You would think that a database of VRBO’s magnitude would have some safeguards in place. For example, a query that compares “new” listings submitted to the VRBO database. It could search deleted listings for up to 365 days and then attach reviews from those deleted listings to the “new” listing. A pretty simple query to write, methinks. It would prevent unethical owners like this from gaming the system.nnSadly for VRBO, I was in the process of booking a 2-week stay in London for the spring through their interface. I’ll be looking elsewhere as I can’t afford to drop coin on places with seemingly good reviews for such a long trip. One night? Tolerable. 14? Inconceivable.nnI hope they contact you and offer some satisfaction, Jason.

I have dealt with companies like this and it drives me crazy. I think one of the best places you can really tell people if a company is being lame is on Google places. There they cant delete comments but Im not sure if they are on there and Im not going to look them up because I will never work with them after doing that. But good for you for exposing them.

I have a house listed on VRBO and have rented through them. I have never really liked the way they do business on either end. Unfortunately, they rank high pretty much anywhere. I also listed my property with a property manager and will rent houses that way as well.

Is http://www.vacationrentalpartner.com/ (techstars 2010) tackling this aspect of the rentals market?

What a horrific experience! Ours was not so bad but we did have some problems with property #120003 on VRBO in July 2010. Our experience was not nearly as difficult as yours but having a bathroom out of commission with a party of 21 was a bit challenging (amongst other things that were not working correctly). We stayed there in July and I wrote an honest review of all three houses. Today there are 6 reviews on the site of which 5 are glowing. The one negative review is from March 2010 and there is a long response from the owner. We never got any kind of response. I am not sure I will use them again.

VRBO allows owners to ‘opt out’ of traveler reviews if they choose to do so. For those of you interested, there are some other companies doing interesting things in the vacation rental space:nn1. http://www.flipkey.com is the http://www.tripadvisor.com owned competitor to VRBO. Flipkey’s premise is that accurate, truthful reviews are paramount to guests having a good vacation rental experience, and they have a proprietary process for verifying reviews and ensuring that they’re from actual guests. I also believe that they do not allow owners to remove reviews once they’ve been posted.nn2. http://www.vacationrentalpartner.com (a 2010 http://www.techstars.org company, of which I’m a founder) offers an escrow service whereby guest payments are held until after checkin. We help guests feel more secure about transacting with owners as they know that their money is safe in the case that the property is significantly not as represented or does not exist. This benefits owners as well – increasing guest confidence improves the chances that a guest will book the property. We’d certainly love to hear both owner and guest feedback on this approach.nn3. http://www.secondporch.com enables travelers to search for vacation rental properties in your immediate or extended social network. This helps you find a place that a friend (or friend of friend) may have stayed in or owns.

Finally people are getting wise to the VRBO scams, etc. Many VRBO rentals listed in High Pointe/Rosemary Beach FL area reverted back to Resort Quest. They messed our reservation up and cost us over $500 to change it. Neither the owner nor Resort Quest would own up to the mistake then the mattresses in the unit were AWFUL and there were bugs in the drawers — VRBO managed to prevent us from posting any of the negative reviews. The owner’s response was that nobody else had made similary complaints — probably because they did not go through VRBO and/or are not computer savvy like my in-laws who also complained about the unit in person the year prior.

I had a similar experience. Rented a condo in Costa Rica via vrbo for New Year’s. To sum it up, the condo did not live up to our expectations. Here’s my review:nA friend and I booked this property for two nights (including New Yearu2019s Eve) and immediately wired payment, including a $25 cleaning fee. Joe Scrivo, the owner, assured us that the condo would be ready for our 2 pm arrival. I arrived early (approximately 11 am), and the condo was an absolute horror show; it had not been cleaned from the previous guests. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes, trash was everywhere (including beer bottles both in and around the property), dirty towels were on the floor, and the entire condo reeked of smoke. The shower was filled with sand–so much sand, in fact, that the water could not drain properly. All three beds had been slept in and were unmade. To top it all off, there were broken eggs littering the entrance. n nI immediately contacted Joe via email; I gave him the benefit of the doubt since I was three hours early. To his credit, he wrote back immediately. He told me that I needed to find the cleaning lady and get her working on it. Of course, I did not know the cleaning lady and it wasnu2019t until 2:30 pm when she finally showed up on her bicycle. She told me that the condo would be ready by 3:30, so we waited. And waited. And waited some more. We sat outside the condo from 11 am until 5:30 pm, when the cleaning job was finally completeu2026sort of. The towels that she gave us were damp, and the bedding consisted of only a fitted sheet and a flat sheet (no mattress pad or bedspread). n nBy 5:30 pm, we had lost both an entire day in Jaco as well as qualitative planning time, since we had hoped to book an excursion to Tortuga Island for the following day. I emailed Joe to give him an update and let him know that we were finally able to get into the condo at 5:30 pm. He wrote back that he, too, was on vacation and had been disappointed because his rental didnu2019t have internet and had not been cleaned either. I regret that he had a similar experience, but it does not lessen the fact that he manages the Jaco property and should have been responsible for ensuring that it was ready for our arrival. n nI tried to resolve this amicably with Joe via email, and he offered me a free night in Jaco. I explained that I do not plan on returning to Jaco, in part because of my rental experience at rentjaco.com, and requested monetary compensation to cover lost time. Joe has not responded to my request.n nI would not recommend this property to anyone. There are much nicer, cleaner properties throughout Jaco; do not waste your time and money at this rental.n nI warned the landlord that if he didn’t make this right, I would post a negative review. Apparently he is able to “opt out” of reviews on vrbo, and I’m not able to post my experience. nnShame on vrbo!

