The upcoming change in the Homeaway.com/ VRBO.com websites’ inquiry policy, wherein the email address of the renter would not be visible in the inquiry, but would be accessible once the owner is logged into his HomeAway account, have many owners fuming and crying foul.
With some many owners discussing the change in policy – most of them confused why HomeAway would come up with such a change in its inquiry policy – I thought why not take a look at the issue.
For that, I tried their discussion forum where surprisingly owners have been criticizing this upcoming policy which HomeAway has named as HomeAway Secured Communication (HASC). The discussion went on to 17 pages and is filled with numerous caustic remarks from owners threatening to “vehemently object” if “HA/ VRBO tries to get between” them and their “customer without giving” them “the option of responding directly to the customer.”
Immediately, HomeAway.com’s support team came up with a clarification that the upcoming move was “an effort to combat phishing, where a criminal tricks an owner into giving his email password and then intercepts the email from the renter using the owner’s own email credentials to steal money from them.”
This could be true, but there could have been simpler ways for HomeAway.com to counter phishing. While the efforts of HomeAway.com to prevent frauds, phishing, are greatly appreciated, I clearly don’t see this move as an optimal solution. Although HomeAway must have given a real good thought before deciding on the feature, I still find it childishly simple for phishers to infiltrate. If the phisher can crack the email account of the owner, all he needs to do is go to the HomeAway or VRBO websites and click the forget password link. Since he already has access to the owner’s email account, he will get the password of the owner’s HomeAway account too mailed to the email account.
Moreover the low percentage of phishing in the HomeAway.com and its group of rental websites (as they claim) has always been its marketing pitch, so the question is: ‘does it really need such a radical re-organization of the site framework?’ Beats me!
That brings us to what owners listed in HomeAway and VRBO want from the websites. To put in the words of an owner discussing the changes in the website’s forum: “…I need is a fairly-priced website that allows me to list my property, provides a gateway for communication between me and my clients, and which provides easy navigation tools for the renter. Background checks, payments, internet security and all the rest should remain my business.”
Meanwhile, I see this upcoming change as an irritant for even travelers who will have to login to communicate with owners. Owners for long have been facing the trouble of soliciting reviews from past guests who refuse to log in and provide information to HomeAway.com or VRBO. Now, that they have to actually communicate via the HomeAway.com dashboard, owners are actually correct when they say that they might see a fall in inquiries too.
The plight of owners will not end here. Ideally, owners have their own way of doing a background check on the traveler using the inquiry’s email address on various social media sites. They also have the ability to, at least, to do a search of the phone number before they respond to the first inquiry. With the new move, the owner stands to lose the basic ability to screen his potential guests.
For a website that charges owners to list their property, the disgruntlement is, in many ways justified. An owner has to say: “This is enough for me to consider dropping VRBO. Private communications with guests have nothing whatsoever to do with VRBO. This is not eBay where direct communications bypass their ability to earn fees. Or perhaps that’s where things are headed (commissions?)”
And then what if an owner decides to leave HomeAway or VRBO? Since they will lose the ability to login, they will stand to lose all the communications they had with renters forever.
In a nutshell, I found the proposed changes a little too much to just combat phishing as claimed by HomeAway. Well, we have to wait and see till this is implemented or if there are other motives behind the changes.
What do you think of the changes? Let us know if the upcoming changes will actually change things the way the owner does business using HomeAway or VRBO as channels to market his property.
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