Vrbo Owner Reviews

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 VrboOwner . 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 VrboOwner . 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

*Update* I’ve dropped VrboOwner 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*

VrboOwner 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 VrboOwner 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.

VRBO has definitely not kept up with the times of technology. VrboOwner 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. VrboOwner 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!!

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

We have been using VRBO-HA for about 15 years. Nice having the broad market that this company offers. Overall I say it’s good. Below are issues I encounter…
Something to improve would be a smart pricing calendar that would intelligently assign your existing seasonal pricing into future.
The phone app doesn’t function like the PC version; reservations inadvertently accepted when replying to a reservation request.
In every conversation with help line, anticipate the relentless recommendation that you activate instant booking; drives me nuts and I repeatedly tell them to make a note on my account to quit asking me.
Editing price quotes is sketchy. 10 to 20 percent of time it won’t properly save your edits; most recent issue was that it auto-sent without me able to review accuracy. Luckily there was not large a large error and I didn’t need to embarrass myself recalling quote.
On one of my listings they will completely turn off if I am unable to respond to an inquiry within 24 hours. Not a desirable thing to happen when reserved guests lose their ability to see their reservation and think that they were scammed.
Phone app won’t immediately display new requests without reboot of app. Luckily text notifications provide flag of new reservation requests and inquiries.

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!!!!

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”. VrboOwner 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). VrboOwner 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.

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. :(

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 VrboOwner 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 VrboOwner 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.

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 VrboOwner , 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.

We’re long time property owners on VRBO and I’ve reported this before — The current version of VrboOwner simply does not work on iPhone 10. What gives? We can’t reliably work from VrboOwner, 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?

VrboOwner doesn’t allow templates to be created through VrboOwner 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.

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!

I’ve been using VrboOwner since it first was released and it is an essential tool for me as a rental property manager. It’s very user-friendly and I rely on VrboOwner for 95% of my property management tasks related to online bookings.

However —For some reason, the calendar feature has become unreliable just over the past year or so. I open the calendar several times a day to add bookings, to edit them, to adjust my pricing on various dates, etc. But it has become a VERY frequent occurrence that when I tap on the calendar feature, it simply will not open and I get a “retry” message. As I type this, I have a couple of guests asking for information about their bookings, and I can’t view them at all unless I go to the desktop version of my account. This is a major problem and needs to be permanently fixed ASAP.

VrboOwner 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. VrboOwner 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!

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.

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.

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…

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. VrboOwner 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 VrboOwner 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. VrboOwner isn’t reliable when you need to adjust quotes, add extra charges, subtract charges, etc. Hopefully VRBO will take the time to update VrboOwner very soon.

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!

VrboOwner 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.

For the amount of money Vrbo gets as “commission” from hosts, I honestly expected a better app than the competition. However, I feel like I need to go to the computer to do stuff which isn’t always an option. Example: Airbnb calendar doesn’t fully block dates from showing as available, I’m having to manually block them. So I select to block on the calendar, but it Block’s the first date selected but not the sequential dates. And then it won’t update the view until I completely close VrboOwner and reboot it to view the calendar and confirm, but it still doesn’t look right. This same issue occurs with the inbox. I get a new message notification, open VrboOwner , and there’s nothing there. If I wait 5 minutes and refresh VrboOwner a few times, the new message will eventually show up. Very frustrating when trying to keep up with every new message.
And I wish there was a way to look at the financial stuff, such as how much I’ve earned, upcoming deposits, monthly booking numbers, etc. I guess I’m just spoiled with the Airbnb app, (that doesn’t charge commissions from hosts) and was expecting this one to be similar in usability and features.

I don’t know what they are doing but every week VrboOwner 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.

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.

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 VrboOwner , 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 VrboOwner , 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 VrboOwner .

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 VrboOwner 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.