FlipKey Reviews 1,822

Hi Jan, thanks for leaving us a review. We’re sorry that your booking needed to be cancelled due to changes to our vacation rental platform as all bookings starting after October 31, 2024 were cancelled and all travellers refunded. We understand that this cancellation has messed with your plans as you had other reservations dependent to your stay now cancelled. Once your booking is cancelled you will receive a full refund with the next 3 - 5 working days. About your stay, you can still communicate with the owner via your booking portal as some owners will still accept bookings from their guests via other platforms, or directly. Please understand that any booking or arrangement you make with the owner is directly between you and the owner. None of the Tripadvisor Vacation Rental Companies will have any involvement with, or bear any responsibility for, such bookings or arrangements nor any issues that arise from them. Many thanks - Oliver - Tripadvisor Rentals Support

Hi Jesper, thanks for taking the time to leave us a review. We‘re sorry to hear that your booking was cancelled. When you send a booking request through our website, the owner or property manager will confirm whether they can accept your booking or not. They have 24 hours to accept it – after that, it expires. No money has been taken from you yet as your payment is still pending. On your bank statement, you may see the transaction as pending because a hold has been placed on your card, but it’s not a charge. If the owner or property manager accepts your booking, the payment will then be processed. If they reject it, the payment will be cancelled. When a booking request is declined by the owner, or the request expires due to no response from the owner within the 24-hour window, we instantly tell your bank to release the hold on the payment. Each time an owner declines a booking request, or they don’t respond within the 24-hour window, their account is penalized and if they decline multiple requests then their account will be suspended, so it’s in their best interest to accept the request, and as you said if they list the property then they should be able to accept it. At times their calendar may not be up to date, or their property may temporarily be unavailable, but it’s their responsibility to ensure that their listing information is always up to date. When online, you have two options, to either message the owner with any question you may have or to submit a booking request. The difference between the two is that if you choose to send them a message, then no credit card is required. If the owner then responds to your message, and you still wish to proceed with your booking, then you can send them a new booking request. Many thanks! Oliver- Tripadvisor Rentals Support

Hi Lance and thanks for your review about making payments to confirm a booking. We're sorry to hear that you had issues with making a payment on your booking, and we understand this was disappointing. Often, payment issues happen due to the bank blocking international charges or requiring a two-step verification to approve the payment. Sometimes it's an issue with the web browser or device that is being used, which is why our team will try to do multiple troubleshooting steps to try and figure out the issue to determine if it is a technical issue on our part, user error, or the bank. Guests that use PayPal as their form of payment tend to have fewer issues when booking with us and have the added benefit of receiving any due refund within 48 hrs of processing versus regular method of payments can take up to 10 days. Thank you again for your feedback! Sylvia - Tripadvisor Rentals Support

Hi Pluto and thanks for your message about the availability of properties on our website and VRBO. We're sorry to hear that you've had issues with securing a property due to the owners not having their calendars up to date, and we understand this is disappointing. Despite the reservations being made on third-party websites like ours, we don't own, manage, or operate the listings. Owners are responsible for making sure they have their listings up to date to avoid negative booking experiences. To help encourage owners to maintain their ads they are penalized on their account performance when they decline requests or cancel bookings due to such issues which will cause their listing to be lower on the search, not receive the excellence reward or site recognition, and suspend and close their account. We do recommend sending owners an inquiry instead of a booking request by clicking "contact owner" on the ad this way you can message one or more owners your interest in booking their property and check their availability and rates before adding any payment. The owner can then reply with a quote, and you can review then add the payment to secure the property with an automatic confirmation. You can also call our 24hr reservations team that can call the owners directly as well to help secure your booking at +1-844-242-3777. Thanks again for your feedback! Sylvia - Tripadvisor Rentals Support

