VRBO.com

I have used VRBO 6 times before and had never needed to process a refund. Due to the Covid-19 issue, the owner cancelled on me and assured me I would get 100% of my money back. When I booked they took my money in 10 seconds - it's been 4 weeks now, and I have received only 50% of the monies due me back. They claim "Be patient, a lot of people are getting refunds". I may not use these people again which really hurts the property owners in the end, but a refund policy of 'be patient' when they take your money so quickly is at best lame. I will press them daily until I get my money back. At this point the Owner is out of the loop - it is 100% in the hands of VRBO and I blame them entriely for this fiasco.

I had to cancel my reservation with VRBO on March 15 due to Coronavirus and closed ski slopes. The owner of *** unit *** (***) has refused to provide ANY refund! I asked to rebook or even 50% refund but he refused. VRBO policy only recommends that owners refund payments but won't do anything to enforce the policy or back up the traveler. I am simply out my entire 5 night stay during spring break. I have contacted the owner (property ***) and VRBO (Homeaway) multiple times with no resolution.

Unwilling to eve. Help with covid 19 refund. I live in dc, I payed for a trip to new orleans. The owner even told me that the safest place to be was at his home in new orleans....??? Vrbo did nothing to help. Out $3000

I needed to cancel both a Vrbo reservation recently due to COVID19, and the VRBO experience was terrible!
VRBO's policy is somewhere between "you're on your own" and "screw you". Their stance is that it's between the renter and the host. Well, my host wants to keep all the money. I've sent the host four emails - the first one two weeks ago - and gotten no reply. I've been reasonable (I think), just asking to change to dates instead of just a refund. Still no reply to my questions.
VRBO makes it impossible to reach them for help, and I couldn't use the place if I wanted to (the US/Canada border is basically closed). I'm even being charged a cleaning fee for a place that's going to sit empty!
When life gets back to normal, I'm never using VRBO again, or HomeAway or parent-company ***. And I'm going to encourage as many people as possible to avoid them.

Worst company dealing with the global crisis COVID-19! The company is playing toss with the property owner about who can refund to us! VRBO said that they don't have our money; the owner said the same thing. What a joke! We are out $2000+ with many fee including the cleaning fee! We will never book through VRBO again and I hope this reputation burns you down to $0 in the value. The company is no different from SCAMER!

I booked a rental with *** thru VRBO last fall to travel on 4/25. Due to the Covid-19 travel restrictions the trip was cancelled. The property owners will not refund even 1 cent of my money not even the cleaning fees or damage waiver fees when the home will be sitting vacant. They will not even offer a credit for the year only until December of 2020 and since this pandemic will probably last most of the summer the offer is worthless. I have been using VRBO for years and have recommended them to family and friends but no more! They do not stand up for their customers and you are left at the mercy of dealing with the property owners by yourself who are basically stealing money and taking advantage of everyone during this terrible situation. They should be ashamed of themselves and I will never consider VRBO again.

DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT GIVE VRBO YOUR MONEY NOW!!!! I stayed at a property mid March and everything was great. I had to put a $1000 deposit down for the stay. I loved the property, left the place clean and had a great experience. Then, I received an email on March 26th that said my $1000 refund has been processed and I will get the money in 5-7 days.
9 days later, I called VRBO to follow up on the refund and they said to give it 7-10 business days due to what is going on in the world today with the virus. They told me this is how long the process takes. I mentioned my email says 5-7 DAYS but figured I would wait.
It has now been 11 BUSINESS DAYS and I called to follow up since I did not receive my refund. I was now told they extended refunds to 14 business days and said the company is in financial trouble due to all the cancellations and the refund has not been processed yet. I have an email from VRBO that said the refund was processed on the 26th. I said that money should have been held in an escrow account and should be readily available to give back to me. I went back and forth with the lady and she said there is nothing she can do.
I am sure there are a number of regulatory violations that is going on here with how they are holding their deposits and are probably co-mingling the money or worse yet it is not even there anymore. BUYER BE WARE and do not give them your money now. I hope they one day give me my deposit back. I feel this is horrible that they are screwing people over on money they are not entitled to during these tough times. I WILL NEVER RENT FROM THEM AGAIN AND WANT TO WARN OTHERS ABOUT THE BAD PRACTICES THAT IS GOING ON AT VRBO.

We have called and was told they emailed and called the property owner. Nothing. Called them back keep being told nothing they can do without the owner. What if the owner has the virus. What then. They tell us that they have no emergency contact for the owner. We have contacted the owner and get no response. How terrible to take advantage of people. We don't want to lose our money we want to reschedule and they tell us they can't do that without the owner's approval. So in the long run of things we lose approx $5 thousand for a room we can't use now or ever. Never will we use this company again

NO STARS: I received only $112 security deposit back on an >$2000 trip due to coronavirus. VRBO talks about how they encourage property owner's to give us credit or partial refund which DOES NOT HAPPEN because it is NOT REGULATED strictly enough. I have lost so much money on this trip. The property owner has ghosted me and all VRBO can do is send a "polite email" to the owner to give them a gentle nudge which...guest what...did nothing. Never using this service again. Stay away.

