Home Away-covid refund

[minniemouse]

Has anyone been successful in obtaining a refund for accommodation booked through Home Away due to being unable to travel re covid? Travel Insurance is not covering it. I'm assuming Home Away is only an advertising site and the contract is with the individual owner.

[Hermione]

We had to claim from the insurers when we had to cancel due to Irma they were so disinterested in helping in any way.

[mickeyspal]

If they are the same company as vrbo, which I think they maybe, then we got a full refund on 2 trips we had booked

[Mary A]

We were booked for last May through Home Away. Full refund promptly received but from owner

[emmabanana]

We got a partial refund through them last year, we’d only paid the deposit.

[Lu Lu]

I got the money back from the owner but not the deposit/ Home Away fee. It's VRBO now - not sure if that makes a difference to claiming anything back.

[steve@mac155.f]

OP they are just a listing site and the owner sets there own cancelation policy, although they were urging owners to refund guests who could not travel it was at the owners discretion.

Steve

[minniemouse]

Thanks for the replies. I thought it may be down to the individual owner.

[tiggers friend]

I've cancelled a condo booking for the Gulf Coast and the money was back in my CC account in four days.

[neil1489]

My booking was direct with a UK based owner and my original booking was terminated less than a month before we were due to travel due to the first covid lockdown. The owner at that time said that he would only refund us the security deposit. In the end he finally agreed to amend the booking to this year but yet again this booking was terminated due to lockdown. After a bit of research I found the following

gov.uk/government/public...on-and-refunds

gov.uk/cma-cases/cancell...-accommodation

Using this advice I negotiated with the owner and he has finally agreed a 50% refund which I have accepted. I did take advice from a solicitor about "frustrated contracts" which is where a contract cannot go ahead as originally planned due to no fault of either party and I was advised it didn't always qualify for a full refund because a court was likely to ensure no party was made to suffer a loss but it does mean that accommodation owners are legally obliged to give refunds even if that refund is less their own costs.