VRBO Warning

Darcy03231

DIS Veteran
Joined
Nov 1, 2006
I know people here who rent through VRBO. I've done so for years and never had an issue, until now.

Last July I rented a home for my family to stay in for my daughter's wedding. It's in a resort town on a holiday weekend (Columbus Day), so I booked early (15 months ahead) and paid the booking in full per the owners rules.

Last night, 2 weeks before we were supposed to arrive, the owner canceled. The reason was that their plans had changed and they decided to stay in the house! They issued a refund. When I let them know what a bind it put me in they said they didn't contact me earlier because they weren't sure what their plans were going to be and there might be a chance I could have stayed there, so they wanted to wait until their plans were finalized before canceling my reservation.

The problem is there is nothing to rent - - all the houses/condos are booked as are the hotels. It's prime foliage season in the northeast and a holiday weekend to boot. VRBO was not at all helpful. They classified the cancelation as COVID related and wouldn't honor their book with confidence guaranty and even attempt to help find me a new rental.

The resort where the wedding is at has been wonderful and they are reaching out to everyplace they can think of to try to get us rooms. We've been bumped to first on their cancelation list. We live about an hour away so worst case is that we will just have to travel back and forth for the weekend. It would have been much worse if we were coming from any distance. If you absolutely need rooms and your plans are not flexible I would highly recommend booking a hotel through a national chain. VRBO owners can cancel you at the last minute, for any reason, with no repurcussions.
 
My guess is that some people will cancel their trips at the last minute also, so keep checking for availability. Also check eBay and Skyauction for last minute rentals. I had an Airbnb owner force me to cancel a reservation and was not happy about it either.
 
I know people here who rent through VRBO. I've done so for years and never had an issue, until now.

Last July I rented a home for my family to stay in for my daughter's wedding. It's in a resort town on a holiday weekend (Columbus Day), so I booked early (15 months ahead) and paid the booking in full per the owners rules.

Last night, 2 weeks before we were supposed to arrive, the owner canceled. The reason was that their plans had changed and they decided to stay in the house! They issued a refund. When I let them know what a bind it put me in they said they didn't contact me earlier because they weren't sure what their plans were going to be and there might be a chance I could have stayed there, so they wanted to wait until their plans were finalized before canceling my reservation.

The problem is there is nothing to rent - - all the houses/condos are booked as are the hotels. It's prime foliage season in the northeast and a holiday weekend to boot. VRBO was not at all helpful. They classified the cancelation as COVID related and wouldn't honor their book with confidence guaranty and even attempt to help find me a new rental.

The resort where the wedding is at has been wonderful and they are reaching out to everyplace they can think of to try to get us rooms. We've been bumped to first on their cancelation list. We live about an hour away so worst case is that we will just have to travel back and forth for the weekend. It would have been much worse if we were coming from any distance. If you absolutely need rooms and your plans are not flexible I would highly recommend booking a hotel through a national chain. VRBO owners can cancel you at the last minute, for any reason, with no repurcussions.
I'm sorry to read this is happening to you. Usually, renters would prefer to keep money, so this is a rare scenario. Be aware that chain hotels can overbook and cancel reservations as well, there is no perfect system. Hopefully everything will work out and you will all have a story to tell about you beat this problem.
 


There is always my parents current way of traveling. They are bringing their house with them and preparing all their own food with an occasional take out from places. Seriously they have a camper trailer that they pull behind a crew cab truck. When they want lunch my dad pulls off near a park in a small town or at a rest stop, places blocks behind the wheels so it is not rolling as much for my mom (she gets nervous even though it is hitched to the truck and he has used the parking break) and they go in prepare some sandwiches and a can of soup that they eat and then wash up the few dishes they have before heading on their way.
Depending on weather and road conditions once my dad is done with harvest (barley is in and they are in the middle of corn plus they still have oat and beet harvest which unless weather causes problems including a partial loss due to either freezes or high tempatures will last until the end of October to middle of November) they will travel to visit family in the southwest part of the country pulling the trailer as they normally either then or the first part of the new year provided there is not a huge spike in cases in the states where we have family or any state they would have to travel through.
 
Thank you for posting.....Oh...I feel for you. This is horrible...adds unnecessary stress to the last two weeks of finalizing wedding plans.
To think that they held on to your money for almost 15 months and do this the last 2 weeks!:(
We have never rented Airb&B or VRBO for lots of reasons, but I always wondered if the company would stand by the guest.
I HOPE for you that a cancellation at a hotel or something comes up!
Thankfully, you are an hour away, don't know what a wedding groups do if you are a destination wedding, like 2 hours or more away from home.
GOOD LUCK on the wedding. ENJOY your daughters most memorable day!:love:
 
Another VRBO risk (something that I have run into before - similar to what you experienced, but slightly different circumstances) is the owner selling the home and the new owners not wanting to do the rental (in our new case owners spending the winter in their new home). This happened to me once, but with lots of advance notice and the original owner notifying me and returning all funds including reimbursing me for insurance out of his/her own pocket. I was easily able to book something else, but it still was a pain after having spent a lot of time in my case, narrowing down and picking a large home that I thought would be perfect for our extended family group.

