Bad Experience with Trip Advisor Rentals / FlipKey

[Robert D]

I just had a terrible experience with Trip Advisor Rentals (aka FlipKey). I get 50% of my rentals from Airbnb and have gotten none thus far this ski season from TA/FK. I got a rental request from TA and didn't notice that it was for a Tuesday and Tuesday week, not the Saturday to Saturday that was available, and clicked on Accept and 30 seconds later saw that it was not March 14-21. I immediately called the renter and explained what happened and he was fine with me canceling but when I tried to cancel TA/FP demanded that I pay a $150 cancelation fee. I called them (I think they are located in the UK) and they would not cancel without the $150 fee. The renter tried to cancel but they were going to charge him $300. With Airbnb, there's a short grace period to cover errors like this but TA/FK has no tolerance. Bottom line is I told them the reservation had to be canceled and they could take all 10 of my listings off of their site. Their site has never worked very well (it takes 24-48 hours for a change you make to a listing to be reflected on their site vs. instantly with Airbnb among other issues). I'd be very wary of doing business with them on the rental side. Conversely, I've had great success with Airbnb and could not have generated the rental income I have without Airbnb.