Owners Direct 

I have left a review here on the 4th of June. I have lined out all the issues I have had with OD when renting a property (Booking reference: HA-JZ7ZSC). I have also stated that my review of the property has not been published and it is still not. 3 weeks after I submitted my review I have received an e-mail that the it can not be published as it includes a customer service related issue and I have to deal with OD direct to sort this one out (the CS issue in my review was that OD stopped answering my e-mails and are in no way helpful - so doesn’t that cat chase its tail here?). I have then had a click to chat conversation with OD on the 21st of June to sort the review issue out so future travellers are allowed to find out the truth about the property but the lady could not help as my problem needs to be handeled by the “relevant” team - which was not her.
She promised me an answer within 48 hours this is now 7 days ago and I still have had no reply (reference number 16540833).
I will keep everyone who is interessted informed here until the issue is solved.

Ownersdirect have been getting steadily worse. Now they call themselves Homeaway they have hit rock bottom. I contacted their customer service to point out that my most recent guests had not received an automatic request for the second installment of their payments. Mistakes happen, forgivable and now I know that it is a possibility, I can watch out for it. But because the guests through no fault of their own paid late, the company is holding onto the money and will not disburse it until more than a week after the guests have left, instead of (as in the contract) the day after guests arrive. The agent was unable, or unwilling, to do anything about it though he agreed it was totally unacceptable.

Bye bye owners direct ...........

"We would like to inform you of an important change regarding your HomeAway subscription. To provide a consistent experience for both owners and travellers, HomeAway Payments will be the required method of payment when you renew and Alternative Payments will no longer be available. You must sign up for HomeAway Payments before your subscription can be renewed."

What this in fact means is - f. you we are intent on world dominance and are buying any web sites we can involved in holiday letting and by the way we are going to hold on to your £ for as long as possible - because we need more and dont care about you or your houses that we make so much £ out of - oh and by the way lest get more £ and offer a 'service fee' ....... what service would that be exactly. Also fyi we really don't care if you are leaving because Expedia own us and frankly it makes no difference to us whether you leave or not.

Bullying sperm of the devil. Even if OD now expedia - now Homeaway - now ripoffhomeownersdirectly changed their policy I would never advertise again. I despise them and their vile business practices. However dont make the mistake of thinking they care because they dont - the accountants have worked out what is the best for them and hey ho.

You would think the trust pilot reviews would have had some influence but they just regurgitate the same old nonsense.

shocking company, appalling actually. I have been trying to get help regarding many issues but instead I get a call telling me to remove my own website address from my listing as its a violation and my pages will be frozen. I said I will do as they have requested and do everything to make more bookings. They cannot do anything for my concerns at all. He had no answers for me when I pointed out my listing is being penalised because I wont offer on line payments, I have told them on more than 20 occasions I cant afford to do that nor do my customers need it. I offer Paypal which they hate....reason, its a secure payment but much much less than theirs. The want me to be under their total banner, when I asked if I was and a client asked a question about my villa or the area what would they do? They would contact me and I would do the work for which they are being paid for.....I stopped one on line booking with costs because I nearly lost the client over it. Clients do not like being ripped off by huge companies making more money than they should. We paid a fee, we advertised and clients booked...easy. now they want control of my money and charges. The sooner I find an alternative the better. MY VILLA IS HEAVILY PENALISED IN THE LISTINGS BECAUSE I WONT LET THEM CHARGE MY CLIENTS MORE MONEY FOR DOING NOTHING......PERIOD !!
They have changed their name because of the bad press, no other reason. They have lost hundreds of thousands of villa owners and I am now trying out two other companies. Absolutely shocking company, if you are a holiday maker, please don't book direct with them, its a rip off for more money. They are greedy. Owners Direct was about Owners and Holiday Makers. We pay an annual fee to them but that wasn't enough.....so they charge booking fees AND keep owners money for long periods of time. Beware.....companies like this go bust easily, if an owner doesn't get your money then you wont get your accommodation.

HomeAway is now far too complicated. Owners Direct was so much easier, i gave them the availability I had, they gave me enquiries, I paid their annual fee, job done. Now I cannot make head nor tail of their new payment system. I used to have five listings with them and the last one finally expired in May 2018.

I'm going to give Simply Owners a go and use booking.com and Air BnB for my late availability.

