While I see a lot of hate on here for VRBO our experience with them has been positive. I have used VRBO many times over the past 15 years with rarely any issues or problems. However, this past June we had a reservation go completely sideways. For the Montreal Gran Prix in June 2023 we booked accommodations through VRBO in January. With the Gran Prix being crazy busy you have to book early to get some reasonably priced place to stay. We booked through VRBO, the host took our money and confirmed our reservation. All good we thought. On the day we are flying out to Montreal the host did not send me directions or check-in instructions. I emailed and called the host and no response. The host went AWOL and were now scrambling to find a place to stay. As you can expect we were quite upset that our host took our money and then bailed on us. I talked to VRBO about the situation. They tried to find us alternate accommodations in Montreal but because of the Gran Prix there was nothing available in their system within a 100 km radius. They asked us to see if we can find alternate accommodations and then send them the receipts for the extra.We were able to find some acceptable accommodations near the airport on the island of Montreal. But this place cost around double our original booking. VRBO reimbursed me for the cost of the AWOL booking and I submitted our receipts for the new booking. VRBO has a book with confidence guarantee and AWOL hosts are certainly covered. It took about two months for our request for reimbursement to wind its way through their system but they did refund the extra cost of our last minute replacement booking. I will give VRBO full marks standing behind their booking with confidence guarantee. But I will remove one star for the amount of time it took to process the refund as well they lost our refund request in their system. I had call VRBO in late July to get this moving again.
