Evolve Vacation Rental Reviews

Evolve Vacation Rental
( 32 reviews )
Website: Evolve.com

Evolve Vacation Rental Customer Reviews

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The fact that they make you take out this insurance. I think they pocket the money. A ripoff.
March 19, 2024

We have used VRBO a ton and this was the first time we used Evolve and the last. If a rental has Evolve we will look the other way. They make you take out insurance that is absolutely ridiculously expensive. We paid over 1,000 dollars for nothing. They are a ripoff. You can’t not take there insurance.

Evolve - Booking.com - Yvana Chiha
February 1, 2023

We booked through Booking.com and the property had dog hair all over it. We booked a week but stayed one night as my son has allergy-induced asthma so we had to check out early. He was unable to breathe and even had to stay at a hotel the first night, while I stayed with his siblings.

We had to find a hotel for the remaining stay in Denver. We stayed 1 night of our 7 nights and got a $250 refund out of my $4k total stay. I disputed the remaining nights and the dispute was reversed as they provided a clause that the fees are non-refundable.

This is a scam, they could care less about their properties and only strive to steal and retain money from families visiting with children (5 kids). This is a pathetic company, they even stated in the dispute that we accepted the $250 refund, how is that even possible?

I will review EVERYWHERE and dispute with AMEX again and again until it's solved. Booking.com will hear about Evolve and hopefully rip all their properties from the network to save future complaints. I hope the property owner, Yvana Chiha, catches on because she will end up leaving Evolve a review about how they screwed her investment up like many others have if these actions continue as they have with us.

The resolution is to refund the remaining nights and if this won't happen without legal action then I will contact my council and take it to the next step. I'm sure many others I find online would like to join in on a case regarding Evolve and its inability to perform to standards expected by the hospitality industry.

Save your money choose a better company to rent from
December 4, 2022

Not a good company to rent from. As a customer… Maybe as an owner as well.

List goes on. The property we rented across the country was not worth $1500/ week. There is a tenant living on the property. This is not clearly advertised under the property description and is hidden under the Evolve heading in a hidden property description. Extremely misleading listing on that fact alone. Had we knew of this, we would’ve picked a different location. However, we didn’t find out until the day we arrived. Property was not clean, does not warrant a $300 cleaning fee. despite the fact the one toilet was clogged (use your imagination here) and was unusable, a bathtub was clogged turning showers into baths. dead insects, old food, and food wrappers were found in the rooms, under beds, in closets, and behind furniture (found them looking for sockets for the lamps), and stains throughout the house on the carpet and walls. One kid refused to sleep under the covers it was that kind of a situation. I mean they didn’t even have the audacity to fix the broken blinds and curtains, easy fix, and says everything about how much they value the property and your experience.

Brought all this to the property persons attention, nothing was addressed, cleaned or fixed, and my message wasn’t even acknowledged. we were there for a week. This was not an entire house listing, but instead felt like an AirBnb or hostel where rooms are rented out.

Mentioned this to Evolve and got the round about, was told that because we didn’t mention anything to the owner it was being ignored by Evolve as it was something that could’ve been fixed on the spot. Evolve lied, the owner was told on day 1, nothing was fixed, as mentioned above nothing was fixed or acknowledged.

I get privacy, I don’t mind even cleaning, hell, I would have even fixed the blinds, but when we’re being charged a $300 cleaning fee for a property that is already unclean that’s ridiculous. When we are traveling with little kids, only to find that there is a tenant on the property upon arrival. That’s bad business. This isn’t even covered under their strict policies, however it doesn’t mention that you must park on the left side, BUT it doesn’t explain why. This is a very misleading listing. The booking person had no idea, so how are we to know this. Very misleading listing…

Evolve called the uncleanliness normal ware and tare and didn’t warrant a remedy. Um, the toilet was clogged and unusable, we didn’t take pictures of the clogged toilet that had been used, Evolve only acknowledges documentation so take many pictures and will do their best to not help you or remedy the situation. Horrible business as a consumer/ guest.

Guess we should have taken pictures of the human waste. Poor business, poor customer service.