VRBO advertises that they are requiring owners to refund 50% of bookings cancelled due to the Coronavirus. We were to have 17 people in one house (The ***, owned by *** and *** of Orlando, FL)—two with lowered immunity systems, and a nurse working with COVID-19 patients. We received nothing, not a dime, back from the owners—close to $10,000. VRBO did refund their fee of $600. We even paid a lodging fee and taxes, although nobody lodged there. VRBO should have helped negotiate this more. We will never look at a VRBO property to rent again.

VRBO has allowed its rental owners to take money from people who have had to cancel their reservations due to COVID-19. With the closing of the beaches why do they think we would want to travel? They should have to provide full refunds to customers. We booked a beach vacation but the beaches are closed now.

As everyone complained, we are out a lot of money because we are not allowed to travel, nor should we travel and absolutely no help on getting a refund. The owners also will not offer a refund because they were "hit hard". WE ALL WERE!!! So I'm just supposed to give you my much needed money!!!!

Horrible. I booked a vacation in Kauai. Covid-19 outbreak prevented us from travelling.
The property Owner took all our money, no refund. No services rendered.

We had to cancel due to COVID, I bought a Travelers Cancellation Policy for an additional 350.21...with all the fees of the rental, I am out $7881.45! I immediately filed a claim as advised by the home owner rental...it is sill in “reviewing” status even tho the policy states I will hear something within 15 days, I filed 3/18, today is 4/5/2020...I have called, left messages, get the run around...home owner states insurance should pay, VRBO states home owner should reimburse...how do we all sue this fraud company? So angry and SO much money that we could be living on...all of us need to band together...what do we do?

VRBO is hands down the worst company that I have ever come across. We rented a house to stay in from March 28-April 1, and due to Covid-19, we made the decision to cancel the trip. When contacting the owner over and over again asking for a refund or to reschedule (per VRBOs Covid Policy), he kept telling up that it was "business as usual in Del Mar" when everything was shut down and that we should just hit the cancel button.
The two weeks leading up to our trip he flat out didn't respond to emails, texts, or messages through the VRBO portal so we had to contact VRBO directly. The customer service numbers just hang up on you because the call volume was too high, so we did the online chat. 3 times the customer service rep ended the conversation without answering our questions about how to get in touch with the owner and how we were supposed to proceed, and even when VRBO sent a letter directly to the owner, he chose not to respond.
So we now are out the $1500 which included a cleaning fee of $200.
I am honestly speechless that a company can literally take money from people when they are forced to cancel their trips because of a national pandemic. The fact that VRBO is standing behind their owners and allowing them to offer nothing back, speaks volumes. I am sure VRBO will not make it through this, but if they do we will NEVER use them again and will NEVER recommend anyone we know to use them.

After reading the reviews and complaints, I am not the only one that is highly frustrated with VRBO. They are definitely only looking out for the property owners and not the renters. Rescheduling our family vacation is not even an option.....we do not even know when my husband will be returning to work. I am in disbelief that VRBO and property owners are refusing refunds when businesses and people across the world are going above and beyond to help each other out. My vacation is not until May and I missed the cancellation period by SIX days and the property owner, Matthew Devey, refused to give me any type of refund. I canceled as soon as my husband was not allowed to work in our state any more due to the Stay Home .....six days too late. They should be ashamed of themselves.

I have never had such a horrible time with a company. Do not use their services...stay at a hotel. I was yelled at by customer service and hung up on, just because I wanted specifics about when and how I was going to receive my $1000 refundable deposit (over 2 weeks late). I couldn't believe it. No apology yet, or money.

I’m having a terrible time getting my money refunded. I cancelled on 3/12/20 and it’s now 4/3/20 and I have yet to receive my refund. I have contacted the company several times and they keep stating due to Covid-19, the money will be refunded in 3 weeks. I feel terribly about the situation, but I need the money refunded.

DO NOT use this company!!! This is a really hard time for all of us and they have no sympathy. No refund for my trip even though I literally cannot get there due to Covid-19. It’s not fair!! I understand host wanting to have cancellation policy’s on their rentals, due to people cancelling at the last minute and missing out on other guests, but no one can stay there right now anyways. So they basically get free money. Please!! Never use this company again.

Our reservation was made in Nov. 2019, well before the COVID-19 pandemic. We had already paid in full by the time it had become obvious traveling would be irresponsible and go against all government advised travel and orders. Our first contact with the host, to see what could be done in terms of canceling, was 3/14/2020. We officially canceled 4/2/2020. Our host will not be refunding anything other than a small cleaning fee and offer a credit enabling us to use one of the host's rentals within a year from the original travel date (April 9-13 2020). VRBO will only refund their fees. We are essentially trapped into either using the same hosts or lose money completely unforeseen and unavoidable circumstances. We had also purchased trip insurance which doesn't cover pandemics. We will never be using VRBO services again.