HouseTrip Reviews 4,298

Went in to Housetrip to book a particular property in Wells, Somerset. It was showing £990 for a week in late September, all other websites quoting £519!

I’m sure my house rental experience will be great!
I have not yet stayed in rental unit yet. This is not a complaint about the owner!
Placed reservation, card was charged $75.00 in international transaction fees. Notified home owner that stated Trip Advisor handles everything $ wise so contact them. Contacted Trip Advisor to see if I could use different card that doesn’t charge ITF, was told no just leave it as was. NOT ACCEPTABLE. Visa will only remove ITF charges if reservation is cancelled. A few days later I now have fraud charges on the same card I used to book this home. Prior to booking this house I have not used this card in over 6 months.

If I could leave a review without giving any stars I would. Met at our apartment in Palma to be told that they had double booked us. Spent an hour sitting in the foyer of the apartment while the rep said he was trying to find us somewhere else. He already knew we were overbooked so why didn't they sort this out before? Were told that we could go to a similar standard apartment. Got a taxi over there only to be told that it hadn't been cleaned. Had to wait for another 2 hours until we could get in. When we did apartment was no where near the same standard and when we looked at the price was significantly cheaper than the one we booked.
We asked Priority Villas to refund us the difference between the 2 which was €210 but they refused. One of their suggestions came at 6pm on our last night which was if we left the apartment that night they would refund us for one night! Totally crazy! Just the strangest most unprofessional dealings with a holiday company I have ever had. Contacted HouseTrip but they couldn't do anything because we didn't let them know straight away and they had already released the money. Eventually they offered us €120 which we decided to accept because life is too short. Never explained why this was the amount offered, or offered any compensation for losing precious hours of a short stay. DO NOT BOOK WITH THEM

Bad support . No response to email nor hotline.

Unacceptable response time to complaints and requests. Refuses to honour commitments made before merger with tripadvisor.

BOGUS PROPERTIES: They advertise properties that are not available...owners then offer alternative and inferior accommodation at same price. HouseTrip staff admitted to me they know this is happening. I was charged foreign currency transaction fee on the payment and the refund for trying to book a house that was never available. HouseTrip have refused to refund the fees of £30

I am still looking for an official complaints department for this company who debited money from my account over a month before my trip and then cancelled the accommodation 24 hours before arrival and the helpline says, 'sorry, not our problem its between you and the owner of the house, you'll have to try and get a refund from them' BUT I PAID HOUSETRIP.COM and they have a policy that states an immediate refund should any unforeseen circumstances occur.
Where is the complaints department???

We recently spent 2 wonderful weeks in Isola Farnese, a tiny medieval village about 17km outside Rome. The property suited our needs, and had a lovely outside space, great for al fresco eating & sunbathing. It was very quiet, peaceful & perfect to come back to after a busy day in Rome. The owner, Laura is delightful! Very friendly, helpful & she recommended visiting some beautiful nearby towns like Bracciano & Viterbo which were easy to reach by train. This was a fairly last minute booking for us, and went without a hitch! We had good communication both with the company and with the owner and would be very happy to book with them again.

Re:- ..Apartment Carrier Assasinados Barcelona 9th-14th April.

Hi

We recently used house trip to book a 5 day break in Barcelona in our favourite area the Born district, upon arriving at the property in Carrier Assasinados 15mins before check in time we received an email to inform us that the propery was no longer available do to unforeseen circumstances .

The email had been sent at 0830 on the day of arrival whilst we were on the flight to Barcelona.
This obviously left us with no where to stay, house trip attempted to find us alternitive accomodation, over the next 4 hours they sent us options for alternitive properties every time we found one we liked we were informed they were booked up as I said this went on for hours with repeated phone calls by ourselves in the end we were told that your properties in Barcelona were all fully booked but they would keep trying in exasperation we decided to look for ourselves wandering the streets at 8pm we managed to find a very small and hot hotel room in an an area we did not want to be in.It was this or sleep on the street.

At one point after hours of calls and still nowwhere to stay we were told to have a “Wonderful day”!

The following day we found an Airb&b property in the Gracia district an hours walk from where we wanted to be having wasted 2 days of our 5 day break.

