Villa 3 chambres en bord de mer avec vue sur Lands End!

VRBO Default Booking System Ruined This Clients Experience

I am an owner of several villas at this luxury Cabo resort, Villa La Estancia, for now over a decade, and also manage hundreds of these units, having even been active on the HOA as President. My goal has always been to offer the best experience to both my clients and the owners, so because of this, I do not always book the actual reservations on VRBO because there are many better ways to accommodate our guests and give them a better overall experience from concierge services to private cars to activities. As a VRBO member since 2003, I have rented to thousands of happy guests – and you can read thru several of our great reviews proving this. Unfortunately there is an automatic default on the VRBO system which if not careful, will automatically book the reservation when one is just wanting to simply reply. This is what took place. So because they never received a confirmation number from our end (we provide one that is actually given to us from the Villa La Estancia directly), and we never received any confirmation or payment from VRBO (as they pay owners after a guest stays), by the time the client reached closer to their reservation date, the villa/unit had already been booked for Spring break. We tried to reach back out after realizing that there was a mistake made through the VRBO booking system, and that’s when we quickly offered other units I own that were still available during this high season and busy period. When I personally called VRBO’s customer service, they had agreed with me that it looked as though the “confirmation” that was sent from their system was preemptive as well as incorrect. While I can understand the frustration that was had by the client, the communication between us had only been 2 emails, never hearing back any affirmation that they were in fact still interested in the rate we offered and the units we had. Villa La Estancia has many different ways of booking the private Villas and by the week before the only option we had was to show some of ours that are listed on a private site. Unfortunately by this point this client felt very upset as we can only imagine. Rather than understand the situation and the surprise and dismay we also had, they chose to write an unfavorable review. We hope to one day make it up to them.