This has been going on for well over a year now. For more years, it’s not been possible to remove/change transient occupancy tax setting when quoting stays greater than 30 days — must be done via browser! VRBO has just made it impossible for us to function as mobile users. Even the browser application has been moving downhill, release after release — there’s nothing intuitive or simple about it. Invest in a UX team, and mobile support. If you can’t support new/recent iPhones, what the heck are you doing?

It’s better than nothing but the competition is WAY better. I gave vrbo a fair shot and am really not impressed. My primary complaints include: The messaging is very glitchy. The screen constantly freezes up and won’t send messages on multiple search engines and on the app. Not just the messages but the whole platform is glitchy. Also, the ability to customize messages is basically non existent. On airbnb I can craft the exact messages I want and set the exact times for them to automatically be sent out. VRBO only has certain templates your allowed to use, a limited number of them, and you have to set reminders throughout the day to send the messages because they aren’t automatic. Basically, on airbnb and hipcamp the process is smooth and easy and requires very little time whereas every time I have to do anything on vrbo I feel like screaming and pulling out my hair. It’s time consuming and doesn’t work well.

FRAUDS AND THIEVES USE HOME AWAY!!!. I recently decided to try home away along with Airbnb. I was excited to get my first booking and expecting it to be similar to Airbnb but Nooooo, The first guest I had with this platform robbed and trashed my place. When i reported the situation to them and filed my claim I was informed they won’t provide compensation for any of my stolen items or any malicious damages. To make matters worse they don’t verify the identities of the renters and put me and you as owner holding all the risk, so filing a police report is almost useless. You would think this would be the worst thing but no. To add insult to injury they still haven’t released the money that was paid by the robber to rob me and destroy my place, their reason for holding the money is to prove that I’m a legit renter. you would think after being robbed and my place destroyed by someone who booked my place through their platform they would make concessions considering the circumstances, but they were so callus that one of the many people that they forwarded me too was laughing on the phone. I couldn’t believe this when it’s all said and done HOMEAWAY Doesn’t care about the homeowners who list the homes on the platform. I would strongly advice not using this platform if you don’t want to be robbed and mistreated

The absolute worst app I am forced to use daily.. No exaggeration, it’s just plain terrible. I need this for my business but it’s painfully slow, not user friendly, and the layout is abysmal. Has to be closed and re-loaded about half the time I use it. Push notifications arrive sometimes if not ever at all. Last week I was locked out and had to call customer service to get back in. They gave no explanation. Viewing reservations is an exercise in patience. Finding a reservation to communicate with the guest is cumbersome. To view and track financials… well that isn’t going to happen for you at all on this app. Just to see one payout your are forced to wade through multiple screens that load slowly or sometimes not at all. I like Vrbo service but this app is my main interface and leaves me angry and frustrated when I use it. Several years ago when I started my business I thought maybe it was just a glitch or an oversight, maybe Vrbo would fix this mess of an app but nothing has changed at all. I have actually just raised my nightly rates on this app and lowered them on the competition just to lesson the amount of time I am forced to use it. They should just throw the whole thing out and start over.

Clunky site & a pain to use. I’ve had some great guests through here but WOW is the site a pain to use! From minor things like not being able to delete old bank accounts that aren’t used any more to major ones of not being able to remove a booking approval once sent to a guest who decides they no longer want to book and having it block the calendar FOR THREE FULL DAYS & they give the guest no other option but to “cancel “ and lose a portion based on cancellation policy (and remember- nothing was actually booked so don’t ever send that unless your certain they will book!) it’s a super frustrating site if your used to the ease of Air platform. If the guest selects insurance in the request to book they can’t get out of that either unless they lose money and “cancel” if they change their mind about booking. The message system is so dated as well. Guests can start multiple threads & their own requests on one block them from booking on another. Communication with them guests buried in the thread by date instead of most recent being brought up to the top. Its crazy it’s so behind the times with as big as the company is but I get a few bookings so I just keep pushing through and using it.

Terrible. I regret ever using VRBO. DON’T BOTHER USING VRBO I normally don't write reviews, but this app is so horrible that I want to warn anyone considering listing on VRBO. The app constantly glitches and is not user friendly. It’s very difficult to navigate, and there are many features missing. The desktop version isn’t any better, so it’s not just a problem with the app. I have properties listed on Airbnb and VRBO, but the VRBO layout is so terrible in comparison that I have stopped using it. I tried to delete the listings, but there is no way to permanently delete a property once it’s been listed. You can only HIDE it, which can sometimes glitch and reopen the listing as ACTIVE, allowing people to book. This is frustrating as one of my properties has been sold, so I don’t want it to reappear and get booked again since there is a $150 cancellation fee. This seems wrong. If I no longer own the property, why can’t I delete it from the account? Or at least give an option to mark the property as SOLD. The only option is to delete your whole account. This would be fine with me, except for the fact that it deletes your Expedia and other traveler accounts as well since they are all linked. So any points you’ve saved up from personal travels will be deleted as well. At this point, I am very irritated with VRBO and regret ever listing on it in the first place.

Highly Disappointing, not user friendly, tons of spam. It is mind boggling how much money Vrbo will spend on TV advertising, but when it comes to actually using their App, it’s like they’ve never listened to their customer. This platform is wrought with spam users. I am inundated at least weekly with fake accounts messaging me to book my place, asking for my mailing address so they can “mail me a company check”. The App is coded so unbelievably poorly for iPhone users. (Can you not hire someone that actually knows C++ please??) It redirects you to the “web” version all the time, does not sync with their email notifications, and makes you re-sign-in every time, many times unsuccessfully, causing users to have to change their password all the time (and no, I’m not forgetting my password, it’s an App coding glitch). The App has very basic, limited property management capability, so you’ll need to be at a PC to get most things done anyway. The AirBnb app on the other hand is extremely user friendly, they takes less of a commission fee, and very very rarely experiences issues with spam accounts.

Glitchy app & not user friendly. This app doesn’t allow templates to be created through the app to have pocketed quick responses to inquiries, and doesn’t have an auto-reply feature, etc like Airbnb does. This is VERY important to me since I manage so many properties. The calendar view is nice bc it shows the prices for each day without having to click on the actual days, but the calendar it’s doesn’t work at least 30% of the time I try to open it on my iPhone XS. The calendar functions are extremely limited along with many features on the VRBO app that are available on Airbnb. VRBO also charges higher commissions for bookings and therefore I increase my price roughly 15% on VRBO and charge more fees simply because I don’t want to do business very frequently with VRBO. You would think with them charging much higher fees that they would have a premium product/ functionality over Airbnb, but that is FAR from the case.

Very bad for owners !. It is a very bad site. Vrbo mixes our house with hundreds of other nearby houses, making it impossible for people to find our property. It now conceals any contact details from prospective renters, so we can not contact them and interview them prior to renting. Vrbo is trying to be like Airbnb, where guests can automatically rent and then destroy your property. It is impossible to get preferred status on vrbo, even though you may have all 5 star ratings. It is highly inaccurate in granting preferred status since they seem to do this based upon how many bookings that you do. Maybe you do not want these bookings. Or maybe you want high quality bookings. Vrbo penalizes you if you reject potentially bad quality renters. They also make it impossible for potential renters to contact you by stripping out your phone number, so potential clients can not contact you. They have increased the annual fee to $500. They also charge huge service fee to both the travelers and owners. Thousands of dollars per year…

"Coming Soon". *Update* I’ve dropped this app from 3 to 2 star. I do not like the constant “Rate Me” pop up. I also tried to edit a future client’s booking request (drop the cleaning fee) and could not do so. I was able to before this new update. If I keep having to go to my browser...why have this thing on my phone? And this “You lost a potential booking?” Most of the time the “lost” booking was to a home unlike mine: twice as big, lake view, an unattached house, etc. Theyre not comparable. *Update end* This app works well in a variety of situations. The operation is simple and effective. However, I have needed the ability to edit my rates, etc., and all the app does (for the 11 months I've been using it) is to promise that these features are "coming soon." With all the money being taken in during the year (between hefty fees for owners--and now renters, too), there should be more than enough tech support in place to make doing all my VRBO business from my phone a reality. I just spent almost 20 minutes on the phone only to be told what I already know--that I can not edit my rates via my VRBO app or Safari. I must use my computer. I don't want to carry my computer every time I travel and I certainly don't want to use a public/hotel computer when I'm accessing such things. It is a security risk. Very disappointing in this day and age...and unaccountable when one considers how much VRBO is now gaining from its users.

Go for Airbnb, Vrbo does not worth the effort. Poor customer service experience and a lot of hidden fees if booking date was modified. I’m traveling out of the states and can’t make international calls so I used the chat function about my recent payout amount. Vrbo owes me $360 to my payout due to a check in date change. I heard from the customer service person in the chat that there are fees when you change the booking dates and that amount “varies” (which means as much as the platform would like to take). The change was a request from the guest and I was being flexible (later on the guest requested to revert it back to original dates), but Vrbo took additional $360 just for the changing back and forth (which was not marked in their payout and somehow they took $360 just for changing the dates from and back to the original). This is unreasonable and I want that amount back (unable to do so in the chat and couldn’t call either due to internal traveling. There is no customer service email to handle payment situation). I’m not going to list my property on this platform anymore and will go just for Airbnb. Not worth the money and time for this platform. :(

Terrible App. I can’t believe how poorly this app works for the most basic functions of which it should be designed for. Trying to upload and move photos for a listing is a complete nightmare. It will randomly not upload some photos I spent a lot of time selecting. It will sometimes just upload personal photos at random I have to delete after waiting forever for it to upload. But it will also randomly have errors and say it then can’t delete those random personal/not listing related photos it uploaded at random for awhile, so I will have to keep checking back. The app will randomly say it just can’t connect regularly. Then…the worst!…I will spend hours trying to put our listing photos in order. The app will constantly remix the photos to a completely random order almost every time I try to move them. I can’t believe it can’t handle something so simple. This is not to mention what a pain messaging guests is on VRBO. Maybe it’s my iPhone?? But this has been on two different iPhones months apart and I have zero issues doing anything on the Airbnb app with the same phone. Airbnb has a fantastic automated messaging system with saved messages we can schedule for each guest. VRBO does not as of my review date. You have to send messages yourself which is a huge pain when we are booked almost every day all year with stays of all different lengths. We are booked every day through Airbnb anyways and it is phenomenal. We have a VRBO listing just to cover our bases, but Airbnb all the way for owners’ ease of use. I hope VRBO fixes these issues. Doesn’t seem like it would be that hard. But still..everyone books through Airbnb anyways, so might not matter anyways.

