Bend Vacation Homes

I booked this vacation home in Bend, OR in August for a 3 night stay through VRBO. The dates of the stay were Sept 15-18th. The policy of the owner, Bend Vacation Homes (via Sandi as listed on the VRBO site) is clearly that there is a 30 day cancellation policy for a refund. So I don't dispute that we cancelled after this window. However, before our stay began, Oregon had an unprecedented series of wildfires across the state. This was and remains an ongoing catastrophe. Based on health advisory notices, and road closures, we were unable to make our trip to Bend. The Air Quality was amongst the worst in the world for our stay period, and deemed by 3rd party air quality measurement services as "Dangerous", "Hazardous" and "Very Unhealthy". We had to postpone our trip. We had other rental lodging booked during that trip and in all other the owners or property managers understood and refunded the all fees, including the nightly stays.

When I sent VRBO messages to Bend Vacation Homes (to Sandi as listed on the VRBO site) indicating we needed to cancel due to the wildfire closures and air quality and safety issue, she did not respond. I then called her two days prior to our arrival, and she answered, and she said they were unable to refund our stay fees -- which amounted to $1,075 -- even though we never stayed in that home. I stated that that seemed very unreasonable because of the wildfire issues and safety issues, to which she stated "we understand the issues, we're living in it". I even offered to rebook the dates on a future date if they'd roll over the amount, and they did not respond.

This is an incredibly greedy and short sighted decision in my opinion. I paid in good faith over $1,600 for lodging, fees, and taxes in advance not knowing there would be a wildfire event, especially one as severe as this one.