Don’t pay for booking sites’ mistakes

QAGILL CHARLTON

READER CHAMPION

Holiday home owners should make any rental restrictions clear at the point of booking

I booked a holiday property in France’s Lot valley through HomeAway on Jan 12 using the website’s booking calendar. My reservation was accepted and I paid £509.62 via HomeAway’s portal.

A few hours later, the property owner got in touch to say I could not book these dates (six nights from Tues July 30) as in summer she only accepted reservations with a Saturday start date. She said I could cancel the booking and would receive a full refund – as confirmed by the cancellation policy set out in the property’s online advertisement. This allows a 100 per cent refund for a cancellation made more than 30 days before the check-in date. I cancelled immediately on the HomeAway site.

The refund took almost two weeks to process and arrived in my bank account as two amounts sent over two days in the last week of January. But I have only been repaid £465.67, a shortfall of £43.95. I feel strongly that the bank charges should be refunded.

I have had several communications with the owner and HomeAway, and they both agree I should not lose out. However, today HomeAway said it was up to my bank to refund me and that it was closing my complaint.

Can you help?

GILL WATSON

It is ridiculous of HomeAway’s customer services to say your bank should be paying the charges. This mess has nothing to do with your bank but is a failure of either the property owner or HomeAway to load the booking calendar correctly or point out that rentals can only start on Saturdays in high season.

I went through the process of making a reservation for this property and it is still accepting bookings that start on any day.

I wondered whether the large discrepancy between the amounts paid and refunded was due to fluctuations in the exchange rate, but this is not the case because the euro actually weakened against the pound during January.

HomeAway’s website has a legal notice covering chargebacks and reversals. This says that if a guest reverses a payment, HomeAway Payments will automatically charge the property owner 3 per cent of the amount involved for processing the transaction through its payment portal. Add this sum to your bank charges and it comes to around £44.

I asked HomeAway why it had closed your complaint when there was an unresolved dispute. The agency has now apologised for being so unhelpful and says it will refund the bank charges in full within 10 days.

I also asked why the calendar allowed you to make a reservation in the first place. Nowadays, rental properties often allow for flexible stays year round, usually with a minimum stay requirement. If owners offering an online booking facility want to restrict customers to weekly rentals, they must highlight this on the website page.

HomeAway says its calendars can be customised in this way and it is the responsibility of owners to do this. It has spoken to the owner of the property concerned and told her how to correct the availability.

NOT SO PERFECTThe Lot valley, where one holiday rental became an issue