Hi Donald, thanks for taking the time to leave us a review. We’re sorry to hear about your booking BR29593768 being canceled. We can imagine your disappointment and frustration as other options were more expensive due to the close check-in. You had selected that property almost a year in advance, for a good reason. When booking a vacation rental on our platform, travelers are covered by our Payment Protection. We collect the traveler’s funds, and we keep them until the day after their scheduled check-in date. In case there are any issues upon arrival, the funds are still safe with us. With our Payment Protection, we fully refund any traveler who has their booking canceled, or has been denied access to the property, or the property is misrepresented, however, no compensation is offered to travelers. Any compensation will need to be requested from the owner. This is because when a traveler books a vacation rental, the booking contract is between the traveler and the owner. We appreciate your suggestions to change our payment protection policy. Management reviews suggestions from travelers and owners and has them in mind when making updates and improvements on our platform. Once you informed us of the second listing found on our website, our Trust and Safety team immediately started the investigation, which included attempting to reach the owner. This is the reason it took us a couple of days to get back to. We apologize if this created additional inconvenience, as urgency was key due to the fast-approaching travel dates. Owners are allowed to advertise on multiple sites, and some have multiple accounts with us as well. Having said that, owners are still responsible for ensuring that their pricing is up to date and their calendar is always synced correctly between different sites. We are sorry that you had some issues with that owner from the start. About the second listing you found on our website and booking.com, it was registered on our platform with a slightly different address in St. Maarten, it had a different name, and it was advertised by a different owner. This is one of the reasons neither the listing nor the account had been flagged to our Trust and Safety team until you reached out asking to look into it, as the owner had been unresponsive to you by then, as well. Many thanks! Oliver - Tripadvisor Rentals Support

Hi Elizabeth, thanks for taking the time to leave us a review. We're sorry to hear about your booking and the deposit not being refunded back to your credit card. We are still assisting you with your refund, and we are waiting on the property manager. When a traveler cancels a booking, the owner or the property manager's cancelation terms apply. And, because the booking contract is with the owner or the property manager, we need their approval before we can initiate a refund. We are sorry for this delay. The property manager messaged you stating that they have replied to us already, however, we haven’t received any emails yet. Additionally, because it’s the weekend, when we tried calling them today as well, we couldn’t reach the correct team at the property manager’s office who can give us the approval. We will be following up with them again tomorrow. Thank you for your patience. Many thanks – Oliver - Tripadvisor Rentals Support

Hi Kelvan, thanks for taking the time to leave us a review. We're sorry to hear about your concerns relating to any currency conversion fee on your booking payment. We understand how upsetting it’s finding out that you may be charged such a fee, after it already happened. The currency your booking is charged in depends on the currency the owner has chosen to receive payments in. To make comparing prices easier for you, the website may show you the booking price in your local currency. Once you’ve decided which rental you’d like to book and you’re on the payment page, you’ll see the full price in the currency in which you will be charged. On that same page, underneath the grand total for that rental, travellers will see a link that says why travellers are seeing prices in two different currencies. This link is there for travellers to understand in advance how charges may apply. Rest assured, our platform doesn’t charge any fees for currency conversion. However, the travellers chosen payment method may charge their customers some fees for transactions in a foreign currency. We suggest travellers check with their payment providers to see if they do charge currency conversion fees for transactions in other currencies or not, and what those fees are, since not all credit/debit card charge such fees to their customers. Many thanks - Oliver - Tripadvisor Rentals Support

Hi Ronald, thanks for taking the time to leave us a review. We're sorry to hear that after your booking request was accepted the property owner contacted you stating they couldn’t honour the accepted reservation. When a traveller books a vacation rental on our website they are covered by our Payment Protection, meaning that we will keep the traveller funds, until the day after their scheduled check-in date. This is done so that if there are any issues before a traveller arrives at the property, or when they arrive at the property, we can still help them as we still have the funds and not the owner. About your booking, the property owner cancelled your booking, and they were penalized because they cancelled your booking, as we understand how cancellations impact travellers and we want to avoid them as much as possible.
About your booking, the booking was cancelled in our system by the owner, a full refund was processed back to your original method of payment. We don’t have any records showing that any amount was not refunded back to you and that we kept 75USD. Please check your statement again, and if you still feel that you weren’t fully refunded, please contact us via this link https://t.co/Ez39ygj58U so that we can gather more information, and pass all the necessary security questions, and further help you. Many thanks - Stephanie- Tripadvisor Rentals Support

