Vrbo

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I have just booked a holiday cottage through Vrbo, but I have since read some terrible reviews of them.....really wishing I read this before booking! Can anyone tell me their experience of using them?

We've used them often, no problems at all.

@PangolinPie that's reassuring.

Same, no problem at all. Airbnb on the other hand…

Thanks @Lemme I wonder if there ratings are rubbish because people are more likely to do a review if something goes wrong!

Staying in a vbro at the moment. All good and lots of good experiences.
Are the reviews you are worried about for the property or vbro itself?

I've used them lots, never had a problem.

@LostMySocks Vrbo itself, looks like issues are with scam properties, no help if owner cancels with support finding alternative accommodation which is something they say they will do. We are going with an 6 and 8 year old. Don't want to turn up at 5:00 after a day of travelling to find no accommodation available! But people responses seem reassuring.

Did the property have plenty of reviews? Its the ones with too good to be true prices and very few all similar reviews you need to watch. Our one is lovely. Really clean and we arrived to a lot log burner complete with fire guard.

Yes plenty of reviews.

We booked around a year in advance, all paid then with about a week to go, owner almost doubled the price - when challenged they said they were happy to cancel and refund if I didn't want to pay the new price.

I've used them a few times and never had any issues.
They feel more reliable than Airbnb but that's probably just my perception. As others have said, read the other reviews. I only book places with excellent guest reviews.

They're just a listing site. I think they used to be called holidays abroad or something. I've booked through them loads of times and never had any issues.

Used in Europe and the US. Never had any issues. Properties always as listed and good communications.

We've used them regularly no issues.
Same caveats apply as with all holiday vendors where you are dealing with independent properties- use your common sense. Only pay through the website, don't do direct bank transfers. Vrbo won't protect you if you deviate from their T&Cs. Do your own research, use Google maps and street view rtc to search for locations if you can (we use pool shapes to identify places if no detail is provided). Go for properties with extensive photos of all rooms, not just the main living area etc.
But we find vrbo and their app very easy to use.

We used it for properties in various countries and never had an issue. It's a booking platform, they are not responsible for the property.

If in doubt, search for the property on the web. We found them always listed on several platforms, incl. Booking.com.

We had issues when one property over the years, it was suddenly removed from Vrbo leaving us without any means to contact them. Again, I found them on the web and managed to contact them to sort out keys etc. But that was an issue with the property management (they were useless in general) but not something Vrbo was faulty.

We nearly always use VRBO - having previously used homeaway which they took over . You need to look carefully at the individual listing though - some are listed directly by the owner and others are listed by other agencies - and properties also have different cancellation properties - some offer no cancellation at all whereas others you can cancel pretty much up to departure date . You can filter out properties based on this.

Sometimes you can find properties on multiple sites which will give you more peace of mind as to the property being genuine.

We did have an issue last year where the owner of a property we had booked had sold the property a couple of months before our trip. We were informed by the managing agent who offered us an alternative but we chose to cancel and rebook ourselves as we didn't fancy the alternative offered .