(This is not a question, I’m just venting.) I have had reasonably good luck in the past renting places through sites like this but I am getting frustrated with my current experience. I have two problems related to availability. First, I put in my dates and destination and get a list filtered for my needs. But most of the people I contact say their place is already rented during my dates, even though the calendar online doesn’t show it. For AirBnB this happened and the person’s response said, “It’s already booked as shown on the site.” But AirBnB doesn’t show calendars for availability of specific properties, like HomeAway does.
The second problem is dealing with property managers who list properties on those sites, but do not have exclusivity in renting them. So properties are clearly shown as available for my dates, but the manager writes back saying something like, “The owner says it’s not available for those dates…But I have something else you might like blah blah blah.” I don’t know if these people are legitimately incompetent or if they are bait & switch scams.
I had one issue where I inquired about a property and the response was from an agency that pushed me to their web site to conduct the transaction instead of going through HomeAway. I don’t know if that violates the HomeAway terms of service but it certainly seems shady.
What really frustrates me is that there is virtually no customer service with these sites to address this type of issue.
I am burning out on this whole experience. I am looking at rentals on Lake Maggiore, and I think that European areas that are popular tourist spots must attract more of this kind of problem than the U.S. locations I’ve done this for in the past.
I just booked a place using Airbnb yesterday. I input my dates and got a selection of possibilities. When looking at a given place, I was able to check the calendar for availability. (I was thinking of adding an extra night.) It says “View Calendar” down just before the pictures.
I have heard the same from other people about places not being available even when the site says they are. On Airbnb there are some places that are “Instant Book” (you can use it as a filter) so I would imagine their calendars are more up to date.
Last year I used VRBO and had that bait-and-switch happen. One person offered another (nicer) place, but the dates were a bit off. Another had their own short-term rental business with a number of places. We ended up going with that after finding good reviews about them. My theory is that they list one place to get in touch with people, but do transactions off the site to save on fees.
I had an issue with a recent Airbnb stay and found the customer service to be really good, but that was after the fact.
Good luck planning your holiday! I find it a really stressful experience.
Thanks for that. I think I see what’s going on. I have clicked on that, and it seemed that it merely allowed me to select my travel dates. I click and the calendar comes up under Check-In showing the check-in date I selected, and allowing me to change it. On second look it does seem to show gray on certain dates. The gray dates were the same dates as my travel dates so I thought it was showing me my travel dates, but the same dates are gray no matter what travel dates I put in so it looks like those are unavailable dates. It was just a coincidence that the only days in August that this place was booked were the exact dates I wanted to go there. HOWEVER, it came up in a search of available places for my dates, so it still doesn’t explain that.
The user interface design on HomeAway is much better. I am really surprised that a company whose entire business model is web-based does not have a better user experience design (I am a software development manager and have managed a couple of web development projects for the federal government).
I gave up on private rentals and booked a hotel. I think part of the problem is that I need to book farther ahead–we are traveling in peak season in a tourist area.
I had some issues in March with Airbnb hosts in Tokyo backing out, but I was fairly impressed by Airbnb’s customer service. They block a host with second thoughts from renting to anyone else for those dates. I suspect, however, that these guesthouse operators were listed on several services, so that wasn’t much of a deterrent.
I never rely on the calendar and email the host directly to confirm the place is really available. We’ve had minor issues, mostly a difference of opinion of what exactly “clean” means…I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the host gather up the dust bunnies in the bathroom and believe me, after 50 years of owning cats, I do know what cat pee smells like and it’s your basement lady! Otherwise we’ve had fine experiences with almost all of our stays. But the calendar is pretty much a crap shoot.