As you can imagine these circumstances were not conducive to a relaxed break.

How is it possible that a property can be withdrawn a few hours before a customer is due to move in?
How is it possible that not one single alternitive property could be found in the whole of Barcelona?

No refund has been received (£591.89) over a week later!!

AVOID THIS COMPANY AT ALL COST!!!

Many Thanks

David Simmonds
Jenny Lewis.

It's probably best I share my experience of this company, I don't usually leave negative reviews but our experience was bad enough to share. We booked an apartment in New York through HouseTrip for a party of 7. I contacted the owner directly, 3 weeks ahead of our travel date, to check the booking and the owner came back to inform me the booking had been cancelled months previously and the appropriate cancellation fees had been paid to HouseTrip. The owner was told we would be notified. Unfortunately, HouseTrip didn't notify us. Being so close to the travel date, the cost of finding alternative appropriate accommodation was significantly more costly that the original apartment we booked. HouseTrip refunded our deposit which they had been in receipt of for 10 months but when we tried to get them to address our complaint, all we got back was a standard replies.

My disappointment with Housetrip/TripAdvisor/Flipkey was their reluctance to take any responsibility for their error. They stated the owner had cancelled only recently but I know this is not the case. The date they gave corresponded with the date of the owners reply to me and her contacting Housetrip to advise them they hadn't notified me of the cancellation.

Trip Advisor took over Housetrip during the period of our booking which contributed to the total lack of customer service and the failure in keeping us informed. I will certainly never be using any of the Trip Advisor group again and would not recommend them either.

I'd strongly recommend not using this company for your holiday rental bookings.
Booked an apartment for a family holiday in Ireland 6 months ago (October 2016).
Called the owner to check if apartment had towels provided day before check-in, was surprised to hear that the apartment was overbooked 3 times!
As it was 6 nations weekend there was literally no other accommodation available. Housetrip 'offered' accommodation 20 min drive away at a higher cost.
Housetrip do not check owners and penalise owners enough for cancellations! All about the owners rather than looking after their customers (who pay their salaries!)

I can't even seem to write a review about the owner on their website.

I would strongly recommend not using this company and seek other means if you want to enjoy your holiday!

It may be that house trip is normally a reasonable company. Not with me. I have been waiting over two months for a 2000 euro refund that is owed to me because an owner cancelled my booking. Nothing to do with me. I get fobbed off by customer service, no or slow response to emails, broken promises. Disgusting service. I would never use this company again nor recommend that anyone else does.

Hi there, I used housetrip and have given 2 stars, as they helped me a small amount by getting just over a £100 in compensation from the company who owned the apartment, due to the issues we had and that the apartment was also not the one the company sent pictures to us of. It was the same complex but different apartment. Housetrip was unavailable for us to complain at first so unfortunately gave the company all the money for the apartment so that was also their fault. However, I proved that I had contacted them in time so the compensation was granted. Little did I know but the company who rented us the apartment back on the 28th July, had taken 400 euros out of my account the day of my arrival. They said it was for a deposit but nothing was damaged or broken. As you can see from the start of my email, "they" gave me money back.

Housetrip then washed their hands of me and stopped replying to my emails, trying to get back that 400 euros they had taken!

To this day I still haven't received the money - just empty promises.

Booked a holiday through this company and tried to contact the host via phone and email before arriving. Was unable to reach them by phone and sent an email which was not responded too. Go to destination and had no where to stay still unable to get hold of host.
Got hold of customer services and they said they would get hold of the seller and ring me back in 20 minuets. 40 minuets had past with no call back so called them again at which time they told me they also could not get hold of him. Was then told that a refund would take 3-5 working days (it has now been over 6 working days without a refund and have now been instructed it wont be until start of next week). So we were left stranded in a foreign country with no money to book a hotel as they would have to investigate and then hand over the case to finance.
House trip need to look at how there customer support actually support the clients and also need to review how there payment protection plan works as leaving people stranded in a foreign country with no place to stay is unforgivable. You also need to put in place a better way for people to inform you can not get hold of the host before travel as not being able to sort anything out untill you get there caused the biggest problem in this case.
I would never recommend this to anyone. We managed to sort out some where to stay for our holiday although due to the customer so called support we lost our first 2 days and put a bad mood over the holiday. Shame on you House Trip