We just booked a house through VRBO (for our wedding) near Boulder just before you posted this. I read the article then. The experience with the homeowner has been good so far.nnHowever, just yesterday, 4 of 5 of the user reviews for the property disappeared from the listing. They were even positive reviews, all of them. It’s mysterious that they are gone which made me think of your experience. Something weird is going on at VRBO.

Jason:nnI mentioned on Twitter that I would leave a comment here and that I had mixed feelings. I am vacation rental owner and do advertise my property on VRBO. I realized that my mixed feelings weren’t actually because I am an owner using VRBO. I’ve had my rental since 2007 and have had a number of people stay there over the course of four seasons. My very first year I had a negative review on one of the sites I advertise on (not VBRO) and that review happened to be entirely jacked up and unreasonable. Whatever site the review was left on did ask me for my side of the story but did two things 1) the review went live, I was NOT allowed to remove it 2) warned me that after 3 negative reviews my property would be removed from the listing. nnHaving a three strikes and you’re out approach upset me, only because their review was unfounded and they trashed my place (but, of course, they didn’t mention trashing my place). nnSince then I’ve had one complaint and in that situation I refunded the couple what they felt was fair which was for two nights of their 8 night stay. nnWhat does this really mean for the purposes of your post? It means that a) VRBO should not allow the owners the option to remove reviews because then the peer system is “broken” b) As an owner who really cares about the stay for my guests it pisses me off that other owners are only out to get as much money as they can in their pockets — essentially at other’s expense. nnAs a number of your commentors have stated below….they won’t use VRBO to book a trip…..could one of those have potentially been a guest at my property? Possibly. I believe it costs me $249/year to advertise on their site and if they allow the sleazy owners, such as the ones you rented from, to deter potential guests from owners like myself…..well, that just sucks.nnFrustrating really from both an owner perspective and guest perspective.nnBTW, when I cancel my advertising with them they will call me and I’ll be sure to direct them to this post.

This is just despicable. nnAnd by “this,” I primarily mean raising $400 million to solve a market fragmentation problem, buying up all the available market share, and still putting forward such a crappy customer experience.nnBut also their reviews policy.

I am currently waiting on VRBO’s fraud team? to respond to a complaint so I guess I will see where that goes. I rented VRBO #314330 two weeks ago. The property manager Michelle met me at the house and said the owner said we had to have cash which we brought, plus give a $500 check for deposit. We were in the house less than 48hrs as ours was just a weekend rental. We agreed with Michelle to clean the house ourselves which we did. The first night we discovered NONE of the four TVs worked and I called her and she said that she would see about getting the cable company out but it was the weekend, they never showed of course. The DVD players of which each room was supposed to have either were non existent or they had NO CORDs to hook them up. The washer and dryer were so loud they could have been heard next door. Also the last day we were there Michelle texted me that the house was going to be shown that day as it was on the market, so we spent our last morning there cleaning the house in expectance of this “showing” and noone ever called or showed up. I didn’t go swimming with my kids because I was waiting on a call from Michelle’s sister about coming to show the house essentially wasting our last day there. Then Michelle tells me she can’t come to the house to meet me and give me my deposit back and get the key and she will mail my check back to me. Now three weeks later my check is cashed (I had emailed to ask if everything was satisfactory and when it would be mailed with no response) So, today I see the check is cashed, try to call no answer, I filed a complaint with BBB and emailed stating I would seek legal counsel and all of a sudden I get an immediate response of course. Now, 3 weeks later she is claiming that we damaged the bamboo flooring under the dining room table that we never used! We ate out everytime except one meal which was eaten on the patio. I’m really in shock right now as her accusations are completely false and I am a nursing student and can’t afford to be without this $500. I haven’t left a review on VRBO, but now it seems if I do it might never be seen…. SOOO frustrating I have used VRBO numerous times over the years and NEVER had an experience like this. I scraped money together for the rental to take a break before my last two months of nursing school and Michelle knew that, but yet can’t email or call about supposed issues before cashing my check and ignoring my emails. Any suggestions????

Sooo….nnWhere does one go to find a respectable property to rent? We’re heading out to Hawaii (Oahu) this summer for two weeks. Its our third summer vacation in a row there and I’ve booked the same hotel we’ve used twice before. I found we spent so much time in the car travelling up to the North Shore away from the tourist-y bustle of Waikiki and thought, perhaps, it would be great to split the holiday time between Waikiki and find a place on the Ocean to rent on the North Shore. Hotels are scarce up there! I’ve gone through the VRBO website and was looking for feedback outside of their website when I stumbled into the fray here. There must be thousands of VRBO listings on Oahu and I haven’t counted the number that come up on the North Shore BUT I’ve learned there are only 875 LEGAL listings on the entire Island. This is according to the Department of Planning and Permitting – Code Compliance Branch for the City and County of Honolulu of properties which have been issued Non-Conforming Use Certificates (they list a few North Shore properties). Say what??? Suppose an owner gets their operation shut down while someone is in the middle of their vacation? Not a savory thought.nnThe more I’m discovering the less I’m liking renting through VRBO or ANY ‘by owner’ websites. Looks like we’ll be doing a lot of driving again this year. nnThanks for the article Jason. n

As a long time advertiser on VRBO I have to say that since the mega corporation, HOMEAWAY took over and bought up most vacation rental sites, the quality and service have seriously been lacking. What other service does one pay thousands of dollars to, yet the company won’t even give you a customer service number? They are ALL about the $$$$$.

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