Stayz Avis 

Booked accommodation via Stayz /VRBO website in November to check in in March. Was charged 100%. In December decided to cancel. No such option was on app for my chosen property. Two lengthy calls to customer service. Finally cancelled after a week or so. Refund took 3 weeks minus 5%. Never again.

I tried to make a complaint regarding a guest parking across the footpath all day, impeding pedestrians and making them walk on the road which is unsafe. The link doesn't work and I spent 2 hours waiting on the phone, then was told, I should contact the host. Its not safe for me to do that. Stayz stuck to their script, no concern for my safety or that of our residents impacted by thoughtless short stays.

Stayz came at us for having 1 extra person stay than we told them originally. The only way they would have known is if the owners of the property were watching us on the cameras. Super creepy stuff. The property owners are the customer not you. Stayz doesn't care if the property owners are spying on you. My and my wife had sex in the living room and those creepy people would have seen it on camera. We won't use Stayz ever again until they create a policy about property owners and their cameras.

Just lost around $400 as Stayz sold me accommodation that was not available.
Could not cancel without penalty and numerous phone calls have not resolved issue.

Tried to cancel my booking shortly after making it (when I discovered via comments on airbnb that the house was on 3 levels with aircon only on one level).

The virtual agent couldn't find my booking details! Three phone calls and 4 days later, I'm told the case was escalated to their Technical Team and to wait another 24 hours. The perils of booking online with a massive company with automated systems - and customer service operators who are trained to sound helpful, while NOTHING happens behind the scenes.

Scam. Once reliable, now a scam. Paid for accommodation in full only to receive an email the day of my stay (3:11am) saying it was cancelled by the host. No refund was processed. Contact has been impossible with no phone numbers or chat portals working. Very disappointing.

Booked 3 weeks accommodation through Stayz and asked for a tax invoice so I could get reimbursed my almost $4000 outlay. Stayz/Vrbo support advised they don’t issue receipts other than for their service fee even though they are the recipient of my payment on my credit card statement. I was advised to contact the host for the Inovice but the host refused to issue anything either. It’s a piece of paper, 5 mins to whip up on a computer but too much effort apparently. Stayz/Vrbo s happy to take your money but there is no accountability and even less care factor. I’m not even sure about the legality of not providing a receipt in these circumstances. The whole experience and “service” model is disgusting. My issue was raised to the support supervisor and now I am receiving multiple emails daily asking if my issue has been resolved satisfactorily or telling me that I’m not responding to their emails. I certainly am responding to these emails as the issue has not been resolved at all. I’ll never book through them again or recommend them to anyone. Following this negative experience I booked accommodation through their competitor and was immediately automatically issued with a complete receipt.

I booked a property on Stayz for a July trip and paid in full months in advance. A month before the trip, the host contacted me directly to say the home was unavailable and pressured me to cancel and switch to another property she managed. I was reluctant, but with limited time and options, I accepted. The substitute property was in appalling condition: filthy, badly maintained, and outright dangerous.

The kitchen appliances sparked and tripped the power, the shower rail collapsed on my children, wardrobes nearly tipped over, and beds were dirty and incomplete. I reported everything immediately. Stayz’s response? The host refused a refund, and they “couldn’t do anything” because the stay had already occurred. They offered me $150 in credit—for a property I paid over £1,700 for that put my kids at risk.

Stayz/VRBO continue to list this substandard property on their website, despite it clearly breaching safety and hygiene standards. They failed in their duty of care, and their platform offers no real accountability when things go wrong. I do not recommend booking with them, and I’ll be filing complaints with consumer regulators in both the UK and Australia.

I contacted Stayz on 11th July 2025 to cancel my accommodation, I was told to send email to host. I have done this. It took 48 hours to here from accommodation host who knew nothing , said he hadn't had contact. Over last few days I have received emails from Stayz asking me to answer questions, but none attached to email. This is an absolute farce. I am due to be admitted to hospital for major surgery, which is why I had to cancel trip. Stayz and host made aware of this medical situation. Spirit of Tasmania had my money back in my account within 48 hours. Can't believe 2 weeks later still nothing.

I cancelled my booking 2 month ago but still haven't got a refund yet. I've been contacting the owner of the accommodation but no response for more than a month at all. I'm worried that I might not be able getting a refund.