Hi Angela, thanks for taking the time to leave us a review. We‘re sorry to hear about your booking request possibly never being accepted, and we are sorry to hear that you feel we are a fraudulent company. Rest assured, we are not. We understand your frustration, and we’ll address your concerns about owners waiting for another client a higher offer, just so they can cancel your existing booking. We looked in our reservation system, and we’re unable to find any reservation or declined booking request. When searching for a vacation rental on our website, every listing price and availability is set up by their owners. When a traveler is interested in reserving a property, they can either send a message to an owner or they can send a booking request through our website. The owner will then verify that the dates requested are available and its pricing is up to date, and they will either accept the request or not. If the rates are not up to date for the specific time requested, then the owner will have the option to send the traveler a quote with the updated price. It’s the owner’s responsibility to ensure that their availability and pricing are up to date prior to accepting a booking request or prior to sending a quote. Owners do this because they usually advertise their listing on multiple websites. They need to make sure their listing is correctly advertised before proceeding with the request acceptance or sending a quote. Only when a booking request is accepted by an owner, then they’re in a binding rental agreement with their guest, and they can’t modify the accepted rental price. If owners were to cancel an accepted booking request, they’ll be penalized. They will be subject to a possible cancelation fee, and their listing performance will be impacted as well. We take booking cancelations very seriously. If owners were to cancel more than one booking, their accounts may be terminated indefinitely. As mentioned above, we’re unable to locate any booking request in our reservation system under your name. If an owner canceled a booking of yours, please contact us, so that we can further investigate what happened. Please contact us via this link https://t.co/Ez39ygj58U, so that we can gather all your information, pass the security questions and help you. We are more than happy to provide our assistance in finding a vacation rental that meets all your criteria. We’ll be able to secure your booking and answer all your questions. Many thanks! Oliver- Tripadvisor Rentals Support

Hi Christy, I'm so sorry for the bad experience you had with Flipkey. I understand how frustrating it can be to see a property you like online that is not actually available. This is certainly not the experience we would like for our travellers. It is the owner's responsibility to ensure that they properly advertise their listings, to eliminate any confusion or issues like this. We are sorry these owners let you down this time. If you are still looking for a property, please feel free to call us on +1-844-242-3777 and our dedicated reservations team would be more than happy to assist. Thank you for your feedback and your understanding in this process. Best wishes, Lina, Tripadvisor Customer Service

Hello Charles, thanks for taking the time to leave us a review. We're sorry to hear that you had to cancel your booking and were unable to pay the cancellation fee. We can understand your frustration with not being able to pay the cancellation fee directly from your account. Kindly note when our site is turning down payment, we usually try to take the payment by phone as the issue is not with our website, and by taking your payment over the phone we will be able to tell if the issue is with your payment method company.
Since you refused this option, we sent your our bank details with our bank beneficiary, our account number, and our bank address but we can see you refused to pay the cancellation fee by bank transfer as the bank beneficiary shows Flipkey and you wanted to pay to Tripadvisor.
Kindly note Tripadvisor rentals are affiliated with many sites such as Flipkey or
Holidaylettings.
Therefore your contractual obligation is to Tripadvisor Rentals and Flipkey.
If an owner is based in the US, they need to create an account with Flipkey in order to be paid in USD. However, if an owner is based in the UK, they need to create an account on Holiday letting in order to be paid in GBP. It is the owner's responsibility to create an account under the correct affiliation. You have chosen to be paid in USD and we can see you created your account with Flipkey therefore you are contracted through Flipkey. We cannot provide our EUR or GBP bank account to a FlipKey owner, even if they’re based in the UK. We're sorry to have closed your account and we understand your disappointment.
If you wish to advertise another property with us, please contact us via this link https://t.co/Ez39ygj58U so that we can gather more information, and pass all the necessary security questions, and further help you. Many thanks - Stephanie- Tripadvisor Rentals Support

Hello Marcia, thank you for taking the time to leave this review, and also for talking with me today about your reservation. Please accept our deepest condolences for your loss. We can only imagine how difficult this time must be for you and your family. As mentioned on our call, any listing cancellation terms are set up by their owner, and the booking contract is between owners and the travellers. We have already reached out to this owner and asked them if they are willing to waive their cancellation terms and offer any refund. As soon as we have their response, we'll be contacting you back in order to further assist you with this cancellation. Thank you in advance for your patience, and understanding.
Many thanks! Oliver- Tripadvisor Rentals Support