If we could award Owners Direct no stars we would have done. We have been advertising our property with this company for a number of years and by and large it worked out very well UNTIL one month ago. Our first guests have been and gone and still we have not received our money from Owners Direct. Can you imagine how the guests would feel if they knew this! One month later and still no monies received. We have contacted Owners Direct on countless occasions but to no avail. None of their employees are helpful. They seem clueless and evasive. They seem to read from a script and are either unwilling or unable to help. When asked to speak to a supervisor we are told NO this is not possible. When asked why they reply either there is no supervisor or on another occasion he/she has no phone on their desk!!! What sort of company is this? Final straw was yesterday when we were transferred to the “payment department” only to be told they do not know where our money is and we would have to speak again to Owners Direct. Asked to be transferred back the reply, wait for it this is good.........we are until to transfer you back. This company no longer has any regard for property owners and without us they have no business. Our next step is to contact the BBC’s Watchdog programme to see if they can help us get our money. We are due our second party of guests tomorrow we are not holding much hope of receiving their money either. What a total shambles. We believe we have waited long enough and remain out of pocket.

UPDATE - 15th JUNE 2018

ID #8018798
E-mail received today informing us that technical team are looking into this. This just feels like more fobbing off. How long does it take to transfer OUR funds which Owners Direct received from our guests months and months ago.

UPDATE -19TH JULY 2018

WE HAVE NOW HAD 5 SEPARATE BOOKS STAY AND STILL WE HAVE NOT RECEIVED A PENNY FROM THIS COMPANY - IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SPEAK TO ANYONE. EMAILS ARE IGNORED

AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID

Owners Direct were a great company and business with a simple business plan. Charge a reasonable annual fee to put owners of properties and people looking to rent them together.

It was clearly a threat to Home Away and Expedia, so it would appear they bought the company, changed the business plan entirely to ensure both owners and renters paid a lot more commission and then, having ruined the reputation of the brand, removed the name entirely.

Owners Direct was a threat to their business and it is no more.

I am removing my property from Owners Direct who are forcing me into on-line bookings. I am moving to Simply Owners. I have had endless problems with Owners Direct after receiving an email in January from HomeAway Payments stating that I qualified for the advanced payment service, as the Owner I would receive payment instantly. They are now saying this is not the case despite this I received another email in May once again confirming that I qualified for the advanced payment service. I telephoned customer services again and they were quite rude and said I had no choice but to accept the only payment option to owners which is payment 5 to 7 days after guests check out. This does not work for me as I have no cash flow and why should HomeAway hold on to substantial monies for a period of 12 months in some cases. They changed me to on-line booking without my consent (their was an issue with their site apparently). During this time a guest made a booking and they are refusing to release money that is owned to me unless I sign up for on-line booking. What was once an excellent company is now the complete opposite. Simply Owners is a far better choice and there is no service fee for guests.

We are not wasting any more money advertising with Owners Direct /Homeaway. We used to get between 25-30 weeks booked annually with the original Owners Direct. Homeaway has ruined this. This year we have had a grand total of 5 through them. The site is far too complicated both for holidaymakers and owners. We are so happy and relieved not to be renewing our subscription with them.
Phew
J & C

On the 13th June Owners Direct website and name will be no more, swallowed up by HomeAway which in turn is owned by the parasite company Expedia. This company and the people who own it, and work for it should hang there heads in shame for the damage they have done to thousands of owners businesses , and for destroying the good name of a British Company and making it so toxic, that it has to stop trading under that name.

Owners Direct was the best website I have ever advertised on, and the best site for an independent owner to be on up to 2016.
When I received an email from them saying that this year will be a year of upgrades built around me the owner. This has included bullying of owners, threatening owners to dump there adverts’ as far down the listing as possible. Trying to stop owners from login unless they setup online booking first. Hiding phone numbers, email addresses, disconnecting links to owners websites. Banning owners from the website if they want to take there own bookings on renewal . And now the final upgrade destroying the website and its name, all built around owners, one hell of an upgrade.

What this company has done to owners, and to the website Owner Direct I hope that this is the start of the beginning of the end of this appalling company, owners deserve better than having to deal with this parasite that lives of other peoples hard work.

It seems H/A and O/D have also been playing silly devils here in U.K
Have just found out IF you subscribe to H/A your properties are posted on ALL their other sites F.O.C including O/D. For the last two years, i have advertised on BOTH being charged separately on both sites. Have asked for a refund on one of them and i await their comments.
I wonder how many other property owners have been advertising and paying on both of these sites.