Good reminder about risks OP. Despite the risks I'm renting on VRBO again (actually from an agency that advertises thru there) a three bedroom condo in the Moab, UT area late April / early May of 2021. If my rental would get canceled, I think it would in this case be pretty easy for me to replace it with two hotel rooms. We are going at a fairly popular time, but not with as high occupancy as the OP probably is experiencing in their situation with the holiday weekend and fall foliage season. I would, though, be paying almost double and not have the space and kitchen I would prefer for two families getting together (our family and my brother's) with the hotel route. In this case I am willing to take the risk. VRBO IMHO means almost nothing and is more an advertising platform than anything else. Your experience is in the hands of who you are renting from (more risks than a reputable hotel chain for sure).

Keep us updated OP on how all this turns out. What a pain too with already being so busy with things for the wedding and now having to deal with this too. Wishing you and your family the very best.
 


Very selfish of the owners of the property not to let you know what they were thinking of doing regarding their property. They didn't want to lose out on the booking preferring to put you out instead of giving you a heads up. I've seen the ads for VRBO on TV and I presume they have a feedback option, I would go on there and give the owners of that property the relevant feedback. I don't think the issue is with VRBO, it's with individual property owners.
 
We have booked through VRBO, HomeAway, and AirBNB multiple times, and will do so again. Really these sites are just a platform for connecting individual owners with renters. You're always taking a risk because at the end of the day, the booking is between you and the owner. Some owners are amazing and professional, and others are not. Some are downright scam artists. It's really important to read reviews, but even those are not guarantees.

Personally, I'm willing to take a risk on a home rental because that's what works better for my family. Usually if we're staying in hotels, it's because we're only going to be a night or two in a particular location; for longer stays, we want a kitchen and a living room. But I go into it knowing it's a risk, and I might need to find something else.

Thank you for posting your story; it's a good to be reminded of the risks, especially for people who haven't tried home rental sites.

I hope you are able to find lovely accommodations for your daughter's wedding, and she has a beautiful fall wedding!
 
Thanks for the well-wishes everyone. Here's the update:

The resort really pulled out all the stops and was able to find rooms for us. We're not all at the same hotel/motel/resort, but we all have rooms.

I filed a complaint with VRBO and posted on their Facebook page. I was immediately contacted via Facebook, asked to forward the listing number, my email and the emails I received from the owner. I still haven't heard anything from them.

Last night when I got home (I was out all day and never even looked at my phone) the owner of the property had sent an email through VRBO saying that their plans had changed again and that the house was available it I still wanted to rent it! What was also interesting was that the property is no longer listed on VRBO at all and the other two properties she was managing are also not listed on the site at all. There was also a disclaimer that if I booked the house that VRBO would take no responsibility if anything went wrong. My husband thinks that she may have gotten kicked off their site. I politely declined to re-rent (and didn't say what I really wanted to). I don't need to be worrying about whether her plans will change again even closer to the wedding date.

I do realize this was the exception and not the rule and will rent using VRBO again. We really like having a house/condo when we travel. We find that it's not only less expensive, it's more comfortable. We've rented both in the US and outside the country and never had any issues. However, for something like this, next time I will spend the additional monies and book rooms right at resort/hotel.
 
I am one of those people not willing to risk it. That was horrible and not nice. My biggest fear is renting a place, making plans, flights, etc. only to find the place does not exist, etc. Someone takes our money and runs, etc. Just not worth worrying about it.

Now if someone gave me first hand reference (friend/family) - I might consider a place.

Enjoy the wedding and congratulations!
 
That is unbelievable! I'm glad it all worked out in the end but holy cow, that would have put me over the edge. We too, like to stay with an AirBnB or VRBO but I've been hearing and reading about more and more of this type of thing happening.
 
Standard rules are that when the owner cancels a reservation in good standing, they are blocked from being able to rent those same dates on vrbo. It sounds like they got even bigger penalties going on, so they must have done something even worse. Good choice in staying away.
 
Thanks for the well-wishes everyone. Here's the update:

The resort really pulled out all the stops and was able to find rooms for us. We're not all at the same hotel/motel/resort, but we all have rooms.

I filed a complaint with VRBO and posted on their Facebook page. I was immediately contacted via Facebook, asked to forward the listing number, my email and the emails I received from the owner. I still haven't heard anything from them.