Falling short. Vrbo has gone downhill the last couple years. The app has a glitch that makes it difficult to type in messages-leaving no space between words. You have to double check every message to make sure it typed out right and doesn’t make you look stupid. The app also didn’t apply the correct pricing to our listing and we lost money on a booking. We had two guests in a row have trouble booking our property through vrbo. The second never could make it work so went through Airbnb, which ended up paying us $80 more for the exact same booking, while the guest paid a little less overall. The fees are crazy high on vrbo with very little support. The messaging between host and guest is very frustrating because there is no way of knowing if the template emails are going out on time or not-and you can’t count on the guest getting messages that are supposed to be sent. All in all, we would rather not have to use vrbo, but do still get quite a few bookings through vrbo.

Horrible App. The VRBO app is for a lack of better words, garbage. It’s not user friendly in any way, things are not organized in a way that makes sense. The interface lacks check-out instructions, there is no integration with smart door locks, like their rival, its slow to react, uploading anything is nearly impossible on the app as it’ll cause an error, then log you out AND lock your account. Today alone, I’ve been locked out 2x on the app and have had to call customer service, whom was professional but is outsourced to overseas customer service agents, in Peru. Many times you have to go to their website on a physical computer to get things done efficiently. To make things worse, when your account gets locked out customer service makes you delete the app completely, to then redownload it all over again as a way to fix the lockout one is having. VRBO needs to do a better in making this work. I do not have ANY issues when I use their rivals platform and app, Airbnb. It’s to the point that I want to get rid of VRBO because I don’t get any hits on it and my property is AMAZING. Since I started my hosting journey 2 months ago, today is my first VRBO guest and it has been a nightmare trying to get things working and ensure I’m able to respond in a reasonable timeframe. When I initially joined VRBO as a host, their Expedia Account Management Team, Josh reached out and after I responded I didn’t hear a peep out of him, that was back on Aug 16th, 2025. Little things like this is what makes me want to cancel.

Worst app I’ve ever used.. Constantly the calendar doesn’t load, you have to refresh over and over before it loads all of your bookings and at times you have to log onto the web browser to access anything and still get refresh issues. For the last few days I haven’t been able to log in to the app at all. I’ve uninstalled it multiple times and it won’t let me log in. When I click on “forgot password” and enter my email it says “cannot connect to the network”. All of my other apps are working just fine and there is nothing wrong with my internet connection. Even the actual website won’t let me make changes to our calendar blocking and booking rates and when I called into customer support and sent them a screen recording of what was happening they didn’t have an answer for me and just suggested for me to tell them what changes to make and they could do it. What is the point of having an app and website for owners if we can’t actually even use them and have to call into customer support to make changes to our account. They charge a lot of extra customer fees for bookings compared to Airbnb to not even have a working app and website for vrbo owners.

US maybe good but not internationally. The reason I gave them a one star is the fact that I tried three times for them to fix their issue and I get an email saying they did, however the issue remains. The issue below. I downloaded this app and even the VRBO owner and I immediately try to activate my account on both. Every singe time I try to log on it would say “Error, invalid log in credentials please try again.” I call the call center and they tell me I have to get a new email. When I tried that the same happens. Then they send the case to their support technician and I was told they would solve the issue and “contact me.” Then I get an email a day later saying “ We have resolved the issue and your account and any associated property listing(s) have been reactivated. We apologize for any inconvenience. Sincerely, Vrbo Account & Supplier Risk Team.” So I am excited that I finally get to use this awesome website! Nope!!! Not today! I call again and same thing happens, I call a third time and then they want to see the email that “THEY” sent. I sent them their own email, and same thing happens. To this day I can not log in! So yea, one star is all they get!

Disappointed. We have mostly had 5 star ratings from tenants. But because we will not automatically accept a booking, vrbo has downgraded us and our bookings have come to almost nothing. I call that vrbo “cutting off their nose to spite their face” - it’s cost us bookings and income on both our parts. Our home is in a family neighborhood and we respect our neighbors / so we ask additional questions before we accept a booking. Vrbo may not care that tenants disturb neighbors and possibly trash an owner’s property, we’re not going to do business that way - we will screen potential tenants before we accept. In addition, many we have been turning down appear to be scams whose “company is paying for their vacation and will be paying by check - totally cutting out vrbo. Yet because we don’t automatically accept them, we get dinged for it. Not very happy w how vrbo does business - it must be a win/win for both parties. Vrbo has in essence destroyed our bookings by taking away our status. Plus your fees are pretty greedy as well.

Nonstop problems. This app and the entire VRBO platform is the least user friendly in the STR market. I have had repeated double bookings due to the calendar not syncing properly despite being set up correctly. It will work okay for weeks and then suddenly “un-sync” and there is no warning before you have bookings for the same dates on multiple platforms. It also prompted me to “offer guests the option” to purchase damage protection, and I clicked yes. Went a month with no bookings before a prospective guest messaged me to tell me she was being *required* to buy the damage protection. I could not locate the page to remove that “option” and had to contact support, which was not a smooth experience in itself. VRBO deliberately made it seem the protection was optional when it was not optional. The only “option” is to the owner as to whether or not to enable it, but the verbiage is completely incorrect/misleading. I don’t know if it was intentional and malicious of VRBO or if they are just incompetent. Either way, this platform has cost me more money than it’s helped me make. The fees and commissions are much higher while the level of protection and customer service is almost non existent.

Over $6k held for over a year. I had 13 stays from 2021 through now that VRBO held the money for. They are calling it a glitch on their billing side. I have called for several issues since renting my property and am never able to speak with a manager or supervisor. Nothing is ever resolved. I called to give them a heads up about a party being planned at my rental, they did nothing to stop it. They never reached out to the renter to stop it and never charged the customer extra for trashing my property. They do not have email addresses, direct phone numbers and will not give last names. The person served in my civil suit is the one person who has emailed me when they wanted to sign me up. How is the company able to get away with egregious breaches in contract? I guess we will find out. I filed a civil suit against them today. This company is trash. Don’t waste your time and just post your property with Airbnb. Better payouts and you are able to get actual help with any issues. Take it from someone who has had $6,600 held for the past year.

Good but one issue. I’ve used the owner app for a couple years and I generally like it however my one complaint is that it ghosts all forms of contact information from being shared with people. You can’t send anyone your phone number because VRBO doesn’t want us communication outside of the app. While I understand the business reasoning for this, it frustrates me because some renters want to be able to speak with you over the phone. I’ve had inquiries from Europeans who are interested in visiting the Chesapeake region for the first time and they would like to talk to a person rather than the impersonal messaging in the app. I would like to be treated like an adult by VRBO. If I want to share a phone number so that a potential guest can call me and get a better feeling about their vacation planning, I should be able to do that. If VRBO is so afraid of losing business they should come up with better incentives to keep people willingly using their system, not force the issue by treating us like children. Claire Homeowner

What is up with the MarketPlace feed?. I guess vrbo thinks I want to know every time someone books with another owner. It’s interesting but not actionable information. I mean I can’t change my view, add another room, or change how many people I can accommodate. When I go into the app, it’s usually to respond to a guest, or look at the calendar. But no, vrbo wants me to look at the market feed. Stop trying to make the Marketfeed happen. Why so much prominence on mobile and web site and why are you burying the operational aspects of my business? Inbox, calendar, rates, revenue. When I do want market data, the info I need is not available. The area my house is in is VERY seasonal, so the last 3 months doesn’t do me any good. I want last Summer’s data so I can manage my pricing. I think vrbo needs to do more research with users to understand needs regarding market data.

Getting a lots of fraud messages please work on screening these fraudulent. I just want to make you aware as I’m sure you are I receive a lot of fraudulent request for reservations they want me to take a check their company check because the company does not have a credit card all kinds of nonsense!! I know it’s fake as I’ve been working with Vrbo for a long time and I’m surprised you are not able to get rid of these fraudulent request. I work with the other short term rental companies and I never get any fraud request such a large company can have better filters it’s really annoying!!! I am sure people have been taken advantage of . I enjoy hosting the real ones please please try to get rid of all these fake reservations it’s just a waste of time and energy for everyone. Thank you please Sarah

VRBO App Lacks Lots of Features. When I am out and about I find the Vrbo app handy in that I can accept a booking request and maybe ask/answer simple questions on current or pending guests. However unfortunately it lacks a lot of features that you can only access on your laptop, desktop or even just accessing the website on your iPhone. The app has been out long enough now that I feel they should’ve had the time to update it with all the same features we get elsewhere. It would make our lives a lot easier as Owners! I also experience the app not working a lot and giving me a message to check back later. That is quite frustrating when you really need to do some work on there ASAP. The app isn’t reliable when you need to adjust quotes, add extra charges, subtract charges, etc. Hopefully VRBO will take the time to update the app very soon.

Processing Request for Booking. Several times we have had to consider a request to book and have had issues. VRBO has limited options for owners to either accept or select a reason to decline a booking without penalties to owners in the form of reduced placement of property or viewed less because they are placed at the bottom of rental options, even though a request is obviously a scam or a potential renter does not even want to book, just ask a question. We have recently had to spend over an hour exchanging VRBO texts with requester and on the phone holding and talking to VRBO because the original renter didn’t meet the minimum age required, so they had switched their reservation request and contact names to 2 different names. They would not withdraw their request to book, so we had to decline it and ask them to resubmit under a new account with the correct primary renter information. To further the aggravation, each message they sent through VRBO was duplicated 4-5 times so we were sure there was a system issue, maybe even a security issue. VRBO needs to improve information sent to owners so they are comfortable with potential guests and want to continue using VRBO, now owned by Expedia global company.

