"Stop Homeaway UK" Facebook Campaign

[Villa Verde Makri Greece]

HomeAway UK is a greedy and inflexible company that ruins far too many holidays, damages far too many homeowners’ businesses, and denies liability for everything that goes wrong. Their lawyers even include untrue statements in their evidence when taken to Court. I can back up that statement with documentary evidence. They persuade Trustpilot to allow them to break the rules to increase their rating. I’d be happy to amplify any one of theses points on request. If they have treated you badly, please join our campaign to try to get their activities regulated in some way. On Facebook please search “Stop Homeaway UK”.

[AndrewH]

HomeAway UK is a greedy and inflexible company that ruins far too many holidays, damages far too many homeowners’ businesses, and denies liability for everything that goes wrong. Their lawyers even include untrue statements in their evidence when taken to Court. I can back up that statement with documentary evidence. They persuade Trustpilot to allow them to break the rules to increase their rating. I’d be happy to amplify any one of theses points on request. If they have treated you badly, please join our campaign to try to get their activities regulated in some way. On Facebook please search “Stop Homeaway UK”.

I no longer list with HA(UK), or more accurately that part which used to comprise Owners Direct, because of the huge drop in their performance for me, since acquisition by Expedia. I do personally suspect that HA(UK) have a special relationship with TrustPilot, which has hiked their "TrustScore" from less than 1 out of 10 up to 7.6 in a period of months. To me, it is "too good to be true", but I can't substantiate that.

It seems that with every booking made through their site HA(UK) ask the booker to give a TrustPilot review of their booking experience. It is not to be a review of their subsequent holiday, but too often these "verified orders", as they are marked, are exactly that. IMO, they are not "fake" reviews, as many people think, but simply ill conceived and naïve. However, for HA(UK) they work nicely to push up their score on TrustPilot, while TrustPilot (IMO) risks their reputation as honest brokers by letting this continue.

[Villa Verde Makri Greece]

We’ve had very extensive correspondence with Trustpilot about the reviews of HomeAway UK and its sister companies. We learned that there are two items of information on the review page that very few people will read. The first is a “collecting” button (though it’s not obviously a button) that hides details revealing that HA invites its customers to post reviews. There are “company guidelines” concerning invitations and HA has blatantly breached the rules. Back in February HA started inviting but only included travelers who had only just booked their holidays. They would be by far the most likely to post positive reviews. Trustpilot has refused to acknowledge the breach so hundreds of heavily biased reviews remain online, severely distorting the company’s overall rating. HA has been very clever with its use of invitations. They objected to TP whenever they felt threatened by a review, for example inviting people to join our campaign. The review was taken offline pending consideration by TP, another flood of invited reviews was immediately initiated then, after being cleared by TP, the threatening review was re-posted way out of sight, many pages back where very few people will read it. The second item of information is a statement that “HomeAway United Kingdom subscribes to Trustpilot’s paid business services”. In this case it’s more obvious to click for more information. It then becomes very difficult to avoid the conclusion that sponsorship causes Trustpilot to strongly favour companies over their customers. Trustpilot has supported the crooks at HA in fraudulently inflating its rating from 3% to 76% over the last 9 months. 76% is still a very poor score for a business where the vast majority of both travelers and homeowners are genuine people who will make bookings successful without any involvement by HA. We’re now supporting KwikChex in their attempt to get Trustpilot to change its ways.

[AndrewH]

...It then becomes very difficult to avoid the conclusion that sponsorship causes Trustpilot to strongly favour companies over their customers...

There are no parallel invitations by HA to its owner-customers to write TrustPilot reviews. TrustPilot don't appear to acknowledge that fact let alone care about. HA are TrustPilot's customers on TP's own admission. HomeAway PAY them for services. It is easy to conclude that he who pays the piper calls the tune.

[Villa Verde Makri Greece]

We mentioned our campaign in a Trustpilot review, HomeAway UK responded by getting no less than 118 four and five star reviews posted in the following 48 hours. That's 8 times the usual rate and proves that they cheat the system on a massive scale!

[AndrewH]

We mentioned our campaign in a Trustpilot review, HomeAway UK responded by getting no less than 118 four and five star reviews posted in the following 48 hours. That's 8 times the usual rate and proves that they cheat the system on a massive scale!

This must be how they work the system. HA can't hold back reviews from appearing on TrustPilot because that is not in their power. What they can do is hold back their emailed invitations to users of their site (as selected by them i.e. never to a property owner) until they have a very large number of potential invitees and then their emailed invitations can be released en masse.

When HA receive a damning review on TP they can then send out their invitations all at once in the knowledge that they will get an immediate response from a fair number of the invitees and these will smother the bad review. Featherc, perhaps try posting your HA review again as there is a possibility that HA will have now run out of "ammunition".

[Villa Verde Makri Greece]

I posted a new review this morning detailing their latest attempt to silence me. I hope they are now running out of ammunition. I expect them to object so I have forewarned Trustpilot and asked them to resist taking the review offline. We desperately need support from the media but who wants to take on the Expedia Corporation? There are much easier targets out there.

[Bordering]

Like the rest of the big players on the web, it's a scam dressed up as something which it isn’t, with a shiny FTSE ticker, or the prospect of one soon, propped up by all sorts of other scammy rubbish. Facts are irrelevant and legal enforcement is non-existent. Get over it! I dislike it as much as most of the rest of us do, but c'est la vie. Other options are possibly available but we don’t tend to choose them.