Last night when I got home (I was out all day and never even looked at my phone) the owner of the property had sent an email through VRBO saying that their plans had changed again and that the house was available it I still wanted to rent it! What was also interesting was that the property is no longer listed on VRBO at all and the other two properties she was managing are also not listed on the site at all. There was also a disclaimer that if I booked the house that VRBO would take no responsibility if anything went wrong. My husband thinks that she may have gotten kicked off their site. I politely declined to re-rent (and didn't say what I really wanted to). I don't need to be worrying about whether her plans will change again even closer to the wedding date.

I do realize this was the exception and not the rule and will rent using VRBO again. We really like having a house/condo when we travel. We find that it's not only less expensive, it's more comfortable. We've rented both in the US and outside the country and never had any issues. However, for something like this, next time I will spend the additional monies and book rooms right at resort/hotel.
Hope that you wind up enjoying the accommodations better than the VRBO. There really should be some more stringent rules in place to prevent someone like this from disrupting a planned vaca, in this case a wedding event. It’s sad that it takes a Facebook post to see any action. Glad you did, certainly don’t blame you! Enjoy the big event!👍
 
I rent my VR through VRBO here in Maine. Not all owners are like who you dealt with! When Covid reared it’s ugly head and everyone wanted to cancel, we refunded each reservation and VRBO had a form to fill out with each cancellation to mark the reason (Covid) and it would not count against us to cancel said reservations (if an owner cancels a reservation under normal circumstances, then it counts against us) Since it sounds like this owner cancelled your stay and used Covid as the reason, but then emailed you and said they just wanted to stay there instead... I’m guessing VRBO gave them the boot bc of fraud. I’m glad it turned out ok for your plans, if you decide to rent a home again my advice is to message the owner prior to booking and get to know them a little. Most listings also have an “about us” section, def read those! Generally speaking, VRBO does well balancing the needs of both owners and guests. They make more money from guests however so usually they will defend guests over an owner — I hope that makes sense?
 
My husband and I have rented through VRBO several times over the past few years and generally had a good experience. Our last stay in Norfolk/Willoughby Beach was phenomenal - the owner was just awesome (sounds a lot like MDIME above in how they treat their guests!). On the flip side, we just dealt with a shady owner in Myrtle Beach for a stay next summer that left such a bad taste in our mouths that my DH refuses to use VRBO or similar again (except to stay in the house we just left in Norfolk).

I think MDIME is right on target with the recommendation to get to know the owner a bit. I also realized that had I searched Google for the owner's info I would have seen that there she did not have any good reviews and certainly was not the "premier host" as shown on VRBO.
 
Wow, sad that VRBO advertises hosts as Premiere and some reviews are less than stellar! I have never used VRBO or Airbnb, but certainly will take this into consideration if we decide to book in the future.
 
My husband and I have rented through VRBO several times over the past few years and generally had a good experience. Our last stay in Norfolk/Willoughby Beach was phenomenal - the owner was just awesome (sounds a lot like MDIME above in how they treat their guests!). On the flip side, we just dealt with a shady owner in Myrtle Beach for a stay next summer that left such a bad taste in our mouths that my DH refuses to use VRBO or similar again (except to stay in the house we just left in Norfolk).

I think MDIME is right on target with the recommendation to get to know the owner a bit. I also realized that had I searched Google for the owner's info I would have seen that there she did not have any good reviews and certainly was not the "premier host" as shown on VRBO.

Thanks for your kind words! ☺️
 
I know people here who rent through VRBO. I've done so for years and never had an issue, until now.

Last July I rented a home for my family to stay in for my daughter's wedding. It's in a resort town on a holiday weekend (Columbus Day), so I booked early (15 months ahead) and paid the booking in full per the owners rules.

Last night, 2 weeks before we were supposed to arrive, the owner canceled. The reason was that their plans had changed and they decided to stay in the house! They issued a refund. When I let them know what a bind it put me in they said they didn't contact me earlier because they weren't sure what their plans were going to be and there might be a chance I could have stayed there, so they wanted to wait until their plans were finalized before canceling my reservation.

The problem is there is nothing to rent - - all the houses/condos are booked as are the hotels. It's prime foliage season in the northeast and a holiday weekend to boot. VRBO was not at all helpful. They classified the cancelation as COVID related and wouldn't honor their book with confidence guaranty and even attempt to help find me a new rental.

The resort where the wedding is at has been wonderful and they are reaching out to everyplace they can think of to try to get us rooms. We've been bumped to first on their cancelation list. We live about an hour away so worst case is that we will just have to travel back and forth for the weekend. It would have been much worse if we were coming from any distance. If you absolutely need rooms and your plans are not flexible I would highly recommend booking a hotel through a national chain. VRBO owners can cancel you at the last minute, for any reason, with no repurcussions.
So sorry this happened to you. Thanks for the heads up. I have used VRBO in the past.
 

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