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Reviews required. Had a fraudulent encounter on your website that has cost me $1000s. Why do you not have a review setup like Airbnb?. Most guests on this platform have no reviews and do not review their stays either. You need to do something about it. I am declining requests because of no assurety that they are who they say they are. Additionally why don’t you have insurance cover like Aircover. Makes a big difference for hosts like myself.

Stick to Air BnB if you want an app that works. Despite numerous attempts, can’t even login to the app or via desktop. Reset password and still says incorrect. Also freezes when uploading photos. Stick to Air BnB, a program that works!

No alert sounds.. What is the use of an app that does not make a sound loud enough or unique enough to let you know that there may be an inquiry etc. I wish you could fix it as developers as it makes this whole platform virtually an usable. You need a really unique and decent sounding alert sound. Also if you could merge the pricing structureWith Airbnb as an option that would be ideal.

Marianne’s family stay.. It was good to host this family on a mission. To go to Sydney and compete in school athletics. A lovely family of good communicators. They were good to leave the apartment neat and clean. I wish them well.

Messaging. Messaging is clunky...I receive notifications of messages from guests but they’re not accessible when I log into the app. Often need to logout/re-log in to get them.

Review of verifications. We really enjoy our Home Away owner service its fantastic. Just a some feedback on your verification process for guests. This could be much improved would like to see guests past owner comments and what ID was collected by Home Away to verify their identity. Also a photo as I am concerned that if no photo was collected then its not possible to properly identify the individual. I believe this process is necessary as owners we often offer self check in unlike a hotel and therefore dont have the opportunity to guard against any wrong doing. Hope someone is listening and this is improved. Otherwise happy. Regards Doreen

Not Happy!!!. Not happy with this website! Past bookings from Stayz not updated and conflicting bookings... no children prices! As we are a Farmstay people come with children. They should NOT be charged adult prices so now I have had to lower my prices to accommodate.....NOT happy!!

Iphone App. The application on iphone is playing up often, logged you out without even an update. Error to sign in back in. Tried to delete and re-install, but still facing the same problem.

Not easy to book my property and to navigate. I tried to answer a quiery and it said I need to pre-approve before I can respond, but there wasn’t any way for me to per-approve. I could reply only when I went to the app. It is also almost impossible to see my property on the homeaway site and many more are appearing same locality. Even properties 80km away appear before mine, which is in the centre of Hawks Nest. Please explain WHY?!?

Useless in my iPhone. Pls take notice. I have had to delete and reinstate this app a few times as it keeps freezing when I block dates or even try to log in with password. It’s cumbersome and frustrating.

Not happy with your Verifying system. While using your app I shouldn’t have to keep verifying my account. This caused me unnecessary stress whilst overseas recently and cost me $40 in phone calls to have it sorted. Whilst overseas the text messages were delayed therefore the account couldn’t be verified in the right timeframe. Since then I have removed 2 of my 4 houses from HomeAway and seriously considering the other 2. Very unhappy!!!

Wasted time. Downloaded Stayz app to manage my property but only allows me to book trips, so downloaded vbro owner and same, every second time I can’t log in at all and they still want me to book trips. Every time I’ve finally logged in I have to log in a second time and wait for verification each time I go into my inbox even though I’m already in my account. And sometimes it randomly says incorrect login details that somehow will work again later. To answer a notification if at all possible takes quite a lot of time wasting and you finally need to go find a computer. Just why??!!!!! Stayz used to be so simple

No telephone communication with booking requests is not working for us!. We like to speak with potential tenants to screen before accepting a booking. This has proved invaluable in the past and we are very frustrated with this new system that does not allow us to phone them before accepting a booking. If you can show us how to speak to potential tenants we would be very interested. Emailing back and forth takes too long then the 24 hour period is over causing a hassle for both us and the potential tenant. If not, we are probably going to have to cancel our account with Stayz and seek an alternate renting platform. Sorry, the new system just isn’t working well for us. Happy to discuss. Sandra and Phillip Castle

Grateful for VRBO. Grateful for such a wonderful platform to enable guests to visit our property and enjoy the joy each day that we are privledge to steward. Sharing the land and the farm animals helps us to continue to be grateful for all that we have. We love our guests. We also love having their pets too.

Issues with this app. Calendar and dashboard not loading around 20 percent of thr time. Issues with functionality and slipping booking fees. Been informed to not rely on app. and use web based service instead. I don’t trust this app. It’s ok and I’ve learned to just expect problems. The Airbnb app is much more safe to use.

Not happy. I have just spent 4 weeks traveling overseas and missed quite a few bookings as I could not get onto the site . Reply to enquiry a or contact you- very upset with this

Tricky. 1. If I get a reservation request and need to ask the prospective guest to clarify a detail before accepting, Vrbo sends me auto reminders and entitles them with "Your guest as relied to your..." even though the guest hasn't responded at all. Apparently this is standard so they can't even modify the message in their system. Clearly it's a program thing and should be fixed 2. Every single guest reservation request so far has come with zero reviews and nothing to go on to help with a decision to accept the reservation 3. Each time I have contacted Help I have been told that the best way to operate as an Owner is via the desktop so the mobile app is clearly lacking 4. I have had barely any reservation requests for the amt of time I've been on Vrbo 5. Vrbo have found it necessary to withhold my first payout for an ENTIRE MONTH . Yes I apparently agreed to this in the T&Cs however in the initial onboarding call this was NOT explained 6. VRBO charges almost double the Host service fee compared with Airbnb but charges the guest less.

Ok but still a bit annoying. I have two accounts and so frequently log out and log in. Then I have to stop and reload the app. There are still things (like welcome info) that I can’t modify through the app but need to use a laptop. Also it is buggy. Sometimes calendar will not display.

Limited functionality. The thing which annoys me most about this app is that you can’t upload existing photos due to weird size/ dimension / ratio limitations. We have lots of pics we use on AirBnb with instructional info etc and can’t reuse those - or the nice pics we already have. As a result our listing looks a lot worse on HomeAway than AirBnB. Lots of other restrictions. Can’t access payment data. Can’t set up auto self checkin info?? (That i’m aware of). Blahhh Also the Stayz HomeAway branding is confusing. Different logins and names and app names. It’s a nightmare trying to administer.

Automated messages to my guests saying they are from me without my control. Homeaway send emails to my guests saying they are from me and the first I know is that a copy of it came into my inbox. I think “really?” The guests then get confused. This is all new as our property listing was moved to Homeaway when they bought out stayz and the new system is completely automated and out of our control. I’m not so happy with it saying it’s coming from me direct. I’m unsure of when payment dates are as it’s all up to Homeaway. The guests get confused. When we first started renting our space years ago people would pay us direct with their credit card. The simple days.... 😀

Owner??. Enjoying owner? Is an example ofthe silliness of much of your website. Is ‘owner’ a thing? Your question is non grammatical and doesn’t make sense. Generally your website is a tricky muddle. For example logging on, is invariably from a different screen and requires several irritating steps.

Guest Reviews. As a host, the biggest worry is that we accept bookings from badly behaved guests. We cannot see reviews of guest because hosts don’t get the opportunity to leave one. For me it’s the biggest downside to this app, or website, regardless how we access the platform.

App feedback. We find the app to be quite slow at updates and changing between property calendars showing the correct pricing for the property.

Problems with application/Homeaway. 1. Can’t get cleaners report in app or elsewhere in Homeaway platform and it’s a critical report needed by owners and cleaners. Efforts to bring this to Homeaway’s attention a number of times has fallen on very deaf ears!! Disappointing. 2. Message is being sent to owners advising that the security deposit has been returned to guests when in fact this is entirely incorrect and misleading- all that has happened is that the return of the security deposit has been initiated. The guests aren’t going to see the refund for 5-7 business days. This should be made abundantly clear to guests and owners after a stay so guests don’t get upset with owners and Homeaway and expectations are managed. Otherwise, application is quite good so far - easy to use. Maddie

Difficult to navigate. I was unable to change a booking date until I had declined a booking. I believe a travellers contact phone number should be provided to discuss a potential booking before having to accept a booking. This is not user friendly and very impersonal for the customer

Hung for 45 minutes. I could not get this app to get beyond two step authentication- a ‘please wait’ message on my screen from 8:59 till 9:50. I can’t list my property so I deleted the app. Big thumbs down

Good but could do with some tweaking. Overall a good app and relatively easy to use. Saying that I have only had two enquiries through it. The acceptance process could be a bit clearer. I don’t like the generic acceptance message but it’s not really clear if the booking is accepted when you use your own custom one. Could do with some tweaks to make it clearer.

Clunky website. Hi, I've found the website not particularly user friendly and not intuitive . The payments section is particularly confusing with bond being included in 'payout 'to owners... I miss the old stayz format !

Clumsy & difficult to use web site and process. The guest has inquired if the property has a particular feature. There was no obvious way to respond. The system just seems to be geared to bookings not providing information to potential guests. Very annoying. I tried to respond but have no idea if the guest has received anything as there was no confirmation of despatch. 👎👎

Amazing platform for holiday leasing your home. I love this app. It’s easy to navigate and works really well for me as a host. Bookings are always coming through & our property has great exposure. Definitely worth it, with no up front costs. Highly recommend it👍

Thank you. Thanks for being on the same team. We need each other 🙂great clay classes

Frustrating app. In the past you could view a potential guests reviews but now all this has been stripped away and you can only view their ratings. Very unhappy with this and I prefer other host platforms that are more transparent as to who we host our properties to. I will accept a booking for the same dates from another site when I can see the hosts reviews - Stays/Vrbo you are losing business Esa and have alienated your hosts.