In View of the response below THERE is no notification of this anywhere on your site. May i, therefore, have a refund, please ???

"this information was communicated at the time". To whom as i have never been notified over the last two renewals and have only just found out by accident.
"Property owners do not need to pay a subscription for separate listings on multiple sites." SO CAN I HAVE A REFUND PLEASE !! O/D are just ignoring my emails on this point.

My complaints with OD: they insist that because my bank branch is in the UK, I must price in £, even though it is a euro account and all my expenses are in euros. They mansplain over and over their logic - which is senseless. How stupid and arrogant can you be? Does your company lack the resources to fix this? Second, the website is sooo slooow, and has numerous design faults that make navigation pretty hard. Third, if a client accidentally enters the wrong email, they go into a black hole they cannot get out of. Quote from client " somehow typed my email in incorrectly. Can't work out how to change it online. Correct email is ----@--------.--- (I entered ----@--------.---). Can you mail me directly" This was a genuine client, not a scam. So obviously OD bots just censor his email and make everything twice as much work. Eventually they did finally get it sorted but man, it was hard, and OD did not help. Finally, OD (just like their rivals) do not recognise that I live thousands of miles from the property and there is a third party - the local agent - who wants/needs emails and phone numbers - or system access - to arrange checkin. Does your management ever stop watching cat videos and sometime think - hmm, maybe these clients are telling us something useful? Now I expect I will get a response from your bot saying how much you value your customers feedback. I preferred it when you just ignored all reviews - at least that was honest. The tragic thing is, you guys do pull in business (I am a gold partner or whatever) so I cannot kick you into touch. Man, I would love to. So much. I'm waiting.

I have now abandoned Owners Direct and advertise my holiday home elsewhere. Interestingly Owners Direct also seems to have abandoned itself, the very name having become toxic. Recent communications from them say that anyone searching for OD will be redirected straight to HomeAway and unsuspecting travellers looking for self catering properties, in the belief they are booking directly with owners, will continue to pay un-necessary booking fees and any owners who have not already withdrawn their listings will still be enmeshed in a plethora of rules, charges and obstacles as well as seeing their guests paying much more than they would have done had the old Owners Direct still been in existence and genuinely direct bookings still been possible. It is a crying shame that this wonderful platform has been systematically destroyed since it was taken over by HomeAway.

It's now official - Owners Direct is to be merged with Homeaway on 13th June 2018:

'HomeAway will be the new home for your business

Hello, we value your partnership, and want to be completely transparent with you about a recent change in our business strategy. On 13 June, 2018, Owners Direct will move to HomeAway.
We understand that your first concern will be how this change impacts your business. But rest assured, this move to one global brand comes with many benefits that will allow us to grow your business, and increase our own global brand presence.

What this change will mean for you

This is undoubtedly a positive change for your business. All of our resources, attention and spend will now be focused on a single brand, which means more traffic directed to your listing. And more traffic means more bookings.

You don't even need new login details: you can use your existing Owners Direct details to sign in to HomeAway from 13 June, 2018. You'll find all of your listing data and details, so you'll feel right at home'.

So, the end of the 'Owners Direct' brand and website that so many owners and guests have said bears little resemblance to how it used to be, before the Expedia takeover, and before the sellout to Homeaway when it was a run as a family business by Chris and Marie Goddard between 1997 - 2007.

As our current listing on Owners Direct already appears on the Homeaway sites, we do not hold out for something magical to now occur (especially with the few enquiries/bookings that our listings across the HA Group now generate - we are also listed separately on VRBO as well).

We just really hope that the Homeaway Group begins to listen to all the feedback from holiday home owners, those still listing, as well as those that have since withdrawn their properties due to all the changes, and of course to all the feedback from guests and potential guests who might have booked a property if they hadn't just given up in frustration.

After the switch to the 'Airbnb format', Homeaway failed to give potential guests the same features and options found on that site. For example, you are from Germany and you do not have a credit card - how on earth does the Homeaway Group expect guests to book and pay the service fee if they don't have a credit card? Credit card ownership is not so widespread in many countries in Europe. On Airbnb, no credit card - no problem - you can pay by instant and automatic bank transfer for example. The amount of potential revenue that the Homeaway Group must be losing because of this mistake must be staggering.

