Community: Message List

Re: Protection against rate hike upon arrival?

community-no-reply@homeaway.com — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 22:00:19 GMT

Thanks for the advice.

The 25% extra demanded was for the entire 4 months.

We stayed the entire 4 months.

We disagreed with the owners when we arrived, but paid the extra 25% anyways...

They already had the money that we had originally agreed to. As I said there was a whole vacation in motion, and it was too late to change all these plans.

And because they now had our damage deposit, again we were at there mercy. So made sure we stayed on cordial relations with them during our stay, and until we received our damage deposit back (they gave it all back). Only at that point did let them know we were going to take this up with HomeAway, and with the Guarantee Insurance. But they have ignore us from that point on.

I am continuing to work with HomeAway.

As a last resort, I will indeed post a negative review...but don't want to do this until I've exhausted all possible recourses to get the 25% extra I paid back.

My main question was how in heck could one protect oneself against this kind of thing of fraud in the future?

Re: Protection against rate hike upon arrival?

community-no-reply@homeaway.com — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 23:45:33 GMT

Yes we had a signed agreement....but who do you go to complain, even with the signed agreement?

Protection against rate hike upon arrival?

community-no-reply@homeaway.com — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:04:04 GMT

Does anyone have any ideas on how to protect oneself against more money being requested upon arrival?

We negotiated a 4 month rental in Rome from an advertiser on the HomeAway website, and paid upfront

(If I was the owner I'd want that too, since I'm tying up my rental for a long time)

We purchased HomeAway Carefree Guarantee just to be sure.

Upon arrival owner wanted 25% more (I think they realized they might have been able to ask for more from us initially). But now we were stuck: large amount already paid, trip is in motion, etc. etc.

HomeAway/CareFree Guarantee people say this is not covered under their Internet Fraud clause (although am still in discussions with them)

If the Guarantee does not cover that, any ideas how one could be protected against such a fraud/scam?