Never stay at Shady Shay Norton's place in West Hollywood unless you want to have your vaca ruined and be scammed out of money. Due to the fact that home away seems to pay the home owner before services are rendered you could lose out in money. This owner promised me a full refund after jerking me around all day about checking in and then ghosted me and home away. On top of that her apartment is illegal to rent. So home away does not check into those details.I book this is san antonio tx and wen i get to it is nasty so i call the customer service and they told me that i have to wait like 4 or 5 hours till the home owner goes and clean the house after i had a long day travelling so i say no im not staying in that nasty house we we want or money back so i talk to a supervisor for nothing worse then the customer service so anyway i didn't stay in the house and they keep my money they are just stealing from peopleI'm another angry reviewer who had to cancel my trip because of Covid 19 and the no travel order. I have called customer service multiple times. The home owner won't respond to any of my messages. They have literally stolen $631 from me. I didn't have a choice about cancelling, it's a worldwide Pandemic! I will never use Home Away again. I really want to get an attorney and everyone get together and sue these crooks. What kind of people steal during a National Emergency. I'm so disgusted. DO NOT USE HOME AWAY! Don't rent from Aldophus Wilson in NOLA if he is on any other apps. He will steal your money and ignore you.I booked an apartment in Cape Town for Christmas period back in July. Money was taken from credit card immediately. When we arrived in CT, there was neither an apartment nor an owner to talk to. I still don't know what happened. We spent hours on the street with 2 kids and more than 500 for phone calls to the support line. With no outcome. Fake rents seem to be the new business model. Everyday they require new documents to be sent. Although they did not deliver anything and they know... stay away from HomeAway.We had success with previous VRBO but this time, it has been the worst of all possible worlds. Our travel plans were cancelled - everyone is staying home, around the world - and almost a month later they still haven't refunded our deposit, despite FIVE phone calls and promise after promise. Next, I'm going to my credit card company to dispute the charge. Was impressed by some of the things the company said early on; now, I know not to trust.Great folks to rent from. Home was very clean and spacious. A few things were a bit worn, but everything was in good repair. The owners were very responsive and helpful with our needs. Plan to rent from them againMy planned holiday to Morocco had to be cancelled at the last minute when the Moroccan Government closed all its airports to holiday flights because of the coronavirus. I immediately asked HomeAway for a refund (on 20 March) which was acknowledged straightaway. I have recently (@ 20 April) had a refund for the full amount paid out credited to the card on which I paid. Good job in the current difficult circumstances. Grateful thanks to Home Away and the property owner who waived the normal cancellation fee. John H. (Herefordshire, UK)Waiting on my refundable deposit of $500 (for a property of $290/n) with no one to contact. There is no number you can call and there is no way you can do anything else than just wait for their mercy. Contacted the property manager who confirmed that the property was left in an perfect condition which was conveyed to Homeaway the same day. At this difficult time when we all are feeling the financial pressures, they are illegally keeping our money. Will never book with them again.Booked in good faith, Covid-19 meant it was impossible to travel. HomeAway present as acting in your interest on their website but in reality tried to blame the home owner, only refunded the breakage deposit but not the balance. Suggested they didn't have it but refused to say where it was! 6+ frustrating, lengthy and repetitive conversations later and I still don't have my refund. STAY AWAY FROM HOMEAWAY.I booked a home and once I got there, owner would not leave for hours. Then had me sign a contract ( her own) stating all these ridiculous stipulations, cannot go into living room, cannot use pool without paying an extra fee, no opening windows, and the list goes on and that we cannot post reviews of our stay there was no recourse as I had no where else to stay after flying there. Do not use this company. They do not vet their homeowners and this one was literally crazy.My wife daughter and I have just spent four nights at County Loft flat in Whitby and had a lovely time, this flat is furnished to a very high standard and is in an excellent location. We were fortunate that restrictions in restaurants and pubs due to Coronavirus took affect the day we returned home and so we were able to get out and about. Having said that the flat is very spacious and has excellent TV in living room and bedrooms, also lots of DVDs and CDs for your entertainment.The owner Graham is very friendly and helpful and we would highly recommend this accommodation and will definitely return Many thanks Paddy & Denise GreerThe owner cancelled without reason 3 weeks prior to our trip. Have spent 2 weeks fighting for my refund. Website says 5-7 days to get money back if an owner cancels. Not true. Customer Svc. Is outsourced to Manila and they are no help and difficult to understand. Gave them the benefit of the doubt once. This is now the second time I've had an issued. DON'T BE ME!Based on the feedback that VRBO services have received, they sent out an email saying they would work with their property owners to provide some form of compensation. As a result, we worked with our property owner and transferred the rental to next year at no additional cost to us. It's a good will gesture I appreciated. Social media helped on this one!Our family decided to heed the advise of our Chief Medical Officer in Alberta Canada, and decided to cancel our reservation in MESA Arizona. The property owner Debra provided no partial or any compensation for our rental. I was appalled given the world wide impact of this virus. I wasn't expecting a full refund, but some compensation or future rental offer would have been appreciated. When trying to contact Home Away, I was never able to reach anyone on the phone. Very disappointing. Sounds like this isn't a good