Horrible service, Owners stay away.
October 28, 2022
We used Evolve for almost 6 months on a high end condo in Myrtle Beach. They started our rates way below market, and our first booking was a month long work crew who damaged our unit. They fought us all the time on issues, and never resolved them. Their Owner care team seems to be brand new and/or incompetent. I would never use them again. We got less than 1/3 of the revenue they estimated.

Double booked us. Canceled the evening before.
July 16, 2022
We rented a house for eight people in Maine to visit Acadia. They called us at 6pm the night before and told us they had double booked the house so our reservation was canceled. They offered us another house that was THREE HOURS from Acadia, on an island, accessible only by ferry, that we might be able to get our car on if we made reservations in advance. We called them and they told us to check AirBnB! We were lucky to find anything in the area for eight people on short notice. Nearly ruined our vacation.

Never again!
July 15, 2022

Worst rental company. Scam! will keep your monies and will not handle any issues!

Evolve Sucks
June 14, 2022

DO NOT USE Evolve for your rental property's booking company!!! They do not think for home owners and just want to take advantage of our property for their benefit/reputation and let guests abuse it however they want.

I have had so many bad communication experiences with them. The staff are rude and ignorant, always siding with the guests. They take in guests' intentional unreasonable requests to ask for unlimited discount, ( using their 'as advertised' reason to take money from my bookings without my approval ) without the ability or interest to tell truth from fake.

Their booking process is so bad and unorganized that I lost a lot of money 2 TIMES!! because of fraud ID and they did not realize that till the guests stayed full term. They didn't do anything to compensate me, although they work so hard to compensate the guests at any small complaint.

I could give them 100 pieces of evidence (with videos, pictures, text receipts), and they would still get me to reimburse the guest at any small turn (plus I'd be paying them 10%)!! Of my profit every guest stay. At this point I'm basically losing money.

I am glad I got out of Evolve's trash system as now as I finally have time in the summer to manage my property with many other wonderful booking sites.

Evolve has lost me as a customer and my property to list.

What an irresponsible company with many irresponsible and ignorant staff. Very sad to see such a horrible company still in running robbing home owners.

PeterDee August 12, 2023

What other booking sites do you use. I feel they treat my beautiful beach home like a motel 6. Undervalue pricing + no identity checking of customers.

Worst of the worst
June 14, 2022

Worst

Worst experience !!

Never have Evolve as your booking company.

It charges you 10% just to get your money without doing anything for home owners.

Not very intelligent in processing problems, slow in response, always allow guests to take advantages by spending their "vacation" time taking 200 pictures of your properties to get unlimited discount.

You will get robbed by Evolve as they only care about their fake crying guests and earn money from your properties , while allowing he guests ruin your properties while stay.

Don't put your properties in danger.

Their staff are rude, unhelpful and had no basic skills to manage anything.

Evolve Let an Identity Theft Ring Destroy/Ransack our Home
June 2, 2022

If I could give Evolve zero stars, or negative stars, I would. They do not check identification or even ask for a drivers license from their renters before booking automatically (the homeowners have no chance to review the information provided and approve or reject the renters' stay).

Our primary home (as we live in Denver, and that is the law in Denver for short-term rentals) was rented to identity thieves in January 2022. Every dead-bolted locked area of our home had been broken into and robbed of everything of value (ski gear, flyfishing gear, clothing, electronics, our safe which was bolted into our closet and contained a ton of personal information) to the tune of $65,000 in damages between the damage to the home and the immense amount of stolen property, not to mention the immediate cleaning required to remove the home of all the other stolen goods and cigarette butts and blood stains (!) they had left behind.

Evolve took over 2 months to reply to us when we were in crisis, only replying after we sent a demand letter from a civil litigator, only to tell us that the maximum coverage we could get was the $3K they offer for "accidental damage." We called every day for two months and this company simply would not make it right, and still hasn't. We are disgusted.

DO NOT USE EVOLVE unless you are okay with an outcome like ours. They should not be allowed to operate in a way that puts homeowners at such undue risk. We are still digging ourselves out of having had our lives turned upside-down by this crime ring robbery and the ensuing identity theft attempts. Evolve has successfully made sure that whenever their name comes up, I will be extremely outspoken in warning others. It is by far the worst customer experience I have ever had in my entire life. DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!