I will never use Housetrip or Tripadvisor agin..even after many years of helpful information.Be very very careful and READ THE SMALLPRINT.
Its a good money making company so if there is someone with money to invest, go ahead.But for people who are looking for a cheaper way to holiday as they cannot afford fancy expensive hotels, be aware of their booking forms and get out clauses..It will be your fault anyway and you cant win against this big boy

Smooth reservation process, good feedback. HouseTrip has very limited responsibility for the quality of the rented flat/house and very hard cancellation policy.

I booked the apartment in Budapest three months before the travel and did not hear anything from the host, but nevertheless I thought everything was OK. To be sure that the booking was OK, I made contact with the host three weeks before the arrival. She said she did not have my booking ID nr. We agreed that I send her a copy of my receipt. I did so and asked for a reply if everything was OK. She did not respond, neither the second mail. At another platform I found that the apartment was unavailable two of my five booking dates. At the same time the apartment was available at Hose Trip for my five days period. What a luck that I asked the host for confirmation four days before the two weeks cancelation period, that means 85 % refund. If not, regarding the lack of goodwill from House Trip, I would have lost all my money if I tried to make contact with the owner within a few days before my flight. I made a claim of 100% refund, but since I had made a cancellation I had to respect the cancellation policy. I am asking myself what could I possible do. I certainly could not go to Budapest knowing that the host was out of reach. I do not think is fair that they take my 44 Euros because of error made by House Trip booking system or the host. Also see House-trip.com reviews.
TERRIBLE SERVICE, LACK OF UNDERSTANDING. DO NOT USE HOUSE TRIP

I booked through HouseTrip. First I got a rejection because the hostess informed me that the apartment was allegedly already rented. "Unfortunately," I have seen on another website the apartment for about 150, - offered more expensive Euro found ... Thereupon, I have checked with HouseTrip why this is so. Shortly thereafter, the mail hostess: no problem at all, they would have missed up, of course, I could rent the apartment. Aha ... demand at HouseTrip if I could be sure now that me all seemed weird revealed: na klar. For the "absolutely unlikely event" that a host would still cancel times (yes all are "tested" and do something not ...) would help HouseTrip course, to find another accommodation!
After several emails to the host to which this NOT responded to calls (number unavailable) I got 10 days before departure then the news of her, sorry, unfortunately I have in the apartment infestation of bed bugs (if that is true or not: disgusting is definitely !!!). The elimination would take at least two weeks (is not true, the information from health authorities !!!) and therefore they had to cancel my reservation ... Yet another aha !!!! Unfortunately, so HouseTrip could be me now no longer help to find alternative accommodation that now would be too short .... Again a really stretched and now very angry aha !!!

To clarify: If I had the permission - for any reason whatsoever, so lice infestation, serious illness etc. - canceled at the same time, I would be 60% of the costs become loose! Yup! The hostess can however do (and indeed with a justification, which is not to some extent understandable) and not reimburse me 60% of the cost, which I have now more! Because I have a spare guest found (which was more than a miracle !!!), but instead of 214, - Euro now 490, - costs !!!! MANY THANKS!
The HouseTrip employee who was sitting by the way in Germany, but only spoke English, was because "unfortunately do nothing." but stressed that I would get but at least my money back, with my credit card was already charged (that's it probably if not ... This is called FRAUD in criminal law if it would be different ...).

Anyway: I and House Tripp (including subject TripAdvisor, where one felt for hours chased me through all hold-the-lines ...) will definitely NOT (NEVER) become friends!

I can only advise against any of them to stay here, if he / she is really dependent on a hotel !!! Then definitely stay AWAY from this club !!!

Well, if there are other experiences here! But I'm through with the theme! Paris at Mari's apartment = NO GO !!!

All that seems to me not true or too dirty (BED BUGS!!! Imagine that!!!).

Excellent site, easy to understand and full of pertinent information. Booking process straightforward and no fuss.