company to do business with.I wish there would be 0 star review! HomeAway took 900 of me, due to Pandemic and lockdown they supposed to refund my money but they only transferred 560! They are ignoring my messages, telling me I'm uneducated because I'm not British. Fretting me that they will ban me from social media because I'm trying to get in touch with someone who is not sending me automatically generated messages. Pure Scam!I made a reservation for a cottage for over a month in advance. No where on expedia did it say I would be charged immediately over 75% of the entire price. Then I saw my bank account drained of $441.20 by "HomeAway". I canceled within immediately and within 24 hours. It's been four business days and no credit! I can't get a hold of anyone at their customer service since they keep dropping my call. I had to cancel my debit card and dispute charges. STAY AWAY!When VRBO/HomeAway 1st began it was awesome service but appears they've hired the greed mongols and here's how they play you now... So you find a rental and they list it at 162.50 per night. Oh wait but that's not all because what they don't show until you book is an additional $100 owners fee, a $49.00 service fee and then they top it off with $41.72 lodging tax. So now the $162.50 per night is really $353.22:-o! Oh of course you need to set aside another $150 for the damage deposit which hopefully you get back. I'm sure they don't treat the property owners any different and overcharge them too! Hopefully a less greedy alternative shows up soon or someone figures a craigslist style platform that all property owners can utilize and so we can begin paying what the home owners are asking and not the hidden doubling of cost that VRBO/HomeAway has devised. Last, HomeAway will sell you trip insurance on top of all this too LOL!I would not recommend this holiday rental company at all, or the property we were looking forward to staying in, we paid a big' deposit and understand no refunds HOWEVER we are in unprecedented times and hoped the owners would bend a little... but no only 6 days paid £1400 deposit for June 2020 and they offered to rebook between Nov -March 21? Low season with a big family! In Newquay! So have lost all that money I wish someone could help but HomeAway have done nothing and I don't even have an account now... I would NEVER use HomeAway againHomeAway allows owners (Branch Hill Estate) to give unfair traveler ratings. The owner of this rental bullied us asking for a 5 star review before we received our security deposit. Then after we asked for time to properly review the property, they gave us a false rating. When we asked for an explanation or correction, Branch Hill Estate would not respond.Don't stay at Durham house apartment Shocking customer service. I booked Durham House apartment in Beer we left early due to how dirty it was. With covid we had expected it to be clean but the state of it was disgusting - we took photos and contacted The owner Sue Wesley she was rude and very nasty and HomeAway was hopeless. Really to listen to all these bad reviews. Don't stay at Durham House apartment in Beer and don't use homeawayWebsite would not let me cancel my rentals even before my cancellation date forcing me to pay even though I can go during the Coronavirous epidemic. No option to cancel on cancel page just a Coronavirous warning. However, no actual cancel button. And prior a prior reservation i did cancel no confirmation number and a refund I never received.Horrible service! I canceled well within the policy of the vacation rental. Homeaway will not refund my payment for almost 4 weeks! How hard is it to send money to a credit card company? Yesterday they said the money would be deposited today. Today they said they had an "error". The only error is their finances in that they don't have funds to refund. Will never use them again.You think you've booked somewhere then you haven't. You think you've adjusted your own rates, then it turns out someone at the company has made a mistake and so you haven't. There's something seriously wrong with this company: they have a lot of incompetent people and aspects to their system, such as their website and their way of booking. Or just changing the rate. Be very very wary. I'm now going to advertise elsewhere and when it comes to finding houses I avoid them entirely - they just waste too much time.I have rented numerous properties through HomeAway over the years, always with good experiences. I have found the company particularly stellar during the COVID19 outbreak. I had 3 separate properties rented in mid-March for a myriad of family memebers. They worked swiftly and efficiently with the home owners to resolve travel disruptions we experienced as a result of the pandemic. In one case, the homeowner was extremely gracious and issued a refund for our shortened trip which was quickly issued through HomeAway. A second property that my family had to vacate early (2 nights early) was challenging because of the property owner. The owner fell back on the 50% only cancellation fee for a current disruption. I will mention it was the Alamont Manor in Fort Myers, property #7084062. The owner is from Germany and not empathetic at all to what was happening with the advancing COVID crisis. I would never rent her property again. I bought trip insurance for that specific property through HomeAway. I was forced to file a claim with CSA which took numerous (7) hours to complete. Probably not worth it for 2 nights reimbursement. Which I will probably never see. Lesson here is I'll never buy trip insurance through HomeAway again. I would have been better off without it because HomeAway would have taken care of me directly. I really felt supported by the company through all this. I'll continue to use them for my travel experiences.My family and I also lost money (over $1000) due to having to cancel due to COVID-19. We are a military family and there is a military travel ban in place. There is absolutely no way we could have traveled. The owner is refusing to refund us, and Homeaway refuses to step in.Booked accommodation for a wedding well in advance, had to cancel because of Covid. Made the cancellation within the "free cancellation" window and I was whacked with bank transfer and currency exchange fees, even though I paid with the local currency while booking. "Free Cancellation" is in NO WAY free, be wary of that before you commit your money! I will not be using HomeAway again.