We have booked our Christmas holidays with stayz back in 2024 In June so that we can enjoy a good family Christmas holidays together due to the bush fire that occurred in Victoria, in December we didn't have any information with what was happening so we got in to contact with property manager of the site and told us to go through stayz app or website to claim a refund because the town that we were supposed to stay was closed to the public. it been six month now and we are still waiting for a refund of our money we will never use stayz again

Easy to use, stayed at Closetoreef accommodation at Turkey beach.
Was perfect in every way, cheap but perfect.
Fully air conditioned, freezers , linen even mozzie repellant

We are a registered provided of short term accommodation in Western Australia who provided shared guests 30 nights. Even though these guests paid nearly $4000 to VRBO 4 months ago now, none of this money has been paid to us. Their acceleration department has blocked us from talking to Billing which handles the accounts. How can we continue partnering with such a company?

The customer service of Stayz/Vrbo is just.. Appaling. As an owner, the platform is useless, there keep being bugs and other issues with the site. I just got an e-mail asking for more information on a problem I had, urging me to reply to the e-mail asap. But the e-mail was sent from a donotreply address. When I bring this up with the customer support the reaction was "I am a new agent, so can you just explain what you want help with", not even listening to my advice about the donotreply addresses... I mean... What is up with this platform?

I am a property owner. My property is illegally listed by an agent, with incorrect information. The agent has no authorisation from me to advertise the property. I contacted Stayz to have it removed, but they refuse to do so, as I am not the person that listed the account. Apparently, the only person that can have it removed is the one that listed it, not the property owner. Now I have to waste my time with legal action to fix up this mess. I asked them to contact the person that has my listing, but they refuse to do that too.
WARNING! As a prospective tenant, you may be paying for a villa that is not authorised to be rented out. Stick to booking with the property direct, or use one of the big-name companies.

Disgusting customer service for guestsAbsolutely no customer service for guests. We booked a stayz accomodation, only filter word WI FI. We needed wi fi during our 4 night stay. When we arrived hostess said … we have very bad reception so you’ll have to use your own data or head into town to the cafe. Description said network Optus and a password on arrival. They had obviously lied about wifi b4 based on the welcome letter, just to get more interest. When we called Stayz, they basically said tough luck. Girl on overseas help desk said we only write the descriptions the host gives us. If they don’t deliver, nothing we can do. DISGRACEFUL Stayz. NEVER AGAIN!

We booked the accommodation "Aquamarine" on Kangaroo Island via Stayz. Upon arrival in the afternoon, we discovered two out of three bed sheets had blood stains and yellow marks on them. So, we enquired very respectfully to the host whether the sheets been changed. The host insisted to send her cleaner to the property next morning.

However, the cleaner arrived the following day, we were verbally abused, assaulted, and threatened for nearly an hour. From the moment the cleaner entered the front door, she's been yelling, shouting, swearing with "f- " words, waving arms around offensively, etc. We were extremely concerned about our safety especially due to her multiple threats on us. So, we decided to search for alternative accommodation, and we found one that day early evening and booked. The next morning, we checked out 4 days prior to our official check out date. We also sent lengthy message to the host and told her the reason, how we were being abused and threatened, and due to our personal safety concerns, we had to check out earlier.

Then, the host ignored our message for days, until we left Kangaroo Island, she sent us a message, shockingly she had a completely different story from the cleaner. She denied everything we experienced horribly, and our personal safety threat (which we nearly called police on spot but didn't due to we simply wanted to continue our holiday). We tried to elaborate more with the host, we also had half an hour video recording which captured cleaner's abusive language, threats on us, body language, etc. But the host was still in denial on everything, instead she changed to subject into the property was never suitable to us, it was our fault we booked it, she would never approved our stay because of our dogs, etc.

We booked the accommodation with our pets specifically as we have been doing for years and never had any issue. The host approved our booking at the time without any issues.

After returning home, the host sent us another message based on the cleaner's story and said she's going to charge us hundreds more. She made false accusations on our dogs damaged property, none was true. She even said we left dogs at property unsupervised whole day, while we stayed in the property less than 24 hours and never had our dogs out of our sight.

We also took a video on exit to demonstrate we maintained property so well. It is hard to believe how some people can be so nasty out there and go above and beyond to make people victim of crimes.

