VRBO advice

[basil]

In December 2020, I reserved a big house on the slopes of a ski area for Xmas week 2021. It's for my family, my parents, my brother's family, and my brother's in laws who live in Europe. I had originally made the reservation starting on 12/24, but it seems now like my brother's in laws won't be able to arrive until 12/24, and they don't want to travel directly to the ski house. This all just got firmed up recently.

I asked for a modification to the reservation to start on 12/26 about 10 days ago, but despite repeated messages, haven't gotten a response from the owner/representative. The last day to cancel and receive a full refund is tomorrow, 10/25.

I'm super upset about this. I feel like they are stone walling me to make me commit to paying for days that I can't use without an opportunity to cancel. My DH is going to freak :(

Do I have any recourse? It's a big house so even 2 days worth is a lot of money.

[jgenie]

Are you trying to shift your reservation back by a few days or cancel two days? If shifting, are the extra days on the back end available? I’m guessing they will have a tough time renting the house for one or two days and have time to prepare it for your visit. Is it possible for everyone but your brother’s family to go as planned and have him and his IL’s join when they’re ready?

[basil]

Cancel 2 days.

If they say no, then we can decide what to do, since still within the cancellation period.

My issue is that they are just not answering, which feels like cheating.

[jgenie]

You can cancel before the cancellation period and try to rebook but there’s no guarantee they won’t rent to someone else instead. My guess is they won’t have trouble renting to someone else for your entire stay but not just the two days. They don’t want to eat those two days of rentals. Maybe they’ll split the difference and allow you to cancel one day?

[liz]

hmm, that's a tough one. It's a bit concerning that no one is responding to your messages. What would happen if there was a problem during the actual rental period and no one responded then? That's kind of a red flag. Does the owner have good reviews? How many days have gone by since your initial request to decrease rental days? A few days at most would be acceptable, but not more than that.

Are there any other houses to rent nearby? You could rent another. Or just cancel outright, message the owner the reason why and try to rebook the same place.

[Snow mom]

I’m surprised they haven’t answered you directly. I would expect them to say “no” to the modification and move on rather than leave you unhappy with the lack of communication. I do think you’ve got your answer in no answer—they aren’t going to cancel the two days so you can either rent as agreed (have some go the 24th, the rest later or burn the few days) or cancel entirely which might leave you with nothing or something that is bad in other ways. You have to do the math of what you prefer. If it’s a lot of money for you to pay for those two days it’s a lot of money for the owner to let it sit unrented for two days. In addition to being a short period for them to fill, it’s also a hard time to be turning over a rental to prepare for the next people. They might prefer to have the entire reservation cancelled and fill it in with a single rental.

[basil]

Ok, I guess BBB mojo worked, cause she responded like 20 min after I posted this and refunded the 2 days. So that's a weight off my back.

I'm sure they didn't want to lose the 2 days, I get that. And I knew going in that the answer may be "no, don't want to do that" and then decide whether to cancel and find a different place or eat the two days or go separately or what. But it seemed really shady to not answer for 10 days so that I would roll past the cancellation period, then say "nope, not going to approve the change". I don't think I acted in bad faith - I asked politely for a change within the cancellation period which they could decide to approve or not. Others would have just not asked?

But anyway, issue is solved now. Phew.

[jgenie]

Glad it worked out!! I would have done the same - asked for modification and hoped for a yes but been fine with a no.