Complaint Review: Vacasa Vacation rentals

DO NOT LIST YOUR VACATION HOME WITH VACASA.  I did and it was a NIGHTMARE.  Their entire scheme is to rent your home out at below the market rate to keep it mostly occupied and then add fees to you and the tenants outside  the "Rent", which is all they share with you, so they are making the profit while you have to pay all of the expenses.  Their corporate culture is rancid; exploitive of the home owners, totally geared toward Monetizing your property to the max and leaving you with the bills. 

Every month, and I only lasted two, I had to argue with them to get fees to me reversed which were either outside those stated in their contract or for services I never authorized.  Additionally, the sales people told me several things that were not accurate to get me to list with them and then, when it happened differently, the Corporate office would not make right on those representations.   

MONETIZING THIEIR FEES:

Another of their tricks is to list your space on multiple sites but list it for significantly less on the Vacasa website where they get a substantial “booking” fee in addition to the 30% or so of “Rent” you have negotiated with them.  On a two day stay they would let the tenants stay an extra eight hours or essentially a third day, charge them for that time, and not call it "Rent" so they would not have to share a portion of that fee with you even though you paid the extra utilities and had the wear and tear.  Fees for having a hot tub, bringing a dog, early or late arrival would likely go entirely to them.  You have to pay for them to open, shutdown close and clean the cabin but then they add a fee on to bring out the chairs and BBQ in the summer, or clear the few feet of walkway between the snow plow service you pay for and the front door. 

GO WITH LOCAL MAMAGEMENT:    The local Vacasa people were very nice but on important decisions had to refer you to a management hierarchy  with a CORPORATE  MENTALITY that was daunting.   In the 15 years I have owned this property I have had a couple of local Managers who, although they were not always totally efficient, they treated me in a fair and honest manner, the guests like a valuable asset and understood that my vacation home also my second home and was more than an asset for them to run down in order to Monetize it to the Max. And if you want to end the contract you can do that at any time but any bookings they already have, and they book up to a year in advance, they make you pay the entire amount of the “Rent” to them, if you decide to drop those bookings,  even though normally they only get about a third of the rent. 

CONTRACTS:

They are 100% inflexible with their online contract and would not change a single word, since it was carefully crafted to give them every advantage and every opportunity to get more money on their side of the ledger. 

LAWSUITS:  Since they have had class action suits over their questionable practices  (Google: 8/30/2017 11:08:45 AM 17CV37165 or simply try Vacasa law suits) they put language in the current contract that forces binding arbitration, thereby avoiding or reducing the ability to do a class action suit over their business practices.