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Amie Tugwell's Vrbo rental is contaminated with mold, so she and her family checked out after one night. Why can't she get her money back?

Q: I recently booked a vacation rental through Vrbo. I arrived close to midnight, and it smelled weird. I found broken tiles and mold. I immediately contacted the host, who assured me that he would fix the mold. He said he could not get the mold out from the wallpaper because he would have to remove it, but he could spray it with bleach.

My husband woke up in the middle of the night with difficulty breathing. I gave him Benadryl and an inhaler. I put my kids near the front of the house with a window that was cracked open. We left the next morning before breakfast.

I contacted Vrbo and shared pictures of the property. Vrbo said it was not safe to stay there and paid for a hotel. They said they would work on getting our money refunded, but they have not been back in contact with us. We have called four times and still don't have the promised refund. -- Amie Tugwell, Hampton, Virginia

A: I just took a look at the pictures of the vacation rental, and I agree -- you shouldn't have even spent the night there. Gross!

Seriously, Vrbo shouldn't have places like this on its platform. But some slumlords -- I mean, homeowners --want to make a quick buck, and it seems that the only way to get a property like this removed is to complain about it ... which you did.

After you showed Vrbo the pictures, it agreed with you and paid for a hotel room. Vrbo has a "Book with Confidence Guarantee" that says it will take care of you when your rental is unsafe. And mold is definitely unsafe.

Reading between the lines, it looks as if the host did not see a problem with the rental. But the pictures were pretty compelling, and your medical problems were nothing to sneeze at either.

I've seen many cases like this, where it appears Vrbo is trying to nudge an owner into giving a refund. Vrbo would tell you that it's just a platform, an intermediary between you and the owner, but it actually has a lot more power. It could have forced the matter or just refunded you itself, then pursued the owner. But instead, it chose a middle ground, covered your hotel, and then asked you to wait while it negotiated with the owner.

The way I see it, there's nothing to negotiate. Your rental certainly had a mold problem, and the owner couldn't have possibly gotten rid of it in a few hours. It would have taken a mold specialist to mitigate this kind of problem.

Vrbo couldn't have it both ways. It needed to pick a side, and the right side was yours. A brief, polite email to one of Vrbo's executives -- I list their names, numbers and email addresses on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org -- should have done the trick.

Unfortunately, there's no magic rule you can invoke to get a company like Vrbo to do the right thing. Vrbo agreed in an unrecorded phone conversation that you were entitled to help, but I don't see any written evidence that it promised you a refund. Instead, Vrbo told you that you would not be getting a refund, which is a disappointing answer after all you've been through for several months.

I contacted Vrbo on your behalf to find out if this was its final answer. The company had another look at your case and decided it wasn't. It refunded you the full $2,200 you spent on your rental.

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Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy (elliottadvocacy.org), a nonprofit organization that helps consumers solve their problems. Email him at chris@elliott.org or get help by contacting him at elliottadvocacy.org/help/.

(c) 2025 Christopher Elliott

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