Renee&Richard. Fabulous Cottage everything you could wish for. Great garden the bird life is amazing also the sunsets and having fun around the firepit at sunset drinking bubbles and having a lovely bbq on the deck. Well done on making Coppin Cottage such a special place🤗🤗👍

Horrible app and horrible customer service!!. I blocked dates on the app last year but it didn’t get blocked on homeaway database, so guests could book the dates on top of the blocked dates. I had to apologize to guest and ask them to cancel as it was blocked on the app before they booked. Happened numerous times when we were busy in hospital for several months. Homeaway put our account on halt without letting us know. Haven’t received any booking since then. Talking to customer service, they don’t accept their mistake, no apologies, simply said you can use your desktop computer to get it right, and that was not possible for us as we were in hospital in the different city. My question is why there is an app if we can’t use it and get hosts deceived?? Extremely unhappy and will never recommend anyone. There are many similar and much better service providers for hosts.

Reservations download data could include notes. Would be better if reservations download included notes.

Poor App. Unfortunately I am unable to decline a booking using this app and they no longer have their support lines working! This is rubbish!

Easy to use site. Since joining HomeAway we have had increased rental requests and more satisfied clients. We recommend the site for its ease of use and update in these changing times

Limited Functionality. Unlike the full PC version, the app is a cut down version and can be annoying on the move.

I will be staying with Airbnb. I dont know if it’s because Im a Australian address but the app wont work list my property it does not work compute information to set up it comes up with error 101 not happy absolute waist sounds like what Stayz had first time original set was better from the reviews its a shame because all your old school generation prefer Stayz more than Airbnb so I will delete app and stay Airbnb its so simple easy to use

Great however...... There is much time wasted advising past guests who question when their refunds are expected. We advise them a week after departure that refund is made (with or without claim) however guests can’t see the refund come through on their statements. Only from my discussion with past guests we worked out that they get refunded as at the last date of final payment - in my case 60 days prior to check in. How can this be advised more clearly to our guests as it is frustrating for them to follow up a bond refund and they also may think that the owners are holding onto it. I have tried to contact someone to discuss this but to no avail and it isn’t in any owner help pages. Advice would be appreciated

Disappointing. Severely lacking in basic features. How can a company so big make such a bad app with so little functionality. Why can’t I create a guidebook for guests. How is the app advertising the very same app to me inside the app?! Why can’t I see a list of bookings and earnings on one screen? Why do I have to go into my inbox to see bookings?! Then let’s talk about not being able to see any guest info before accepting a booking. Wtaf?

Highly recommended guests!. We are very happy to recommend Chloe and Dan, who were wonderful guests at our house over the New Years period. Many thanks for taking care of our house so well, we look forward to welcoming you again soon!!

All too hard. It is SO hard to set pricing - you virtually have to do each day manually. Also, I don’t understand how there isn’t better visibility of guests. They don’t have a profile, and don’t need to write a message about themselves. I don’t know how Home Away can expect people to hand over their houses to people without any knowledge of the guest.

Excellent app but check in details are sent late. Excellent app.. only problem is that the check in info is sent to the guest after their arrival. I have phoned Home Way to discuss this but they seem unable to help .. I’m now making a public request .. please sorry this our .. the check in instructions should be sent to the guest the day before their arrival..I have to keep remembering to do this myself .. I’m sure it’s not too hard fore the app developers to rectify this

Poor app for tablet or phone use. I am still waiting for this app to be upgraded so that all the functions are available in phone or iPad As the dashboard is not available on these items and not everyone has a laptop now days it makes it impossible to upgrade things such as changed pin codes on the go or access financial reports Also the end of year financial report is not easy to read my accountant didn’t understand it last year The stayz model was far more user friendly

The need to enter my password is really annoying. Because my phone is password protected I don’t see the need to put my password in every time - perhaps once the verification process has occurred and the ap is functional, a 4 digit pin would suffice? It’s the only verification my bank requires to use the phone app in my mobile devices

App issues. Having no end of issues with this app Can’t log in or fix password a lot of times Calendar a nightmare to use and often won’t save when I block out dates Haven’t been able to respond to booking requests 😩

Very good app. It’s great to have a section purely for owners. It is much easier to keep in touch with guests as well as checking the calendar and managing bookings and rates. It would be good to be able to add a co-host which would make life so much easier if we want to go away for short periods.

Character field on reply too short. I try and cut and paste my house information to guests as I do in Airbnb and I have to do three separate reply’s to fit it in Can you increase the characters /words allowed in the reply field please so I only have to cut and paste my standard reply once like with Airbnb

Great support. I am pleased I made the switch to Stayz....HomeAway. I feel supported, listened to and not once did I feel I was a nuisance. There were teething issues but were resolved satisfactorily. I took a year off hosting. On good advice from Kayle Goldring I just blocked the year to avoid having to go through the registration process again. I’m back to hosting and loving it. Keep up the great work!!

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Member since 2006- slowly disassociating. I have used VRBO since 2006. To say the service has deteriorated is an understatement. At first you were five star hands down . Now, We pay more and more for less and less. Trying to get a real person who knows something on a phone is ridiculous and every time you turn around there is a new rule or a new fee. Disputes are not worth arguing over as the payment centre doesn’t listen when you have a complaint. Damage to my apartment was never covered, even though I had detailed photos of sex toys and drug paraphernalia and cigarette damage. I had to repaint. The smell was awful ( I don’t smoke) I was met with me being in the wrong. I got no support and client demanded their rent back. When I refused VRBO refused to pay me for future bookings. My reviews on my property has always been 5 stars. So you probably shouldn’t have me post a review

Airbnb is way better don’t waste your time. As a host you cannot open messages or view your calendar up to date. Have to manually put reservations in. Always an “error” when trying to reply to a guest in need of help. Terrible site Would not recommend this to anyone!

Great Company!. VRBO is a great company to partner with. I highly recommend booking a vacation rental through VRBO and also highly recommend listing your vacation rental with them. Very professional, super easy to work with and very helpful.

Cautionnement. Contrairement à votre compétiteur AirBnb, le cautionnement est géré par les propriétaires. Ne changer surtout pas cette formule. C’est la différence qui fait en sorte que je préfère beaucoup plus Abritel HomeAway!

Very Greedy enterprise. Really fed up with all the charges for little value. Looking forward to a future competitor for VRBO and Airbnb.

System to collect taxes does not work in the Canadian site. Over the last year, Vrbo change it it’s online system so that taxes could be included. The only problem is that it is inflexible in terms of which taxes are to be collected. So basically the system does not work. Previously the owner could manually put in the taxes. This is no longer an option, which provides an extra headache for the owner.

Unusable. App frequently is unable to update and operate. I have an iPhone 11 with up to date software. The only short term fix to this problem is uninstalling and reinstalling the app, it only works for one day tops. You can’t message through the app to contact support, and reporting the issue to Vrbo accomplishes nothing. Super disappointing and makes the Vrbo service hard to use because of the inconvenience of having to use your computer to use their service.

Owner. Terrible app. Signs you out every time so you don’t know if you have bookings or messages, unlists the property weekly for no reason so no one can see it, Shows messages when you don’t have any, shows you have messages but can’t get them to show. Charges customers double and triple fees and taxes. Plus customer service is almost unreachable.

Lag in messages. There is often a delay between updating the messages in the app.

Technical issues. Too many technical issues with the site and app and a long wait to reach VRBO for help by phone

VRBO Platform. My wife and I have been booking with VRBO for over ten years now and for the last several years our property has been on their platform and we are very satisfied with our relationship with VRBO and their Excellent that they provide to Vacationers and as well owners. Thanks again VRBO Looking forward to adding more properties in the future. Darren Porfon

Unbearable slow. Constant bugs and poor performance. This app is constantly giving me stress through its failed functions and constant need to just not work all together.

Complant. I don’t like the fact that I can’t give my phone number to clients. Our rental is in a popular Mexican resort for Canadians. So people are there and the want to see the place before they book for the following year. There is one right now looking for 5 months a $ 10000 booking. Another complaint of mine is that you don’t allow reviews from Canadian clients. I complained before but received no reply from you as to why that is. Steve Freeman

Very disappointing. Receiving errors, calendar often doesn’t work as well as notifications - very inconvenient for those who make it a practice to react quickly to inquiries

The worst app for owners. I can’t tell you how many issues there are with this app. I feel like half the reason I don’t use it more to update prices etc is because of how bad the UI is, and just horribly thought through. VRBO, spend some money to redo the whole app to make it easier for owners to use. From expiring requests staying in your calendar, to my calendar automatically reopening to dates more than a year away after having set it to open after only 9 months, not encouraging reviews from guests, reviews are basically usually only a star rating… look to Airbnb. Much easier and nicer to use.

App. The app is clunky and not very user friendly.

Accepting a Booking. Generally accepting a booking is easy peasy, but not yesterday, I was unable to accept a booking and the request timed out

Poor App and Website, high service fees. The app constantly crashes, kicks me out and won’t allow for changes. The website is the same way, very glitchy and difficult to navigate. Service fees are much higher than Airbnb

Glitchy. The VRBO owners app is extremely glitchy it won’t let me see the main page with menu options at all. What can I do to fix this? I just want to list my short term rental everywhere I can…

Vrbo does not collect required British Columbia (Canada) taxes. The app is actually quite good. However, as of summer 2021 they made a code change that incorrectly asks got gst (even for small business owners who are gst exempt). Their response to my logged support call is “this is an isolated problem”. So it is not fixed. Airbnb handles tax collection much better. They collect and submit on your behalf. Vrbo requires you to collect and submit yourself.

Struggles. This app isn’t the most responsive 🐌

Not what it’s made out to be.. Support doesn’t know how to help you. They don’t even know what “internal” is on a forms they ask you to fill out to be able to host. Once you are hosting, they will hide your listing for no reason and not tell you they have done that for a week in my case. Only to ask for info you have already gave them. Then to say they have to review their mistake and still won’t re-list you. Support is useless in my opinion. Not to mention all the scam messages you get in your inbox from scammers that they don’t verify properly. All in all Airbnb is far superior and books 98% of my booking over the three Vrbo was even able to get me.

Ranking metrics etc. Hello, the ranking metrics don’t load in the app and the use of the boost is unavailable as well. Lastly, it would be nice to see all the marketing tools available in the app so I don’t have to go to the website.