Hi Laura, thanks for taking the time to leave us a review. We‘re sorry to hear about the difficulties experienced while trying to book a vacation rental in Dubrovnik. When you send a booking request through our website, the owner or property manager will confirm whether they can accept your booking or not. They have 24 hours to accept it – after that, it expires. No money has been taken from you yet as your payment is still pending. On your bank statement, you may see the transaction as pending because a hold has been placed on your card, but it’s not a charge. If the owner or property manager accepts your booking, the payment will then be processed. If they reject it, the payment will be cancelled. When a booking request is declined by the owner, or the request expires due to no response from the owner within the 24-hour window, we instantly tell your bank to release the hold on the payment. Each time an owner declines a booking request, or they don’t respond within the 24-hour window, their account is penalized and if they decline multiple requests then their account will be suspended, so it’s in their best interest to accept the request, and as you said if they list the property then they should be able to accept it. At times their calendar may not be up to date, or their property may temporarily be unavailable, but it’s their responsibility to ensure that their listing information is always up to date. When online, you have two options, to either message the owner with any question you may have or to submit a booking request. The difference between the two is that if you choose to send them a message, then no credit card is required. If the owner then responds to your message, and you still wish to proceed with your booking, then you can send them a booking request. The owner’s contact details are hidden until the booking is confirmed and final payment is made. This is done for security reasons and to protect the traveller. One of the benefits of booking a Vacation Rental through Flipkey, or any Tripadvisor site, is our Payment Protection. Please click on this link to view the complete Payment Protection policy terms, https://helpcenter.flipkey.com/faq/view/What-is-TripAdvisor-Payment-Protection. This is important information to be familiar with. If you prefer to have one of our agents help you with your search, please call us at +1-877-354-7539. Many thanks! Oliver- Tripadvisor Rentals Support

Hi Gill, thank you for your message about your booking. I am sorry that it was cancelled as the owner doubled booked, and I understand how upsetting you can be, as you were looking to travel this weekend. As you made the booking on Tripadvisor, your money was protected, and you will be refunded in full, and it will take 3-5 working days to show in the bank statement. You can call us on +44 (0)203 701 5369 if you want to talk about it in details, and we can help search some alternatives. Thank you for your feedback and your understanding in this process. Best wishes, Peter, Customer Support Tripadvisor

Hi Daniel, I'm really sorry for the bad experience you had with Flipkey. I understand how frustrating it could be to see a property you like online which is in reality not available. Also, I apologize that they did not help you find alternative accommodation. Rest assured, that our goal is to provide a unique and positive experience to all our travellers. In order to help you better with that, please feel free to call us on 1-877-354-7539 or  +44 (0)203 701 5369. We will be more than happy to help you. Daphne -Tripadvisor Rentals

Hi Darcy, I hope you are doing well. I am sorry you had a bad experience with our customer support team. Could you please let us know if there is something we can do for you? We are available at +1-877-354-7539 if you need further assistance. Many thanks, Alma- Tripadvisor Rentals Support.

Hello Mr Newel,

Thank you for your comment about the breakdown of your booking. I understand your concern to know all the details you are paying for your stay, and I am sorry that was not clear enough when you made your payment. I understand that you are requesting more details in the price, as it doesn't show our booking fee and the rental cost of the owner separately. The booking fee refers to the proportion of the total rental cost that is retained by Tripadvisor Rentals. It is a fee that is charged to help cover the costs of operating our business, including offering 24/7 customer support, and providing you with a safe and secure payment platform. It varies between 8% and 16%. Please note that the total cost of your rental is always made clear, and the booking fee is not something you pay in addition to the total rental cost. The booking fee is not assessed on the damage deposit and owner-specified taxes.

The price that you saw in the owner quote is the one that you paid, no additional charge will be made. I will email you directly all the breakdown of your booking, so you will know what are you paying for.

Thank you for taking the time to give us this comment, we appreciate your feedback, so we can improve the platform for you. Feel free to call us on 1-877-354-7539.

Hello Penny,

Thank you for your review. We are so sorry to hear that this owner has cancelled your stay at the last minute, and we completely understand how upset you must be due to their behaviour. We are already investigating this matter and will be updating you through our Customer Support team.

Rest assured we do not take these matters lightly and have ways and means of penalizing owners for various problems which can lead to their removal from our website.

We can confirm that a full refund was processed back to the original method of payment, we blocked the payment as soon as we were contacted of the issue and your Payment Protection was applied in this case.

Once again our sincere apologies for the booking experience you've received on this occasion.

Many thanks,
Adrian
Tripadvisor Rentals Support

Hi Kari, we’re sorry your booking was cancelled by the owner of the property. We understand how disappointing this can be. Please rest assured that we take the cancellation of bookings very seriously. While cancellations can sometimes be unavoidable and due to unforeseen circumstances, we monitor this very closely and will penalise and remove owners who cancel repeatedly. We are also sorry that you need to wait few days for your refund. However, I can confirm this has been done and will be with you shortly. We will be happy to help you search for an alternative property if need it. Our reservations team are available on +44 (0) 203 701 5369. Thanks very much for your understanding and sorry for the inconvenience. Many thanks, Alma. Tripadvisor Rental Support.