I was recently serching for a a beach house to rent for a week long summer vacation. I had two things working against me. First, I wanted it for the week of July 4th and second, I did not even start looking until mid May. Like thousands of other people I searched VRBO.com.
VRBO.com is one of the leading websites for finding places to rent for vacations or other occasions. VRBO is actually a HomeAway company. HomeAway, Inc., based in Austin, Texas, is the world’s leading online marketplace of vacation rentals, with sites representing approximately 700,000 paid vacation rental home listings throughout 168 countries. HomeAway® offers an extensive selection of vacation homes that provide travelers with memorable experiences and benefits, especially more room to relax, for less than the cost of traditional hotel accommodations. The company also makes it easy for vacation rental owners and property managers to advertise their properties and manage bookings online. One would think that a longstanding company like HomeAway would take every precaution to prevent any of their websites from being hacked, but it appears that this is not the case.
After an extensive search I found a great property for a great price and the dates I wanted were available, or at least the website said it was. On the page listing the property was a form to fill out to contact the owner. I filled it out asking them to comfirm the date and let me know what I needed to do to book the house. Within the hour I was contacted confirming the house was available and f even offered me a 10% discount to pay in full. I responded to the email saying I was ready to pay. Again, wtin a few minutes I received and email stating they would draw up a contract and send me Bank Transfer instructions.
The next morning I got an email from VRBO. This is part of the email;
Website: VRBO.com, Listing number: 167880
Description: “Beach House W/ Gulf Front View & Private Hot Tubs! Gulf Shores AL ”
Property phone: (800) 210-7914
Dear Traveler,
You recently sent an inquiry for the property referenced above. First, thank you for using our site. Unfortunately, we have reason to believe that the owner or property manager may have unknowingly and inadvertently had their email account compromised…..
I manage to find the phone number of the owner of the rental and called. I was told that they had no record of my inquiry and that the rental was not available. I was fortunate that I got the email from VRBO before I got the contract from the hacker. I wouyld have lost $4,050.00 and possibly more.
VRBO and HomeAway should not allow their sites to be hacked. Property owners pay them to list their properties and they have a responsibility to ensure hacking does not happen. The bad news is after researching this issue on the internet I found this has been happening for almost a year and VRBO has not fixed this issue.
Some Advice from Tastesliketravel.com when booking on VRBO.com or HomeAway.com:
- Most owners have listings on their own site or other rental sites. Check those against VRBO to see if the availability matches.
- Beware of gmail or hotmail email addresses from the owner.
- Confirm by phone with the owner before you pay.
- Be wary of properties that don’t take credit cards or offer discounts for bank transfers.
There are a lot of scams out there. Use a little common sense and don’t get taken. It can turn a vacation into a costly nightmare.
Editors Note: This article was written over 2 years ago. I am pretty sure this issue has been addressed as every legitimate business takes hacking seriously. VRBO Is a good company.
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Dennis Thompson says
January 6, 2015 at 1:35 pmIt’s now 2014 and VRBO isn’t a whole lot better than when you wrote this post. The only thing different now is that VRBO now tries to purport themselves as some sort of pillar of security with catch phrases like “travel with confidence” and “book with confidence”. They also now have some silly rating system where they rate their sellers as if to give the illusion that the are keeping a watchful eye over what they think is their flock of sheep.
I have 4 properties listed on vrbo, I have been a member since 2008, and I have booked over 1000 reservations for my properties. VRBO is a good platform for connecting travelers with owners, but lately VRBO has been trying to act more like a travel agency or reservation site. I think they need to keep their nose out of things they know nothing about and stay concentrated on being a lead generation site.
Now here’s my advice to travelers. Get to the owner! VRBO is only a lead generation website. Don’t give your credit card number to to vrbo or homeaway. Use their platform to get to the owner who is most likely much more secure than vrbo or homeaway. After all, it’s vrbo and homeaway that have been hacked and compromised so many times, not the owners.
And here is my 2014 checklist, which is very similar to the one already offered by the author:
1.) Most owners have listings on their own site or other rental sites. Check those against VRBO to see if the availability matches. Make sure the phone number is identical on all the listings.
2.) Do a carrier lookup on the phone number and make sure it’s not one of those magic jack or google voice phone numbers.
3.) Beware of gmail or hotmail email addresses from the owner. Confirm by phone with the owner before you pay.
4.) If it is your first time booking with the owner pay using a reversible payment method like a credit card or paypal? Keep in mind that Paypal only allows disputes up to 45 days after the transaction. If you aren’t arriving in 45 days then it’s better to use your credit card. Also I’d like to make you aware of a payment method I like to use sometimes that I like to call “double reversible”. This is when you pay with paypal using your credit card. This gives you the ability to first file a reversal with paypal. Then if that doesn’t work out you can do a reversal on your credit card.
I will be posting more about this on my blog as well as linking back to this article. Thank you for the great article!
SkiSilverthorne blog