Why not to use Evolve - partial list
May 24, 2022
Oddities around deposits, fees, cancels, billing, etc. Lots of rules and surprises. Evolve approaches renting a vacation property as an opportunity to promote a variety of world views and social causes and their many (20ish) rules. Rather than assuring a clean place at the best price and to take care of any problems....they assert all of the rules we have to follow in using the property, then steps into D&I, c-vid mandates, etc. Suggestion - focus on assuring a great, hassle free vacation and your rating will go up.

The worst
May 22, 2022

Do not waste your money or time with Evolve. This service is worthless! Evolve would not refund my money after having to cancel a trip because of COVID.

So, I have a credit to try and use from that trip. This is all you need to know about Evolve: they have very few options for rentals, their rental rates are outrageously expensive, many of the rentals look sad and depressing and dated, and they stick you with extra fees.

With all the added fees they charge, there were literally no 1 bedroom 1 bath rentals that allow dogs for under $380/night in the ENTIRE state of WA, even though I searched multiple dates, in the off season.

I checked several other locations throughout the states with similar experiences: massively overpriced, junk rentals, ridiculous fees, little to no options for rentals.

Steer Very Clear of This Company!!!!!
May 17, 2022

STEER VERY CLEAR OF THIS COMPANY!!!!! These employees will use specific terminology to trick their home owners into cancelling to save them from having to return the money involved in their "risk free guarantee".

Recorded phone calls that they refuse to pull because they know they are wrong. Will not recommend this company to anyone as all they care about is their money, and going behind your back to take your money.

They know they are wrong and my recorded phone call with their employee specifically doing the opposite of what I requested, just to steal the thousands of dollars they own me. A complete fraud. They ignored my phone calls, voicemails, and emails, just so they could falsely take the money they owed me.

MelissaMiddleton June 01, 2022

Wow. I'm about to sign up with Evolve, but these reviews are not good! Can you share more about what happened here?

PeterDee August 12, 2023

I signed up and noticed they immediately used Mimimum pricing set.. regardless of whether it was a weekend or high season interest. I had a specific conversation with them around this and they told me this wasn't the case. Then proceed to allow the property to be booked at winter rates for August stays. Cost me 1000s and they charge you.$250 if you turn down a booking!

Mitt August 20, 2023

I am a owner of a property in New Jersey and just signed on with EVOLVE one week ago and asked why the daily prices are so low and this was the response: As for rates, your listing will never go below, $140. Keep in mind, your listing is on SmartRates. SmartRates is a pricing algorithm which uses BILLIONS of data points to optimize your nightly rates in real-time and looks at the market. It uses not just a few properties in your area to compare to, but rather the ENTIRE market. Your rates will ebb and flow and change daily based on the market/demand. It reads real-time data and traveler patterns, similar to hotels and airlines. SmartRates reads all the reviews, bookings, and your conversions (people who look at your listing vs. those that actually book) of your listing in real time to set the most accurate and achievable price. If we increase/adjust any of your rates up drastically, it will skew the rest of your year’s algorithm and will risk your property not getting booked at all. As soon as your listing is live and starts getting booked and positive reviews, SmartRates will continue to adjust your rates throughout the year. Please remember that your listing is starting off new with no reviews or bookings so it cannot be priced the same as other established listings/properties that have reviews.

Horrible rental experience from start to finish
April 17, 2022

As a guest, I rented a house in Punta Gouda FL for a training I was attending there locally and I prefer a home when I travel (rarely use hotels any longer).

There were many issues - no info sent on how to get into the house, no welcome packet to tell us about Wi-Fi and house info, dirty dishes in sink upon arrival, filthy tub and the hot water ran out in like 5 mins.

They left left-over bar soaps in the bathroom for use (not sanitary), the home was not in good condition (hardwood floors buckling up, ants in the home, general maintenance needed), and the kitchen was not stocked with basics (sauce pot, measuring cups/spoons, etc.).

Their customer service is NON EXISTENT. Don’t waste your time with this company - I will never rent from them again. Renters - beware! This company is a scam. They also clearly don’t care about sanitary practices or presenting a clean, safe and properly maintained home.

Evolve.com is Arrogant and Vindictive
January 16, 2022

Worst customer service ever.

I used them for property management, they will promise you high daily rates and high occupancy rates to get your listing. Then they'll use their precious rating algorithm to calculate the minimum daily rate.