Gong show. Was interested in potentially switching to VRBO so I opened an account. Their sales team called me, offered to import my Airbnb listing wholesale and set it all up. Said the schedules could be linked. Perfect right? What they didn’t tell me is they’d make the listing live, without syncing said schedules. 3 days before May 24 (the biggest weekend of the summer and a Canadian holiday). Any host reading this can imagine how quickly I was double booked. Worst part is they wanted me to pay the cancellation fees. I deleted the app and my account and will be remaining with Airbnb.

Really frustrating app. Thought I would give this app a try to list my apartment for rent and unfortunately it is not user friendly at all. It’s not clear how to navigate at all. I’m giving it two stars because the woman who helped me delete the account was fantastic.

Can’t login. Since the update, I can’t login to VRBO owner.

Application mobile et en ligne archaïque. L’application mobile shutdown à chaque utilisation. Très lent et vraiment frustrant à utiliser pour les hôtes qui veulent offrir un bon service à leur clients. Il faut vraiment que vous améliorez votre application et sa vitesse de chargement. Ce n’est pas acceptable pour un site qui veut rivaliser avec la concurrence. Votre application mobile et site web est reste figé dans le temps et n’évolue pas comme il le faudrait.

Poor app for calendar. App doesn’t work all the time to edit calendar

Almost as good as Airbnb. VRBO charges hosts on average 5.4% more for bookings than Airbnb. 3% payment processing fee and 5.4% booking fee. Airbnb has no payment processing fee & only 3% booking fee. The app is pretty good and easy to use. Not too many bugs. I’m glad I can get bookings through VRBO but I wish they’d lower their fees. 5% extra is a lot

It’s horrible. Always get error messages or try again. The app is glitchy and hard to use. Makes hosting much harder than it should be. I expect better from this company, VRBO does not hesitate to take its percentage of the booking, but we get only little support.

Very slow.. It’s not even loading property details, it gets stuck at loading. Almost unusable.

Quiz always blocking me from responding to my guests since this morning.. Always asking me about robot quiz today! I can’t answer to my guests!

Platform. I don’t find the platform user friendly at all. Not easy to navigate it by times.

Multi factor authentication. Latest version of the app has a major bug that where multi factor authentication does asks you how you want to receive code, you click get code then immediately says authentication failed without ever sending a code. Completely unusable

Very Buggy. I can hardly get anything done on this app. Always complaining about not being able to contact the servers even though I have internet access. Apple please introduce zero star reviews because Vrbo deserves none.

Rubbish. Listed the property,more than 5 days, still inactive.Airbnb is way much better than this stupid app

Unhappy owner. The app has been no help in managing my property Limited viewing of platform calendar mix up, loading issues , double listing and when spoke to client services was informed that I should just use main site and my PC instead. This tells me they aren’t interested in improving.New owners be warned not the best

Love the website. As an owner I love the calibre of guests booking through the site, easy to manage and navigate . Communication is great.

Quite a few bugs to be fixed. Have been using Airbnb for a couple years to rent our property and recently decided to post it on VRBO as well. Most of the features are quite equivalent, however I’ve experienced several bugs with VRBO (owner). I don’t know if we’ve just been unlucky, but we had a few issues with the platform and required a second level of support to be able to resolve the technical isues ….

Stop working…. … for a few hours .

Notifications. I’m not receiving notifications of my message and missed out on a possible booking. Constantly getting errors and please try again later. It’s annoying and causing a lot of problems for me

Don’t trust their customers service representatives. We’ve been using VRBO to rent our condo and while they do a good job when you’re listing is set up, it’s almost criminal what the customer service representatives can do to your account when they are investigating something for you. For example, today we had a tax question and while the customer service representative was talking to the tax department our tax form was deleted! We received an automatic email saying we had to complete a tax form if we wanted to be paid. This after being paid by VRBO for 1 full year. So, we had to refill in the tax form, send in and wait 48 hrs for it to be reviewed before we can be paid again. When you ask VRBO if they can trace who deleted the form they say the system doesn’t record that information. So be careful who you talk to at VRBO. If the customer service representative doesn’t seem to know what they are doing or is unhelpful just end the call and call back until you find someone that can help you.

Suggested improvements. A check in module like Airbnb Scheduled messages Co-host functionality.

Can’t even start. I can’t even start, all I get is a pop up screen after trying to login. It kicks me back out. Can’t do anything, no response from support. Such garbage!

Owner. I find the site extremely hard to navigate and I have had issues with payments. I have never spoken with a person when l have a problem.

Very buggy. Team, your app need to be fixed. It constantly disconnecting from the server. Randomly require authentication and does not even record when i just authenticated. Review section is almost not usable.

Good service, glitchy app. The VRBO owner app is very glitchy. Despite the updates the mobile version doesn’t work quite well and the UX isn’t optimized. VRBO is a great service but the app needs work.

Needs allot of work. Need allot of work to ever compete with Airbnb Need to see guests review on the app so we can make educated decisions better.

calendar problems reflect new ideas not tested before implementation. Vrbo is a great company in many ways. Unfortunately, when they tried to change their calendar, they fell into a slew of problems that left hosts with double bookings and mass confusion, which has continued for many months. There were days when hosts couldn’t even sign in to the vrbo site. Just using the vrbo app now requires us to click on three areas, requesting a download as a host each time. Prior to the changes we were signed in automatically. While I understand the need for updates, I hope the next time they test their ideas to see if they work before implementation.

Customer service. Fantastic support by the VRBO team!! Thank you

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HomeAway’s App is their single biggest asset.. HomeAway/VRBO basically owns one of the best operating computer programs for the Vacation Rental industry. All of their individual owners they contract with to rent an Owners property. For HomeAway to have any inventory to sell dates to their Guests they need Owner’s to buy, maintain their homes to certain vacation rental program standards for their homes they book. HA/VRBO reservation, calendar, management and operational tools and tips in their computer system is one of the best ever designed. A Vacation Rental Agent’s best and most necessary management tool is their Guest Reservation system and computer programs and HA/VRBO’s is fantastic with no investment for Owners we just pay them a % of the reservations they sell, confirm and collect our money to work with each other. It is a good relationship.

Easy To Rent. I have been renting my vacation home for a little over a year now. The HA/VRBO website makes it easy to list the property. It does take some time to set up the account and list the property, but it does a good job displaying all the details. The support has been excellent and helpful. My only complaint is that they charge a lot of fees on both sides and I don’t get paid until after each guest checks out or cancels. For example, I have this summer booked and several weeks next summer booked, and I won’t see a dime until several days after each guest checks out. That is a lot of money sitting in their account collecting $500 in interest. Are the fees not enough?

Stop hiding an owner’s ability to access listing. If zero stars was an option, I would choose it. Unbelievably labyrinthian the number of drill-in drop downs one needs to memorize just to check your live listing. Redundant headings where every conceivable option has been iterated and given its own pages with different formats. And then - as with Adobe suites - the developers seem to think constantly changing the menus and format every few months so there is no hope for consistent usage is helpful “improvement.” Please decide how you want to lay out tools and information, make it intuitively accessible and then leave it alone so people can learn and use it. Constant bugs in your calendar syncs. The lockout feature when changing your password is ridiculous - allow people with a trusted mobile device to reset a password and access their time sensitive account! You are - hands down - the least navigable and least usable application and service out there right now.

VRBO provides no security or concern for hosts!. One of our first bookings with VRBO was for 3 days in December 2022. It showed a 5 star rating, so I accepted it. It was a single man who not only robbed and damaged our apartment, but he entered our personal residence and stole every valuable item small enough to hide in his luggage. The police identified him from our security cameras as a known criminal using his own named. VRBO seems complicit in this illegal activity. They no longer include any ranking, review, or identification information about guests. They protect criminals. This burglar gave me a 5 star rating with the comment that he had a very pleasant stay. I presume he is still plying his trade using VRBO. I do not accept auto bookings from VRBO, and I require a damage deposit, full name and home address from VRBO guests before I even consider them. I have since had some lovely guests, but I know I must protect myself from VRBO, which is completely untrustworthy.

Website allows and encourages misinformation. I like the functionality of VRBO, but I hate how it allows property managers to advertise low nightly rates in the ranking search function, then you realize PMs just hide fees in “owner fees.” I could advertise my condo for $1 a night, then slap on $200 a night in owner fees, and vacation searchers would click thinking they found an amazing deal. This keeps renters from being able to find rentable units at their desired price points. And renters probably get annoyed with deceiving hidden owner fees and give up at times, hurting the entire secondary home rental market.... I feel like VRBO should be ambassadors of pricing transparency and matching owners to renters, instead VRBO helps PMs hide and deceive. Please take out owner fees and make it part of the nightly rate!

Ok but has some legs to grow. First of all, we are thankful that VRBO has put in the time to create any platform and we use it frequently to welcome guests. The platform is good enough to communicate and book but doesn’t have us in love with any part of the experience or features. Our chief issues are: 1) We get spammed and/or spoofed often and by many of the same users. We flag these users in the app, they disappear and then return with another booking request in about a week. We get none of these on Airbnb 2) Phantom alerts- My wife and I both manage our rental and often she’ll respond to a guest only for the app to still have an alert for me to respond to a guest. We end up doubling down if we don’t force the app to refresh every time we use it 3) Customer profiles- the app doesn’t share much of anything on the customers coming to stay with us. Our rental is on our property and we like to know who’s joining us for the booking… we don’t need to know PII but we also don’t really trust to platform to know much about the folks staying with us, to note (1) above. 4) Login issues - we get logged out often in same day and lately the text verification hasn’t come through to log back in., forcing us to call. Keep on updating the tool team. Casey

We love hosting guests at our Haiku Surf House. We love our little piece of paradise in Haiku, Maui and offering a more local experience to guests visiting the island. Our favorite part is being able to walk to the coffee shop in the morning and get a coffee and pastry or walking to the Pauwela Store in the afternoon for a snack or dessert. Our property is lush and inviting and full of character with homemade decor and a surfboard fence surrounding the property. Did you know all 110 boards were donated by local surfers and windsurfers, so we feel our property is surrounded by good Maui vibes! We look forward to hosting and meeting new and returning guests from all around the world and helping give them a new Maui experience from the eyes of a Maui local! Aloha, Amy & Joel

This app makes me want to only use Airbnb. Please pay someone to upgrade this app to function like Airbnb’s. It’s terrible for many reasons. It’s constantly logging me out for no reason, it’s not user friendly and after months of using it I’m still struggling to find and access things (I’m not old either. I’m in my twenties). Like Airbnb, you should be able to look at your calendar, select that booking, and get all the details for that booking including being able to easily message your guest. When I need to adjust my calendar, it never makes the changes on the first attempt. It’s so frustrating, and just now I had to log into my computer again to send a message, because the app was not cooperating. Thankfully I was home!

