Getting Near the End of the Road With Homeaway
royguti Jan 5, 2019 11:35 PMI've been doing the short term rental game close to 4 years, started with Homeaway and it was great, I would actually pull some inquiries from Airbnb and bring them to Homeaway as well BUT now I don't feel the love; I had a very shady guest that put a pet in my home, smoked pot,, had people sleep in the house that weren't in the guest list, kept extending the day of check-out (I would agree) and then wouldn't make a payment until late evening, begging all day to make payment and finally paying late evening after I would tell him he has to leave immediately for no payment, basically he acted like it had to be done in his time frame and my requests to pay were a bother, the third time he tried to extend (again same day after I told him he needs to let me know and pay the night before, no hotel lets you stay without paying) I had to lie and tell him that someone had already booked the house that day, something seemed fishy extending the morning of check-out every single time, thank God he left because I thought after all his shadiness and rudeness he would probably overstay, anyways he left the house like a dirty hotel room, food on the floor even in bedrooms, no pots or dishes made and all over the place, sticky stuff all over the floor (cleaning lady was cussing this guest), including taking out my "No Smoking - smoking is an automatic and immediate eviction" sign and putting it away and ripping out all the pages of my guest book, I let him have it when he left and I knew after that he would probably do a negative review, so he did, a 1 star review (worse I've had was a 3 star review because of the once in 40 year basement floodings in Michigan, so out of my control, so not even a bad review just 3 stars because they had to cancel and find another place), saying the house smelled, so get this, for homeaway that's a total legit review even though he tried to book the house 3 times after the original booking, he even tried to book AFTER I told him it was already booked, how insisting to try to book a 1 star home! even offered to show homeaway the texts between this person and myself but they're not interested, to add insult I responded to the review and they took it out! (might be because I added the first name of the person in the review will check tomorrow), so I'm closing to pulling my 3 listings that are on Homeaway, have 4 more than I was planning on putting on Homeaway but at this rate they're staying only on Airbnb.
What type of service is this? I've had around 150 bookings with them between 3 listings (great reviews), planning on adding 4 more this month and I get this? This company is going on the deep end, we created a local FB short term rental page and most of the people that are ALSO on homeaway (all of them are on Airbnb) are having issues and thinking about leaving Homeaway as well.
Correct your ship Homeaway, you're not on the good side of hosts anymore!