Reply to VRBO won't refund Sanibel stay for next week

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[quote=Anonymous]We owned a beach house in Hilton Head for 20 years before selling it at the beginning of 2021.  We rented it out directly through VRBO (i.e. there was no intermediate management company).  Over those 20 years, we had two hurricanes which directly impacted the island, but never significantly damaged our house or required evacuation of our renters).  We did offer "hurricane insurance" which cost $150 and allowed for pro-rated refunds for days missed because of mandatory evacuations.  Not many people paid for that, and we never had to pay out on it..

I can feel for both sides here.  OP obviously doesn't want to have to pay for a house which the owner (most likely) cannot make available to them.  The owner, however, may not have any money to refund back to OP.  We have no idea what their financial situation is.  Even if they may ultimately get some money back from insurance, they probably don't have it yet.  And any cash they do have probably needs to go into rebuilding/repairing the house.  I'm not sure what I would do if I were the owner.

During the spring of 2020 (at the beginning of COVID), we wrote to all of the people who had booked in with us for the season, and told them that the house was open and available, but if they didn't want to or couldn't come (because of where they were coming from), we would allow them to cancel their reservations (with a full refund), or they could reschedule.  (To be clear, we normally required a 50% deposit with the remainder due 30 days prior to arrival.  If you canceled before the balance was due, we would refund everything minus $50.  Late cancellations would only be refunded if we could get a replacement renter).

No one cancelled or rescheduled on us, but it could have happened.  We could have made through a few cancellations, but if the entire summer had cancelled, we could have lost the house to foreclosure.  That could be the situation the owner of OP's rental is in.[/quote]

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