We have rented through Homeaway/VRBO many, many times and never paid a booking fee. We are presently in our next to last week of a six week home rental in Cape Coral, FL.

When booking next years visit I noticed a "booking fee" of $499 for a 7 week rental and did some research. They now charge a fee of 4-10% depending on rental cost to a max of $499 (they say average is 6%) but it also eliminates the credit card surcharge and kinda mandates (for safety) that method of payment. I also found that this was usually cheaper than AirBNB.

..and...re: contacting the owner directly via email...they now encrypt ANY email address put in the booking request so ALL communications have to be through them...and..if they find out that this was somehow defeated they will ban the owner from any future rentals through Homeaway and VRBO.

Nice.... <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Yikes.gif" alt="" />

Oh, I forgot...this was started the 2nd week of February 2016

Duh...edit #2...the owner we rented from gave us a 20% discount and itemized it as "long term rental" to help (it obviously exceeded) the booking fee.