Disgruntled renter. Such a shame because I often use VRBO as a renter but as an owner I am totally disappointed in the service and platform. First I was guided to set up the split payment option where the renter pays a 50% deposit upon booking and then the balance due about week prior to check in. I was waiting and waiting and waiting for those deposits, which, shocker, never came. I finally called and was told that the split payment function doesn’t actually disperse the money that way, sorry, they switched payment processors and the new one won’t do it. Ok, so that’s wasn’t great but what can you do. But this last week the PG&E power outages disrupted our guests stay. They stayed 2 days instead of 4. So after the stay I attempted to refund our guests for his 2 missed nights plus tax as guess what? Can’t. Once the money is dispersed it’s out of their hands, nothing that can do and they keep all the fees and commissions. I guess I’ll be renting exclusively through Airbnb from now on.

Failing technology at its finest!. VRBO app is constantly glitching with the “oops…” Message. Not only is the app feeble, but the overall technology of this company is constantly failing. We have been a loyal client for over 10 years with multiple properties, and we are plagued with our listings being hidden for no reason for long periods of time, costing us tens of thousands of dollars and lost booking revenue. on top of that there is no real customer service. Sure, you can call the number, and even though we are a premier host, we still just get a regular call-center wrap. No sense to overseas, call centers, and those wraps do their best to speak, clear English and help. However, they are basically a firewall keeping us away from trying to solve actual problems that exist inside the VRBO technology system. We have called multiple times every time this happens. Why it happens repeatedly I can’t understand, and no one will explain it. Mysteriously after several days or in some cases weeks, listing comes back on, and again no explanation. If there was a way to give zero stars and still write a review we would do that instead. Totally disappointing and feeling held hostage by this company. You are a technology company! Deliver the technology!

Lags and loading issues. The app has great information and is a wonderful tool for tracking. It is also conveniently for staying on top of your listings. The biggest issue I have is on numerous occasions it will not load I get errors loading the calendar, customer info and lags in the inbox messages. The current convos will be from several days ago it does not refresh and give you the up-to-date messages. I just recently had someone who booked stating they had pets on a non-pet friendly home but I did not see it because it did not load until several days later.

Garbage. The worst, most awful, constantly broken app I have ever had to deal with. The entirety of our 8 years of service with VRBO has been completely exhausting. We have been renting our property for many years, and have never had so many issues with any other service. It seems the owners and operators of VRBO believe it’s a good idea to constantly change format and business structure every 6 months. And if something does go wrong, their support is worse than any over seas call center you have ever dealt with. It once took me a full week and DOZENS of phone calls just to get my account working again. What changed? Nothing! They had no way of explaining why my account had frozen, or why it started working again. During this time, I could not rent to new guests, nor could I refund their damage deposit. It’s not like this was a one-off tech failure, we have experienced many other difficulties through the years. For managing an account that handles quite a bit of money coming in and going out, it is nothing less than concerning that the app has issues. Don’t think the website is any better, the entire company is just as broken and dysfunctional. If you are stuck with VRBO, I truly hope you never have any issues, because if you do, there will be no one capable to help you. Constantly pushing “instant booking” and garbage features no one is asking for to long term customers is a stupid idea. I hate VRBO, and we are moving to Airbnb as soon as my subscription ends (after over 8 years of constant issues). Goodbye and good riddance, I will be smiling walking away from VRBO.

Generally fantastic- trouble when also using a traveler account. In general I really like this app- it has made it possible to get bookings from a far wider range of guests. My issue is only that I also use it for my own personal travel, and somehow the two accounts keep scrambling together, which means (regardless of whether I am clicking the blue app or the white) I often can’t find my personal travel information. I know it’s two different apps and I need to log out of one and switch to the other, but after hours working with customer service multiple times I still can’t switch easily. As soon as I can see my personal travel plans I can’t get back to my owner account, the 2 seem to be conflated.

Buggy App, Requires Patience. The app is significantly worse than the Airbnb app due to poor organization, slow response time, and a less detailed and intuitive user interface. One constant frustration involves opening or blocking nights in the calendar. When selecting a range of dates and toggling open or block, the first or last night in the range often does not update and must be manually corrected. In other instances, the selected range updates properly, but the app automatically includes a day before or after the intended dates, requiring additional steps to undo the incorrect availability. This creates unnecessary work and increases the risk of booking errors. There is also considerable lag when entering price changes for daily rates or fees, making routine updates inefficient and time consuming. More concerning, listings have been changed or removed without notice by VRBO, which has resulted in the loss of existing bookings. When the listing is reinstated, those bookings do not return. This has direct financial consequences and undermines trust in the platform. The instability and lack of reliability are not minor inconveniences. They are detrimental to owners and hosts who rely on the app to manage their businesses. For a platform whose primary purpose is to support listings and provide a simple and seamless booking experience from start to finish, this level of dysfunction is unacceptable. The app should undergo another comprehensive round of user testing, with meaningful consideration given to feedback from hosts and clear action taken to resolve recurring issues.

The app is broken. The app is extremely slow and frustrating to use. The owner dashboard fails to load - just shows a message saying it needs to be refreshed, with no actual fix. The calendar doesn’t allow bulk edits for weekend or holiday pricing, which is a major limitation. The Help section doesn’t open at all. I couldn’t even complete my listing due to multiple glitches and broken features. The interface is extremely unintuitive, and that’s coming from a very tech-savvy user. There have also been widespread reports online about crashes, syncing issues with listings, and problems with messaging guests - sometimes notifications don’t even come through. If Vrbo wants to seriously compete in this space, they really need to step up the reliability and user experience of their app and browser experience.

Terrible APP at pair with Government Apps. When you use this app it feels like you are dealing with a government funded program instead of a for profit tach oriented organization. The app feels like it was programmed by high schoolers. Something as simple as sending a message crashes the app. The user experience is chaotic. Anyone renting short term rentals can attest that after over 10 years since AirbnB came online, both VRBO and Booking should have caught up in technology and user experience. However it seems like there is not intent on getting up to speed. The only differentiation here is that VRBO seems to be more exclusive as far as Hosts. Therefore I advice any hosts to target guests with over 20% higher rates on your nightly rates so that you can 1. Make up for the pain dealing with the app. 2. Filter in some degree , not totally, potential thrashers that will be almost impossible to deal with through VRBO customer service.

The technology needs a serious upgrade. I’ve been an owner with VRBO for 5 years now. Often the system is slow or unresponsive. The biggest challenge is in not being able to credit people for expenses they initially paid for (pet fee or extra person fee) but they didn’t need at check in without completely canceling their reservation and asking them to rebook. There’s an option for the owner to give a fee back but the guest won’t recover taxes or the additional percentage VRBO charges on those fees. Update- VRBO responded to my review about “adding” payment requests! The problem is giving renters money back including the taxes and VRBO fees added to the charge being refunded. Shortened stays or less people should not only get my refund but the taxes and fees they were charged for those days and services they no longer need. VRBO just doesn’t get it.

Horrible service for hosts. I am a new host at Vrbo but I have been hosting many years at Airbnb. Vrbo has been problems from the start. The lack of help from the customer service on the phone is terrible. Every time I call they don’t know how to help me or treat me like I’m a moron and I don’t know what I’m talking about. This time I call the Spanish center thinking that maybe I would get someone that could understand my issues better. The person that attended my call was a Colombian man that kept on interrupting me and didn’t let me explain my issues but then asked if they were resolved and if I was happy with the service. Every time I tried to talk to explain my situation he just blamed me and said I was doing things incorrectly. Their platform is so difficult to understand and there are so many technical issues that make me feel I can’t trust this platform. I think I rather stay with Airbnb. Such a joke!

Difficult and Expensive. I like the option of this site in addition to Airbnb, but the fees are ridiculous. Besides paying for the service they also charge a credit card use fee (percentage). It is highly unlikely anyone will pay with another method and raising the nightly rate will only decrease the likelihood my unit will rent. It’s a LOSE/LOSE situation. Also it is very difficult to get paid. My guests had come and gone before I got my money and I have direct deposit. This company uses a 3rd party to payout hosts so it takes extra time. After this summer season I will be using VRBO/HomeAway/ etc. They also have too many companies merged and the guests that come through are not the cream of the crop but the bottom of the barrel.

Offsets expenses at second home. We’ve listed our house for over 3 years on Vrbo and it’s been a great way to offset taxes, utilities and other maintenance expenses. It could never yield a profit though, so if you’re looking to make money, you really need to think through your business plan. I knew nothing about short term rentals, and Vrbo offers minimal support. There are a few “blind spots” on their platform (such as making changes to a reservation date). I’ve learned a lot the hard way but still enjoyed the hospitality industry. I’ve hosted over 75 groups and have a consistent 5-star rating. I recommend joining a support group such as some on FB to learn about common pitfalls.

Owner App. The owner app appears to display unavailable messages when I was trying to review my conversation history or my inbox. Of greater concern is VRBO’s blocking of communication between the owner and potential traveler. In doing so you are causing owners to lose bookings because of my personal experience there is no substitute for reassuring a potential traveler of a reservations in the thousands of dollars then speaking to the owner who can address their concerns in a timely manner. I believe you will be destroying the brand insofar as if this obstacle to communication process people will no longer feel comfortable booking and committing prior to speaking to an owner, he will have higher cancellations, after-the-fact which then again president Nother problem throwing your cancellation logarithm validity in the question. Again the greatest concern is that The new barriers to communication will drive fewer bookings. On Another note I’d like to hear details of real success stories using the $1 million protection and the other promotional incentives been largely criticized as being fraught with loopholes and virtually useless.

