VRBO/Homeaway has been sold to Expedia and now is implementing a service fee which goes directly to them, ostensibly to improve marketing.
I just saw it on a new quote and wonder how others feel about that?
Trip Advisor also adds a similar fee depending on the owners listing agreement.
I am wondering what will become the new hot site for this sort of thing. I find the fee rather offensive myself.
Bummer. For a rental or two I booked, they were on both airbnb and vrbo/homeaway and I chose the latter as it wound up being cheaper. I thought their no fee gave them a little competitive advantage over tripadvisor and airbnb. I think it is a strategic mistake but time will tell.
I will not use Expedia…at all. I had some bad experiences with air travel with them…and swore never to use them again.
Bummer. I love VRBO.
VRBO is owned by HomeAway, so they are now the same, but there was no fee, now there is a fee.
And they are both owned by Expedia now…right? That’s a deal breaker for me. They are not good with customer service. Sorry…they just aren’t.
I think this is very upsetting. It is my understanding that VRBO charges the property owner a fee to advertise and Air BNB charges the renter a small one time fee to use their service. So, if VRBO is already collecting a fee from the owner, why does Expedia need another fee from the renter??? That is double dipping in my book. Just charge a higher fee to the owner to use VRBO to list their property.
Oh man, that’s a bummer. I knew VRBO was also Homeaway, and typically they’ve been more cost effective than flipkey, but I guess its time to revisit that or try airbnb. How much is the service fee?
This is like Ticketmaster. Don’t tell me about the 5 different fees I’m paying (unless they’re optional), just give me the bottom line.
Why not just tack the fee onto the rental price so it’s invisible to the user?
Oh well. I guess that it done. We have used VRBO on our last few vacations. I guess we will go back to sourcing the old fashioned way.
The fee annoys me but Expedia is almost a deal breaker. I have no confidence that they can run this well. Bummer because we use VRBO almost exclusively.
The last trip we took was a very expensive rental. Turns out the condo we rented was also on VRBO, but using an agent I’d located, we were able to get a significantly better rate ( more than 20% better, if I recall the rates correctly) through her than through VRBO. Many of the VRBO’s are no longer managed by the real owners, but rather some management company/ agent. We wasted a bit of time with some of those, some of whom also seemed to use a bait and switch “oh that unit JUST booked, but we have this other one, that is less convenient and costs more , available”. Um, no.
Hmmm, we like to use VRBO/HomeAway and have something booked for this summer. I hope we’ll be avoiding that fee since we’ve already done our booking. Does anyone know when the fee goes into effect?
As doubt they could add a fee on an already booked trip, but I noted the website is scheduled to be “down for maintenance” on Feb. 24.
Bummer!
H really only likes hotels and I like H to be happy, so thus far, we’ve stuck with hotels. Sometimes we have used Hotwire but somehow have never used the other services. We are lukewarm about Expedia and hotels.com, as we generally prefer dealing directly with the hotel.
Expedia need to justify the unholy amount of $$ they plunked down on the waterfront estate, complete with the DNA bridge. Hence the fees.
“They are not good with customer service. Sorry…they just aren’t”
OMG, the support dude in India was horrid. And I am elite plus whatever member! He yelled at me that I needed to shut up and listened to his canned speech which I had zero time for. I asked for the manager, and he went ballistic. The manager gal actually knew the name of the large airport near Stockholm - the dude did not!
I’ve had listings on vrbo since 2007. When I put up my first listing, the price was about $350 for a year. My latest listing cost $1200 for the year. Vrbo is really getting greedy. At one point in time, I had three properties listed. I’m down to one and that one is not going to be renewed. I will be very glad to be done with vrbo.
@bouders As a renter, what do you like as an alternative to vrbo/homeaway?
I am guessing flip key or Airbnb