We have not only spent thousands booked new accommodation, also our mental health been seriously affected. We raised to Stayz platform to Vrbo, they asked us to send all photos we took, part of the videos (due to whole video is too big), they said the investigation team is investigating but dragged the whole issue for weeks, and the host is even making false accusations (which is a crime) and trying to charge us more.

We also discovered the host been duplicating multiple advertisements of their property, one advertisement would say pets allowed, one would say pets not allowed.

Vrbo has acknowledged the misconduct behaviour from the host and the cleaner, but nothing has been done regarding to it. Being as the management of the property owners, they have failed to putting any action in to bring justice to right place, and prevent future victims. People's personal safety come first, verbal assault and personal threats are criminal offences, Vrbo has failed to put in action on protecting guests' safety as they claimed on their website.

The host has also managed to take down our genuine review by taking advantage of the loophole with Vrbo's automation tool.

We have also discovered almost identical stories from previous reviews. Surprisingly recent years the property had decent reviews, once again, if the host knows how to use loophole of Vrbo's automation tool to take down bad reviews.

We were originally only after an acknowledgement and apology from the host about our horrible experience, but now given the host's attitude, we are not only after refund, but also compensation, and formal apology.

We don't want more people to ever experience this again in this property, especially knowing some people in the past already been victims like us. Nobody should ever put up with having their personal safety being threatened, especially the worst part is being away from the home during holiday in a strange place, and then with no choice but searching for alternative accommodation.

Booked expensive Freshwater beach house property for New Year Cancelled with less than 48 hours notice and no support Some nonsense about maintenance problems given as excuse AVOID They will ruin your holiday

A review about stayz misleading conduct - not the lovely host. In summary - zero days for stayz to take the money for my booking, and 28 days plus to get it back, despite cancelling within the required timeframe.

Booked a place on the 20th Nov 24 which was fully refundable. The booking was for 17th jan 25. Full payment deducted from my account on the 20th November 24. I wasn’t aware this was going to happen - perhaps I didn’t read the terms carefully enough, but other sites make it obvious if you’re going to be billed immediately. I had to cancel. Tried to do this on the 23rd December and the ai bot said “I’ve initiated the cancellation process”. Checked again on the 30th December and the booking still showed as current. Messaged again on the 30th December and the ai bot again said the cancellation process had been initiated. I contacted the host directly at that point who was helpful and said it was cancelled from his end. Contacted stayz on the 1800 number on 3rd jan and was told the cancellation hadn’t come through to their system yet, and would take about 14 days from the 30th December. It would then take 7to 10 days for the refund to be processed. Nice cash grab stayz! Hopefully I’ll see my money then but very poor process.

Unit ID: 9091480
Property: 20028315 Unit 111 is 3 bedroom &117 2 bedroom
Reservation ID: HA-W8QPYM
This property advertised on Stayz @ Surfers Paradise "Unique ocean front" "Amazing Views" operated by Ryan apartments (there is no such body) is a total SCAM. The advert is the first apartments when you look up surfers Paradise for 10-14 people. Booked this 4 bedroom 2 bathroom for 6 adults and 5 Children, for 20-24 Dec, owner offered extra 2 days for Xmas for $1000. We accepted. Then she cancelled our booking and a refund commenced on the 17th Dec. We were to pay her in full on the 20th when we arrived. Cut a long story short, we payed for $1000 and agreed to pay the rest when the refund came through during the week. We got to the apartment...3 bedrooms that slept 6 and the rest were to sleep in the lounge on on 3 small lounges. 1 bathroom, glass doors to balcony wouldn't close, the glass wasn't the correct size for the doors leaving gaps. Found a cockroaches in the kitchen. This woman is a SERIAL SCAMMER. This apartment is in the Focus building but NOT managed by focus. It was disgusting apartment for the price of $6500. She ended up cancelling again as she then said we only booked for 2 adults and 1 child and she couldn't have 11 guests. So we are out of pocket $1000. We found 4 star accommodation elsewhere. She owns Units 111 & 117 in Focus. Be aware. Im reporting her operating as Orion Trust She is now sending Invoices from Orion Trust for $7304.85 for 1 hr to unload and reload our car.
Orion Trust 114 Esplanade Surfers paradise Qld 4217 which is a false address as its Focus.I am reporting her to every booking agent, The ATO, police ETC ETC