Do not list your home with VRBO!. We have had our house listed with VRBO/Homeaway for 10 years. At the beginning when it was a simple listing service, it was great. Over the years, it has gotten worse. First, their fees have gotten crazy. You might as well go to a local broker from what they wind up taking away. This summer we wound up having a disastrous rental where people rented the house and threw a huge party. On VRBO’s advice, they told us to cancel the rental, so we did. Unfortunately the people wouldn’t leave (that is a whole other story). 2 months later, VRBO told us that because we canceled the rental, we had to turn on “instant booking” or our listing would be removed without refund. We refused as we need to screen to avoid a repeat situation. So they dropped our listing after 10 years. A really bad partner unfortunately. They don’t care about you, your home nor the renters. Look elsewhere.

So slow, the new calendar is horrible, freezes. I don’t know what they are doing but every week this app seems to get worse and worse. The current issues are it constantly freezes up, I can’t refund guests a portion of their payments if needed, it takes several minutes just to finally pull up a reservation because it’s so slow and the worst thing is the new look of the calendar with the silly small lines. We now miss several bookings and changeovers because it’s hard to see the very tiny break in lines if you have it synced with Airbnb. The way they had it before was great. Don’t even get me started on the online version. You would think for as big of a company that they are they would have an app that works well.

Use a competitor if you want to succeed. The app’s calendar feature is extremely wonky. Can’t consistently block out the night before check in or after check out almost always. It also doesn’t load half the time to confirm dates. Same with the inbox/messaging feature. Doesn’t load, doesn’t share responses with renters, etc. Room pictures and updates are extremely painful to load and often require reloading multiple times, restarting the app, etc. Beyond that, the company doesn’t offer great support. It doesn’t automatically pay your state/local taxes for you (or give you the option) doesn’t respond to queries or damage claims nearly as well as competitors. I’ll also add that the usual clientele that uses VRBO are pretty terrible and have treated my home or me like garbage. There are better options out there.

Worst app. Never loads dashboard details. Never loads calendar consistently or email. And the best part? No email communication from VRBO to its owner network about alleged, “outages” or that, “they are working on it.” I have heard that for years, and the app is as worse as it has ever been. They send me price adjustments for last dates or dates so far in the future that they don’t line up with their analytics. VRBO should be embarrassed by this but they aren’t because this app has been deficient for a very long time. They are perfectly comfortable telling me to use the desktop version. Newsflash: I am constantly on the go. I use my phone. I shouldn’t have to go to their web site when they have an app that SHOULD work flawlessly. The Airbnb app is solid. They constantly update it and improve it, and they are head and shoulders above VRBO in this regard.

VvRBO Strength & Weakness. VRBO is great as a booking machine just don’t expect much from customer service because it’s next to useless. We’ve used VRBO for 7 years and any problems we run into we normally have to fix ourselves. For example our calendar is set to accept only a 7 day minimum stay but this year someone booked 5 days and when I asked customer service how that could happen all they could say was “do you want to cancel it.” Which was not helpful at all. We are a Premier Host and they assigned us our own service rep. and he never returned a single voice mail which we had to leave because he doesn’t answer his phone. I could go on & on about these issues. If they had decent customer service they could corner the market.

Review. Your platform is great for host interaction, it is not great for preventing one night stays when the host has authorized two night minimum’s. This has been an ongoing sore point for me with your app and your call-center, which refuses to take accountability and fix this issue. Then Vrbo tells me the host to cancel on the guest and hurt my ratings. Now Verbo comes out with a cancellation policy of $50 when they don’t increase the work on the platform and prevent technology issues like allowing one night stay when a 2 night minimum is required by the host. Please review your app and platform settings and fix the problem to avoid losing hosts with your mistakes and offloading of the problem. Fix it!!!!

Extremely disappointed!. The owner experience is terrible!! It’s impossible to manage or change days available and I cannot get paid! I just spent 40 min trying to figure out why my payout for my first booking has not come through, and turns out I need to fill out a tax form. That’s no where to be found online… I had to dig through my email to find it. And then the form submitted said it was successful but a min later I got an email requesting a new form because the previous one did not go through. I now have to wait 24 hours before I can try to submit again…. And I have no idea what I need to do differently tomorrow. What on earth???? I just want to be paid and be done with this app but support can’t cut me a check or give me any real help to get this resolved. This is so frustrating!! Meanwhile I have 10 bookings with Airbnb in the same time period and no issues whatsoever.

Templates should not be an option so easily on this app.. This app is nice for ease of use but maybe too easy sometimes! When we were new owners and just started booking, I got a booking one night when I was tired and was just checking it. Somehow I accidentally scanned the template that said “sorry, this property is no longer available” without realizing it. The renter started freaking out because she had already paid and was trying to find something during the high season. She ended up canceling her reservation because she thought we canceled on her even though we reassured her that we didn’t cancel. This app needs to disable the templates or make them harder to access. It made us lose this booking! We ended up rebooking other people then Covid hit and they all rebooked anyway, so on the long run it didn’t cost us but still!

Improvements needed. There are several features which could make this app easier to use. It would be especially nice to have a "tab" choice for "my bookings". Many people inquire but not all choose my cabin and the list is all mixed up together with the ones who do choose my cabin. If I could click on "my bookings" and just the guests who choose my cabin are there it would be wonderful. Where are they from? Hosting and meeting new folks is fun. The curiosity is there. Guest reviews? Just like I get reviews and also I give them, how do I know how the guest is rated? What if they have been hosted several times and had bad ratings? Would I want to host them? I wonder about these things. Well, the "my bookings" tab is my most primary request for improvement. Obviously I started this before. I would like the people requesting my property to be better vetted. I have receivers many many scams asking me to make arrangements outside the app. Why? I never had that happen on Airbnb or trip advisor. What are they doing they you need to do the make sure it doesn’t happen? Recently, I have to sign in every time. This is an app. If it’s on my phone I want to click to button and it opens. I don’t like that I have to enter my password every time now. No to the newsfeed. It’s not important.

Completely useless. Why is it that Vrbo can’t figure this out? I’m literally on the phone with a Vrbo agent telling me how they keep getting daily calls about Users being locked out of the app and not being able to use it. He is telling me to write a bad review and a harsh feedback. He is very frustrated because he is also unable to help customers calling in. I’m just locked out from the app. I can login as a user, but can’t login as an owner unless I jump through a bunch of hoops. They literally say something about password reset assistance right when you call them so obviously they are having a giant issue they need to solve. It’s been 48 hours and I’m locked out from the app can’t get messages, can’t send messages I have to use the browser. I will do what some others that I have a raise prices on Verbo and lower them on other platforms to avoid having to deal with them.

Glitches. The first glitch I encountered was one that VRBO confirmed they were aware of & that supposedly you were working on. We do not accept “Instant Bookings” yet when corresponding with a potential renter while using the app, it proceeded to do an “Instant Booking”. Because VRBO had to get involved & cancel the reservation & I had to ask the potential guest to resubmit so I could work the reservation from my computer vs the app, it cost me the booking. VRBO did not know when you would get the glitch fixed nor if we would be notified. Therefore, we no longer feel comfortable booking from the app. This week, I had a return guest submit dates for this coming summer. On your 2019 calendar, it showed August 3 as being on a Tuesday, which it is actually a Saturday. Your calendars are all off. VRBO suggested I write you about it. I did but no response. Please get this app more reliable. I have found it useful in the past but recently due to these glitches, not so much & especially when it cost me a summer, high season, booking.

Google map attachment. There is a problem for my listing. Many people all over the world like to visit Sedona, AZ. Sedona is 40 miles from my cabin. However VRBO says that my cabin is 9 miles from Sedona. I have talked to VRBO about this grave error. The VRBO customer service representative told me the error is with google maps which you have imbedded in your website. If I run a search independently from VRBO then it states a 40 mile drive. I get nang requests for people wishing to stay in Sedona. If they don’t tell me this and I can steer them away from my cabin to a place closer to Sedona then they may be extremely disappointed. I tried Tj contact google but they have no way for me to contact anyone there. Debbie

Getting Better. When I first started using this app it was basically useless other than looking at the calendar and replying to an inquiry or guest message. They have finally updated the Dashboard to display something other than internal marketing. I wish VRBO would take notes from AIRBNB with their interface and functionality. I want to be able to schedule check-in and check-out messages like I do in AIRBNB. For some reason, VRBO does not have this feature and I’m not sure why. As a small owner/operator I don’t have the resources to purchase a PMS. These features plus others would be helpful for others like me. Please keep improving. It’s encouraging to see. I would have rather have more functions to help guest experience rather than see that VRBO is sponsoring the Fiesta Bowl.

Reviews review. You accepted a review from someone who never stayed in the home (even her review confirms that) and then the next renter made a review and you refused it saying it was too late! That is crazy. The Acuff’s never stayed in our home and received all their money back - I have tried three times to talk to someone about this all to no avail. VRBO just keeps telling me they cannot remove because they spent the night! They did not! Read their review please. This one review has completely ruined my rentals. If you look at my reviews you will see they are all 5 stars with a few 4 star reviews. Doubt this will help but sure wish it would. Aside from that you won’t post a review that says it does not meet your standard - but after several attempts to find out what’s wrong with the review - I cannot imagine what is wrong with the review

This Platform is loaded with Fraud. Over 60% of the communications I receive on this platform are fraudulent in nature. I’m a host/owner on the Homeaway/VRBO platform. Homeaway/VRBO does nothing to protect their marketplace from abuse. The majority of the folks that contact me are trying to engage in check and Wire fraud. All attempts to report fraud and engage customer support go unanswered. Homeowner beware: we are required to reply to “guest” inquires in a timely manner else we are penalized by the Homeaway/VRBO platform yet the platform has no obligation to screen and protect homeowners against the criminal activity that takes pace regularly on the platform. If the fair’s isn’t reason enough to avoid Homeaway/VRBO then take a close look at their variable fees and commissions. Seriously it’s ridiculous. Whereas Airbnb charges hosts a flat 3% commission, Homeaway/VRBO grabs roughly 10-15%: separate fees for credit card processing as well. It’s bonkers. These guys have been arming longer than Airbnb and HomeExchange yet their fees, commissions are higher and their protections are lower. Steer clear of Homeaway.

