If you use VRBO you WILL BE ROBBED (ps. they don't care)

This condo was only offered as a vacation rental when it was allowable by law. After recreational legalization the listing title was 420 friendly OK for a short time.

VRBO could have stopped the robbery of my home, stealing of my identity, all my personal effects and faith in a fraudulent credit card but didnt. Below is what happened and how you can avoid it.

My Condo! 

VRBO accepted a reservation under the name and card of Wesley Munz (stolen credit card) by running the card through Yapstone payments who VRBO works exclusively with for ALL payment processing.

VRBO showed me the payment was MADE and complete.. 

At 7am on the morning of expected checkin checkin an email hits my spam folder from Yapstone. I am very careful not to miss VRBO related communications so I have an email filter for all communications with VRBO Listing in the email. This Yapstone email has "VRBP Listing" a TYPO in the TITLE and body of the email?

 The only email to ever come with VRBP

Clearly this email says the payment is fraudulent and wont be going through. No phone call just this email with a typo in the title and body. I imagine VRBO received in formation regarding the Fraudulent use of a credit card, that the guest is not who he says he is or even if he is, the payment will not be going through.

On the 23rd I called VRBO because the payment had still not come to my accounts and I was waiting on it expectingly. They assured me that the payment had been disbursed and that everything was fine. 

On the 25th at 11am my housekeeper arrived to my home and found that my safe had been busted open and file cabinet, many of the my clothes and electronics had been stolen, personal journals had been taken with my pages ripped out thrown in trash and found in the dumpster of the condo building on top. He had just left... Until the day of the 25th I could have caught the guy who stole my hard drive with all of my photos, old devices and even took a big jar of change.. all the way down to the pennies. He then began hitting credit cards using old documents from my safe. 

Many things were taken and destroyed, beyond the violation and loss is the crude way of treatment by VRBO employees. They treated me like a thorn in their side rather than a person who like others has been unpaid for the stay, robbed and were upset. 

I explained that even a very simple algorithm could tie the fraudulent payment alert to the VRBO booking reservation showing it didn't go through. Or a phone call to people who are about to host a fraudulent credit card user. 

It was explained I was supposed to check his ID but they are in no way responsible for not putting fraudulent credit card users who had been identified by their choice of credit card processor into peoples homes. A ticket was made by one person, another said he took personal offense to my thinking he was not doing his job right. At Yapstone they apologized for not calling and for my loss. VRBO only said i had done wrong and i was wasting their time. 

The payment still shows as of today - SCREENSHOT ABOVE w/ date and time

After hosting 2,000 groups across 20 homes I am sure VRBO / HOMEAWAY are terrible companies. DO NOT PUT YOUR HOME ON THEIR SITES or you could lose everything due to a typo, lack of a fraud department or just plain lack of a company's social conscious. 

Here is the picture of the stolen credit card user and thief of personal property.
Unfortunately nobody wants it

48 HOURS AFTER THIS ARTICLE WENT UP

August 31st

Before this article went up I found VRBO / HOMEAWAY to be AT BEST dismissive uncaring and rude, and Yapstone to be sorry but oh well. After publishing this article, sharing it on LINKEDIN Groups and sending to the PRESS teams at each company I got call backs and emails within a day. 

Yapstone admits they did not call call me to warn me that a fraudulent card that will not go though was used to book my place and the guest who would be arriving was a scammer. The only communication was a 7am email with a typo in the body and title

VRBO / HOMEAWAY admits that they did not attempt to call or warn me in any way about the fraudulent use of a credit card - they say it did not show up in their system and STILL has not showed up in their system as of today Aug 31st when the card was marked as fraud by their credit card processing team at Yapstone 12 days prior. 

VRBO admits that their system did not or does not update to reflect actuality as mine still says payment has been 'disbursed' to my accounts when it was never collected in the first place. 

VRBO / HOMEAWAY  has made zero efforts to take responsibility and has gone so far as to blame Yapstone and myself when their system is still showing the booking was good and paid for and the account of the fraudulent credit card holder still seems active.

Yapstone offered to pay me for the amount of the rental and two separate members of the team showed humanity by apologizing, taking responsibility for their part, caring about my situation (Which I believe many more people have dealt with) and even sharing plans to increase protections saying that this article and my case is on the desk and in the ears of the CRO (Chief Risk Officer) an executive at Yapstone whom work as the Exclusive credit card processor for Homeaway and VRBO

SEPTEMBER 9th UPDATE

No response or money from VRBO / HOMEAWAY or YAPSTONE despite promises