Dear Travel Troubleshooter: I recently booked a vacation rental through VRBO. I arrived near midnight and it smelled strange. I found some broken tiles and mold. I contacted the host immediately. The host assured me he would repair the mold. He said he couldn’t remove the mold from the wallpaper, but he had to remove it, but could spray bleach.
My husband woke up in the middle of the night with difficulty breathing. I gave him a bena drill and an inhaler. I placed the kids near the front of the house and opened the cracked windows. The next morning we left before breakfast.
I contacted VRBO and shared a photo of the property. VRBO said it’s not safe to stay there and pay for the hotel. They said they would work on refunding our money, but they have not reconnected with us. We made four calls and still no refunds for the promise.
– Amy Taggwell, Hampton, Virginia
Answer: I looked at the photos of the vacation rental and I agree. We shouldn’t have spent the night there. gross!
Seriously, VRBO should not have a place like this on its platform. But some slum roads – that is, homeowners want to make money soon. And the only way to remove such property is to complain about what you did.
After showing the photos to VRBO, it agreed with you and paid for the hotel room. VRBO has a “confident book” that says to take care of you when rentals are not safe. And mold is definitely not safe.
Reading between lines it appears that the hosts did not see any issues with the rental. However, the photos were pretty convincing and there was nothing to sneeze on your medical issues.
I’ve seen many cases like this and it appears that VRBO is trying to encourage the owner to refund. VRBO tells you that it’s just a platform and an intermediary between you and the owner, but there’s actually more power. It could have forced the problem or just refunded itself and chased the owner. But instead, it chose a middle ground and covered the hotel before asking to wait while negotiating with the owner.
There’s nothing to negotiate in the way I see it. Your rental certainly has a mold issue and the owner probably couldn’t get rid of it in a few hours. Mold experts would have been needed to alleviate this type of problem.
VRBO could not have it in both ways. You had to choose the side, and the right one was yours. A short, polite email to one of VRBO executives – List your name, numbers and email address on the consumer advocacy site Elliott.org.
Unfortunately, there are no magical rules that you can call to a company like VRBO to do the right thing. VRBO agreed in an unrecorded phone conversation that you have the right to help, but we see no written evidence that you have promised a refund. Instead, VRBO told you that you wouldn’t get a refund.
I contacted VRBO on your behalf to see if this was the final answer. The company looked at your case again and decided that it wasn’t. I refunded the full amount of $2,200 I spent on renting.
Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy, a nonprofit organization that helps consumers solve problems. Email him at chris@elliott.org or contact him at elliotttdvocacy.org/help/.(C(C) for help.
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Original issue: February 9, 2025 9:03am EST
