Host moves country. Issues with STR account moving country as well? How to win £200 compensation from VRBO!

[Chris_Cooper]

I’ve been hosting STR for a decade. Began in Australia, then moved overseas, but I continued hosting at my Australian listing remotely. You MIGHT think it would be easy to just change the country of your hosting account. How hard can it be? VERY hard lol.

I just won £200 compensation from VRBO, after having spent a LOT of time on their support line, related to me moving country. Issue still isn’t resolved, but at least this significant compensation has held me off cancelling them entirely. VRBO is a much smaller player, but good to have diversity and not have only Airbnb and BookingCom as the big players. We already lost Tripadvisor for STR this year too…

Moving country means issues with:

• Tax Country of residence
• Managing existing bookings - can be challenging. BC and VRBO both make it extremely difficult, or near impossible to change ‘the country’ of your account. Airbnb is a breeze here and fully flexible though.
• Bank account country may be locked to the property listing country, or the STR account listing country. BookingCom limits to property location except changes within EU are ok. VRBO can support different country bank account to listing, but not ‘easily’. Airbnb gives total freedom to pay you in any country, regardless of listing country OR account ownership country. Yay!

Some highlights of my ongoing drama sorting my admin with VRBO:

I have dozens of reviews with VRBO in Australia, and wanted them kept ideally, when moving to UK. I could not CHANGE my VRBO country, so I opened a new UK VRBO hosting account. VRBO support advised that to get paid using my new UK account, I have to:

• DO NOT accept any new VRBO guest bookings for now
• Wait till the last booked guests leave mid 2025 (more than 6 months away)
• THEN Close my Australian VRBO account, and open my new UK account for bookings on my Australian property
• OR I can contact ALL my VRBO guests booked in the next half a year, ask them to cancel their booking, and then rebook under my new UK VRBO listing. Yes, their support actually suggested this as an option. Eeeik!

Neither option seems very good, and these are messy, or will annoy guests a lot.

Additionally, VRBO sent a very blunt email two weeks ago stating that they had locked my payment account, and would not release any more payments ‘till the issue was resolved’. Many calls to their support was unable to resolve this, or even identify what the problem was. I was unable to speak to their elusive ‘billing department’. But each call I was told my case was being escalated, which became painful to hear as I called each few days and kept getting the same response.

Very ironically now - after so much hassle and threat to just close my VRBO account forever, I was given a £200 compensation payment by VRBO. Ironic, as the sole reason they paid this, was that they were unable to resolve why I could not get ‘paid’ normally for hosting, or even advise what was wrong.

£200 (or about $400 Australian) is not a small amount. It has given me enough hope to continue battling on with their payment problems, and I will continue hosting with them, after this suitably appropriate amount of compensation.

Has any other host had similar issues moving country? Trying to change the country of payments for listings to the new country you moved to? Or encountering very complicated VAT payments on platform fees due to where you move, or where your account it registered if you are a company?

Airbnb seems the easiest to ‘move country’, and note that this is NOT just updating your Airbnb profile address to a new country, as the ‘Country of residence’ is an internal value that you can’t see or change as a user, but Airbnb Support will tell you if you ask, or you can review your VAT invoices - if they even send any (they do not bill me VAT at all since I uploaded my VAT ID)

BookingCom and VRBO seem to be SO challenging to move country. Though at least now I got paid a bonus £200 compensation for my efforts in TRYING to change my VRBO Account Country lol… The saga continues on this one though, but it’s more promising at long last

[muddy]

@Chris_Cooper

Airbnb seems the easiest to ‘move country’, and note that this is NOT just updating your Airbnb profile address to a new country, as the ‘Country of residence’ is an internal value that you can’t see or change as a user…

You keep saying this, because some clueless Airbnb rep told you this, but it isn’t true.

I have had my payouts sent to my Canadian bank account since I started hosting, and my address of residence in Canada, although I actually live in Mexico most of the year and my listing is in my Mexican home.