Exceptional Condo and Vacation Destination. This was our first visit to Clearwater and we planned to spend our 1st honeymoon there since we had read about the beautiful beaches. We were thrilled and had the best vacation ever. Sheena the owner of the condo made the whole rental process so effortless and she is such a sweet warm person. She made sure everything was ready for us when we arrived. The beautiful condo was very clean and modern decorated. We did not leave the area as there are some great restaurants right across the road. All we needed were our personal items as the condo offered all what we needed from extra pillows to pots and pans and also has a washer dryer and it was great as we did not have to fight for bathrooms as the condo has 2 full bathrooms so convenient. We enjoyed the beautiful romantic sunsets and gorgeous beach through the wall of glass windows and balcony. We enjoyed watching all the action from jumping Dolphins to sail boats it was a wonderful experience and best vacation ever and we were so sad to leave the condo. We definitely will be back!!!!

Lots of fraud!!!. I enjoy using VRBO/HomeAway but 40 out of 46 request are fraudulent, don’t read the house rules, are new travelers with no reviews, or they cancel at the last moment. Seriously every time I get a request from VRBO/HomeAway I roll my eyes and say “what kind of BS is someone trying to pull now”. I even had a person who was an inmate (yes INMATE...meaning locked up in jail or prison) in Ohio trying to book my Las Vegas property. Lucky for me I do extensive research on everyone who attempts to book with me. In addition I ask lots of questions before accepting anyone. In five years I only accepted approx 5 people from VRBO/HomeAway. On the other hand 9 out of 10 request on Airbnb seem to be legitimate and in the same five year period I have accepted over 200 requests from Airbnb. I would just cancel VRBO/HomeAway but I’m trying to see if they will improve. And I have to admit the 5 people that stayed were very good guests.

Not very host friendly. Compared to its main competitor, VRBO is not ideal for hosts. 1) There is only email verification for guest accounts, which constantly makes me worried about having guests where I’m not 100% confident about their identity. 2) The app has template messages, but doesn’t have automated and timed messages to make it streamlined for host communication. 3) It feels like half of the guest requests are scammers with people asking “if the dates are available”, and then asking about paying an alternative way (aka the scam). 4) The guests sometimes don’t receive a message… I got dinged on a guest review because the guest claimed they never received the check-in messages (and I sent them a screenshot showing that the message had indeed been sent). It feels like VRBO isn’t aware of how great the host experience is for its competitors because they are way behind in app features for hosts.

VRBO is increasingly frustrating. VRBO does some things well, but it has done a few things lately that are frustrating. First, Texas started requiring VRBO to Remit state hotel taxes instead of having owners do it. Fine. But they stopped collecting the county tax that they previously collected and I remitted. So now I have to send a separate payment request to renters every time asking for the county tax. VRBO said they were working on a fix. But this happened in April and they’ve done nothing and apparently don’t plan to fix it. Why change the collection method? They could have kept it the same and just remitted the state tax and let me remit the county. Instead, they created more work for owners and they clearly don’t care. And now they are keeping my rental payments until the renter checks in instead of disbursing to me immediately. I can get MY money earlier for a 3% fee. Simple money grab. Not pleased at all.

Managing extra fees for guest who’s already booked. When a guest asks to extend their reservation or stay an extra night, after you “edit” the dates accordingly, you are then taken to a screen where you can create an additional fee. The fee “name” must be selected from a predefined drop down menu. None of these “names” make sense for this situation. There should be a “name” like “Extend Reservation” or “Additional Night(s)” or “Extra Night(s)”. Instead I’m forced to choose and usually pick “Late Departure”. But then I feel it’s necessary to message the guest and explain why they’re getting an extra fee request named “Late Departure” because I’ve had so many question this previously. It would be much simpler if there was a “fee name” that made more sense for this situation”.

EXCELLENT CUSTOMER SERVICE. I am impressed with VRBO results so far. I received my first booking within 1 hour of publishing my listing and 10 bookings in the next two days which are still coming in. What has impressed me the most is the level of customer service. As a new person I had a lot of questions and there were a few calls. The pick up time was quick I was not left on hold. Each of the reps helped me through and trained me on use of the function in question until my question was answered. I was also nicely surprised to receive a call two day later from a CS person as VRBO to go through all the layers of my listing to be certain I was getting the full benefit of the site for greater results in bookings. Bravo VRBO for great customer service!

App update does not work at all. Vrbo app is completely unusable. It stopped working after an update and I do not believe that Vrbo actually has tech support. I have called three times and was told all three times after a long time on hold and a long time with an agent that tech support would email me. That was three weeks ago…. Nothing! Two weeks ago I called again and I was assured that I was moved up on the tech support list and would be contacted soon…. Nothing. Called again last week. I was told that I would get a call from tech support as soon as I got off the phone with the agent….. Nope! Nothing. Still can’t use my app to communicate with guests. Vrbo customer support is awful!! Vrbo is also not near as user friendly as Airbnb. I have a friend that inquired twice about using Vrbo for her short term rental back in February. They got back to her in August. She decided she didn’t want to work with a company like that.

Communication. I’ve been using this application for eight years now. In the beginning it was wonderful if you needed anything you picked up the phone when you called and someone answered, someone who could communicate and at least presented the idea that the application was there to serve the best needs of the customers. Lately I do not feel the same way. some months ago I tried to reach out to someone I had concerns and questions about payments bookings and COVID-19. I spent 45 minutes on the phone more than once and every time I spoke with someone communication was difficult and I never felt like I was satisfied with the result. Now this is the application that keeps my calendar in order takes my money and the customers and dispenses it based on VRBO’s metric. The application is only serviceable now and not a stand out and is no longer a leader in the industry. James

VRBO Owner Help Desk is ATROCIOUS. While reps at the help desk can speak English.... they cannot think or reason for themselves. They read a script and that is pretty much it. Not problem solvers. And can definitely NOT reason thru a situation. The lowest level of intelligence or understanding of their own systems. It took me 45 minutes just to get the rep to understand what the question was. I had to repeatedly ask... what do you think I am asking? What is your understanding of my question? What do you think is my problem? ... 45 mins later, they finally understood the question but not without a lot of hand holding. It's obviously a cheap off shore call center...

Still waiting for ability to update rates. For more than a year now, I've been seeing "coming soon - ability to change rates" and more, yet still nothing. Roll this feature out already please as it's very frustrating not being able to do so. Update mid-July 2017: they finally added this feature, and to my disgust, it's only the "base" rate that can be updated, which is useless! So upset as I used to love HomeAway. I cancelled one of my two property listings and plan to get my listing up via other sources. Update May 2018: app developer, i am not able to follow your above directions on updating rates within the app for a specific time frame. It shouldn’t be this hard or not straightforward. Do you have a property of your own that you manage? You should as that will help you to see the frustrations from the eyes of the owners. Happy to provide guidance for you here.

Love the idea, but…. I love the idea of vrbo, which is why I’ve been hosting for years now. But I’m increasingly concerned that the only thing that matters to vrbo is to charge someone’s credit card asap! No concern for whether it’s a good match for travelers and owners! The perfect fit might take more than 24 hours! And when I’m still sending messages back and forth answering questions about my property- and it “times out!”, then I receive a shaming message from vrbo that I LOST this booking because I didn’t snag that traveler immediately- truthfully, it really upsets me. Since mine is a B&B, I am here, hosting the travelers and trying to make it a wonderful vacation to remember. Check out my reviews. We’ve had wonderful guests and they’ve really enjoyed their time here. Isn’t that important to you also?? Sorry for the lengthy response. It’s important to me, obviously! Sincerely, Katie Eckert

Not comparable to the Airbnb app for owners. I find the VRBO owner app to be significantly less user friendly than the Airbnb owner app. You cannot see nearly as much information about a traveler before you accept a booking such as past reviews. You can see a star rating but no description for why they get that rating. You also cannot schedule messages to be sent to the travelers like on Airbnb… you can create a template but you still have to manually send the message. The only messages that automatically send are theirs. They only give you the travelers email and not phone number which I find very inconvenient as some people will respond more to a text but not a message within the app. Overall, the app is okay but I think the Airbnb app for hosts blows the VRBO owner app out of the water.

Worst app I use.. UPDATE: Everytime they update it gets worse. Vi stent “network errors when i click on messages or cakendar”. If I try to block days it says it can’t go that at this time so i have to force quit app and try again. Only yo find out that it blocked them. Sometimes it does. Sometimes not. It’s my worst app. Do better Vrbo. I never leave reviews but this app and it’s numerous updates that continually make it worse make running a bnb horrible. I love the calendar view and how it shows stays but that’s the only reason it gets 2 stars. It’s always non responsive. Now I’m getting no properties listed and update your preferences. Click the link and it takes me to the dashboard. To see my property I have to somehow get to the menu and half the time of I click on cakender or inbox it tells me to refresh. At that time I have to force quit app and start again. Crazy.

Vrbo does not protect the owner. Rental for 6, turned into a Memorial Day party for 20 and growing. Neighbors called the police. I called vrbo and asked how to handle the situation, they told me to ask the guests to leave since they broke the house rules. The guest got 100% of their money back and wrote me a 1 star review, wrote that my husband was crazy. I have asked vrbo to take the review down several times and to give me my money back; since I lost the income for Memorial Day weekend: vrbo is not willing to help with the review or the lost income: I have lost thousands and my reputation damaged because my guest threw a wild Memorial Day beach party in my home. What did I do wrong? Trusted that by using the vrbo platform, I would have an advocate to represent me from bad guests.