What: A Trip Advisor company where you can list your home for rent
Expected pay: NA
Commissions & Fees: 3%
Where: National
Requirements: Real estate to rent
Review:
PROS:
- 3% booking fee
CONS:
- A cancellation fee of $150 to $200 is paid by the homeowner for any changes.
- Difficult to communicate directly with your renters
- It appears that homeowners can only reach customer support by complaining in a public forum.
What Their Homeowners Say: (From Trust Pilot)
I am an owner that lists my 3 cabins on Tripadvisor (flipkey’s parent). We have 5-star reviews. I use pricing software called Wheelhouse for rates. recently I got a request to book for July of next year. After I accepted the booking, I realized that the rates on TA/FK did not match those that Wheelhouse pushes. Basically TA/FK was showing some random rate to the traveler but not holiday 4th of July week rate. The rate shown to potential guest was about $800 less per week than it should have been. I updated the price and explained to guest the error, and that I cannot honor the rate that is $800 less than it should have been shown. Guest did not accept the alteration – understandable, so I said they can cancel. THIS IS A YEAR AWAY, so guest has plenty of time to book another property. Got a call from CS stating that to cancel, they will penalize me and change me $150. This is outrageous. CS is non existent when you have a problem, when calendars do not sync, but they jump right in when they can change you some outrageous penalty for cancellation A YEAR OUT. TA/FK has been also disconnecting calendar syncs lately. And this company constantly pushes owners to enable instant booking? with heir buggy website, calendars and prices not syncing, who can allow instant booking? I cannot!
I have been a ‘landlord’ with Flipkey for a couple of years now and managed to survive with their ancient and backward customer care until now. I have recently had a booking from a guest who has paid a deposit with Flipkey and has asked simply details of how to get from the airport to my home town. I sent links of the train company and bus company. Flipkey decided that links to train companies and bus companies are unacceptable. They have informed me I will be removed from their website if I continue to help a guest with their enquiries of how a guest is expected to get to my house. There is no way to contact a human being on Flipkey. It is all just drop down menus on ‘help’ boxes. I was lucky to actually get a reply from a ‘representative’ from Flipkey. It was a one word reply where I was accused of trying to contact the guest directly and giving them my contact details. Flipkey had obviously never even read my message. I wrote to Flipkey again, and received yet another word pro reply. I complained again. This time I received phone call to be told that they were too busy to read emails and I could not send web links to clients to help them.