About a month ago I started getting notifications from Airbnb to enter my Canadian taxpayer innformation in order to continue getting paid.

I messaged Airbnb, saying my listing is in Mexico and I pay taxes on it to the Mexican govt, not Canada. That rep, after checking about it, told me it was because of my payout method to a Canadian account.

Then, because I know reps often give out incorrect information, I called a week later and that rep, after I explained that I was a Canadian citizen, but a Mexican resident and my listing is in Mexico, kept insisting that I had to enter my Canadian taxpayer info because I was a Canadian citizen. I told him that was impossible, because Airbnb has no knowledge of a user’s citizenship, that information isn’t collected by Airbnb. They only ask for your address of residency. The rep kept ignoring that and insisting it was because I was a Canadian citizen.

So I went into my Airbnb account, changed my residency address to my Mexican address, changed my payouts to my Mexican bank account, and I just got paid for my current booking, no problem. And they aren’t asking for my Canadian taxpayer info anymore.

It isn’t true that you can’t change your country of residence because there’s some “internal value” that you can’t change. That’s just as much BS as me being told that Airbnb tax reporting is based on citizenship, when Airbnb has no information about a user’s citizenship.

[Chris_Cooper]

After some time living in Sweden, my Airbnb VAT invoices said Sweden, and had a 25% rate. This has happened multiple times, yet the entire time my profile address was kept at Australia, as I did not change it for years. You saw these invoices on my other post.

I didn’t ‘tell’ Airbnb I was living in Sweden, or UK, or USA or Australia - but they billed me VAT invoices that had these countries marked on them (only after about six months living there). With this in mind, there is obviously a Country of Residence internally in their system. I can’t for example believe that some human at Airbnb is checking my Facebook posts or other information and updating their billing accordingly lol.

But the support rep did say that the country of your bank account was one of the signals the system uses to determine which country to bill you for VAT or require taxpayer details, along with phone and IP address (So you changing your bank to Mexico probably helped in your issue with them).

Makes sense I guess that they need to bill based on which country YOU reside in. And it’s not about travel or visiting. It’s only long term residing in the country that triggers it. Google is the same. After some long time living in Sweden I got a notice that my Google account was being ‘switched’ to Sweden for the Play store and for other regulatory issues, because they detected I was now residing in Sweden, despite me not telling them directly. So I guess Airbnb is the same. At least it must be, else they would not be changing my VAT country on their invoices. I never knew this was happening, but now I am aware at least.

[ocker]

An interesting point is that VRBO owned by Expedia is branded Stayz in Australia. At one stage Stayz had almost a complete monopoly of the on-line listings for holiday houses in Australia, and now as you say they are the third player after ABNB and BDC.
Amazingly I have had VRBO ring me and say you are missing Stayz bookings because your cancellation conditions are less favourable than ABNB and BDC. That is because both ABNB and BDC offer choices which align with MY policy and VRBO does not. They then ask me to choose a cancellation option on VRBO more favourable than my policy and what I have on ABNB and BDC. I say no you want more business from me then you add more options so I can choose one that aligns with MY policy. So they have gone to the trouble to compare my cancellation conditions on VRBO with ABNB and BDC when surely the easier solution is just to add more options on the VRBO platform.
I have also had them message me to say I am missing bookings on VRBO (Stayz) because I am more expensive on Stayz than AIRBNB and BDC for longer stayz. I offer 3, 4 & 5 night discounts but on Stayz only choices are weekend and week discounts. They suggest I reduce my nightly rate to make THEM more competitive with ABNB and BDC. No thankyou you improve your platform to offer more discount choices in the mean time I will get the bookings from your competitors.

[Debthecat]

Had the same phone call - my response was for them to reduce the commission and I will reduce my pricing - make Stayz / Verb more competitive…a better deal and I will look at my pricing…no response as yet!