You booked a property on VRBO or HomeAway and have already paid in full. Are you prepared for what can happen next?

The property owner / manager can cancel your reservation at any time before you take possession of the property for any or no reason leaving you with no place to stay. For example, a property manager may book his rental to somebody else who is willing to pay more money through a different website. When you arrive on site, he may inform you the unit is no longer available, even though you paid in full and confirmed your paid reservation with him days, weeks, or months in advance.

The property owner / manager is only obligated to refund the amount you paid for the booking. This can take days or weeks to get returned to you through the VRBO / HomeAway site. Hopefully you paid with a credit card so you can have the credit card do an immediate charge back and return the money you paid back to you.

The property owner / manager is under no obligation to find you alternate lodging or reimburse you any cost difference between his property and wherever it is you find to stay (assuming you can find a place to stay). If you have to pay more to stay somewhere else, that is coming out of your pocket, not his.

You will never be allowed to leave any sort of negative feedback for the property owner / manager on the VRBO / HomeAway website since you never actually stayed there. No future potential customers will ever know that person double books his property. You have zero recourse against the person who just scammed you.

Please don’t be as gullible as I was and believe this cannot happen to you. I went to a conference in a major US city and booked what was advertised as a luxury condo next to the convention center for a reasonable price. I paid in full via a credit card. I received an email confirmation from VRBO / HomeAway. I contact the property manager to confirm the reservation three weeks ahead of my check in date which he happily confirmed. Thirty minutes before boarding my plane to fly to the conference, the property manager texts me telling me he double booked it and I have nowhere to stay. His alternative lodging options were ridiculous – one was a house under construction and the other was a flea-bag motel. Both options were miles from the conference center. Calls to VRBO / HomeAway went nowhere. I was able to get my credit card to do a charge back very easily at least. I ultimately ended up paying close to double the VRBO / HomeAway condo price for a decent last minute hotel.

My advice – if you are going to use VRBO / HomeAway, you need to have a plan B from the very beginning in case your property is not available when you get there. I have been using these sites for years without incident thinking when I paid in full I was securing and guaranteeing the property. This is not the case.

I am posting this in hopes I can prevent this from happening to somebody else. Please understand what you are getting yourself into with these sites and plan accordingly. Thanks for reading.