Hi sunnybarbados,

VRBO absolutely wants to talk with its customers, and again, I’m sorry you have the impression we don’t. Creating and staffing for VRBO phone support was one of the biggest issues our Customer Experience team tackled this past year. Prior to launching phone support, we did a lot of research on the best ways to address our customers’ needs. The technology we implemented (Click to Call) starts with this request for assistance form, in which you tell us about the issues you are having.  Once you click submit, our phone team will call you back, already prepared with the information you need based on the request you submitted. Also, this way, you’ll be sitting in front of your computer, which we’ve found is invaluable when discussing your listing.

FYI - our average call back time is 30 seconds, so if you did not receive a call back, please email me directly with the best contact info for you, and I’ll ask someone to call you directly.

Thanks for your patience!

Laura

lkelso@homeaway.com

Hello All,

I am sure you are aware that we at HomeAway & VRBO are very interested in all of your conversations on the Community.  We try to "stay out of the conversation" as much as possible, because we do believe that this is your forum.  Occasionally we might respond to a question posted in the Discussions areas, and always respond to questions posted in the Support areas. 

That being said, I hope you will forgive my intrusion into this conversation long enough for me to let you know how very much we do care about you, your relationship to our companies and your businesses in marketing your vacation rental properties.

I've worked in the Customer Service department for VRBO.com for just about 10 years, and now have been an employee/Manager at HomeAway for 4.5 years.  So believe me when I say I know where you are coming from when you are unhappy about VRBO not having "phone support".  This was one of the biggest complaints we received over the years.

That is why last fall we implemented the “Click to Call” technology that Laura described earlier.  It IS now possible to talk to a VRBO representative on the telephone!  (The same is also true now for VacationRentals who also recently implemented the same technology so that the VacationRentals members could also receive Support by phone.)  The main difference is that you have to initiate contact with us from a computer. Our system will call you back and place you into a phone queue for a live customer support agent.

As you have already discussed, in recent weeks/days there have been delays in reaching Customer Support due to high call volume.  The same is true if you’ve requested help via our online support forms. We've been growing recently, and are doing everything we can to meet your needs and improve your overall customer experience.

I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused all of our members, and hope that you will please try to be patient with us!  We are working as hard as we can to respond to all of your questions as soon as we can!

Best regards,

Valerie

Support Manager