And also don't forget Airbnb's more acceptable lower levels of service fee (yes, we are listed on Tripadvisor as well and because of the high level of service fee on that site, we don't receive hardly any enquiries/bookings there either).

We will move with you to Homeaway uk and see what happens. We just hope that someone in your head office wakes up and sees just what you are still doing wrong...

I get so sick of reading all the "propaganda" scripted responses from OD. Its a bit like the North korean propaganda machine. They seem to think that if they keep spouting over and over again we will believe them.... "working for owners" "giving guests great booking experiences" "book with confidence guarantee" (utterly worthless) "help rebooking" (oh yeah great help your call centre are) "our research shows guests want to book online" (no they don't) Blah Blah Blah.......
Well Owners Direct actually no one (owners and renters) do not believe a word of your propaganda. We KNOW all you are interested in is ripping off guests and renters alike- once you have their (our) money the chances of getting anything back if there is a problem is zero.
Keeping OUR money until you kindly release whatever you want to months later...No other industry behaves like this this and you deserve (and surely will) FAIL.

We have listed our property with Owners Direct since 2012. In the early days, it was excellent, both for property owners, and guests, as direct communication was the priority between both. Truly Owners DIRECT. With the subsequent changes and “Updates” to the website of Cas HomeAway, it has become a nightmare for all concerned. We, as owners of a holiday cottage, now have a “service fee” imposed on our visitors - for what?! We supply the service! Bookings are a nightmare for both visitors and owners. We have nearly lost the only three bookings from OD this year, but managed to salvage them. In short, we shall never list with them again, and remain very disappointed with their treatment of both Owners and Visitors. Appalling service all round. What a pity. Owners Direct used to be so good all round. We suggest that SimplyOwners is a far better option.
As an update 24/6/2018 - having removed our listing on 31/5/2018 from Owners Direct/Cas HomeAway, I am disgusted to have received an email from them, requiring us to “rate” our most recent guests. This is based on a 5 - 0 star rating - and the categories are Overall Experience, Cleanliness, House Rules, Communication - followed by “Did you ❤️ having “........” as a guest? It reads like a school report, and is a revolting intrusion into the privacy of guests.
I have never been more relieved to leave the almost “Stasi -like” control of the current Owners Direct/
We are delighted to be able to list our property with SimplyOwnersdirect instead. It will be a far better experience for our visitors, and us.

As an owner I would suggest you steer clear. Totally unaccesible when there is a problem. Hey deleted my listing twice for no reason and have yet to solve the problem despite repeated emails and calls - a total hassle even if it is fixed and if it carries on it will have lost us business

If it was all in the interest of guest and owners maybe a look at your ratings would help you understand the general feeling throughout the holiday owners community. It had at one time Owners Direct were at the top of your game but now very few people agree with the way you conduct business. Everyone pays much more than under the takeover owners and guest alike and my page views that I pay more for are under half that experience prior to the takeover. How does that work Exactly Mr Sharples and Mme Malfoy.

if i could leave 0 stars, i would. a truly appalling company - take the money and run seems to be their preferred mo. i put down almost £600 deposit on a house whose description turned out to be sufficiently far from the facts that i requested a refund. this was turned down on the basis of the refund threshold date though the property description was a clear breach of trades descriptions and i would never have made the booking had the facts not been concealed. the company were no help whatsoever. i am a member of the which consumer assoc. and will be taking this matter further. deal with at your peril!

EDIT: i have already posted the booking id, privately, so you should be able to see it. here it is, publicly: HA-63XDZ4

you have already had visibility of this issue and the best you could do was look for a 'goodwill gesture' on the part of the owner, which of course, he was never going to agree to. he also wanted payment directly into his bank account, contravening your own guidelines. his advert is still on your website, misleading other customers of yours. i've lost nearly £600. go figure...

i have just had a very unacceptable conversation with online chat for Owners Direct. Apparently if the guest doesn't pay a second instalment by the due date then you yourself as owner cannot cancel the booking without suffering a minus to your profile and reputation I asked the customer services lady what I should do and she suggested we wait until the check in date and then refuse entry. At which point I could have the deposit - less their fees of course. I pointed out that I would have lost about £1,500 by doing this and why isn't it automatically cancelled if the guest doesn't pay by the due date so we can mitigate our loses and try and rent to someone else. if the booking isn't cancelled then the dates are still shown as rented. This is not good business sense and unless this policy changes I will be looking to use one of the many other websites to advertise my property.