I was told I could expect $250 a night with 80% occupancy. Unfortunately, everyone in my neighborhood was priced between $80 and $100 per night with 50% occupancy. Didn't know that until it was too late. Big difference, no bookings. But they can lower the minimum rate manually. 

They can adjust the minimum nightly rate, but its too much trouble for them, so you'll go without any bookings. When I did get them to manually reduce the minimum rate to be competitive, I immediately got bookings, yea!

However, constantly adjusting my minimum rate was too much trouble. So they quit doing it. And, then they dropped me as a customer while I was overseas and unable to get another service. Great people!

In my last review on Trustpilot, they blamed me for being a bad customer, but what would you expect when they over-promise and never deliver. I'm sure they will blame me again for being a bad customer.

Good luck, but better to just find someone else.

PeterDee August 12, 2023

I have this experience in the opposite direction. Where my property is being rented out way undervalued. An easy look up of the time and dates in that area show 50% to 100% higher rates for home rentals.

Do Not Use Evolve to List your Cabin!!
September 30, 2021

If you want renters that will treat your cabin like a cheap motel, Evolve is the company for you! Six months in and I am very disappointed with the number of rentals and the terrible quality of renters. Regretfully we listed our breathtaking brand new mountain modern waterfront cabin with them.

Evolve is everything that gives short-term rentals a bad reputation and is getting us banned in many communities. We have many friends that have short-term rentals for several years that they managed themselves through AirBnB and/or VRBO. Hardly one had a bad experience, yet we have had several in our first couple of months with Evolve.

• Evolve is simply an intermediate host that list your property on other sites and takes all the control away from the homeowner with very little benefit in return.

• Evolve nor the renter are held liable for anything, no deposit is required only a $14/night worthless $3000 insurance policy. The only one that stands to lose is the owner. A renter can destroy your house, and just walk away without even getting a bad review!

• Owners cannot screen renters nor does Evolve. Anyone can rent your cabin! The party mansion loophole! Yes our house fell victim to this through Evolve!

• The only information the owner gets about guest is number of guest, first name, fist letter of last name, and phone number.

• You can’t leave reviews on guest nor read their reviews.

• If a guest leaves a review and you respond, Evolve rewrites what you say.

• Evolve writes your listing, you have no say in it. They also pic the photos. If you disagree, they review it but usually sides with their editors.

• 60% of guest I would ban for violating policies like number of guest, smoking, throwing parties, shooting pellet guns, violating noise ordinances, or damaging the property. Actually, you have no way to ban anyone; if they rent from you again and you cancel, you will end up paying a cancellation fee.

• If a guest cancels one week out and you can’t replace them, you get nothing. They get no penalty for cancelling on you, they get a credit with Evolve to rent at a later time.

• Customer Service: It is nice you can get a person on the phone, but there is no escalation path at Evolve, tough luck if you don’t like the “I’m sorry you had a bad experience” script they read from. They are very nice but have no power to do anything and usually don’t.

• They do pay to have a professional photographer come out and take pics, but you can hire one yourself for less than the $250 they claim to spend, so don’t think they are doing you some big favor.

• They are so afraid the of getting a bad review they will not charge the renter for bringing extra guest or other policy violations like smoking or pets.

• Evolve ignores the 8 people occupancy maximums and rented our cabin to a party of 10.

• We found and manage our own cleaning, lawn care, and taxes. What does Evolve do to command the highest fee in the industry? Recently they were forced to manage taxes so look for a fee increase on that in 2022.

Frat Party House:

Our house sleeps 8 people but the bunk room is meant for 4 children, not 4 adults, this did not stop Evolve from renting to 8 adult male college students that threw multiple parties and absolutely trashed our brand new $1/2 million dollar cabin! When we first saw the listing, we contacted Evolve and they told us not to worry, besides we are fully insured.

If we cancelled, we would have to pay a fee. Neighbor’s reported as many as 12 people sleeping overnight and people smoking and funneling beer up to 4AM! We contacted Evolve and they said there is not much they could do, we might as well call them ourselves. They gave no good advice only to report damage for insurance. We had just spent $40k to furnish this new cabin, $3000 insurance is a joke!

In the end insurance payed zero! There was food and trash and cigarette butts all around the house, the house smelled like vomit and beer. The hot tub had to be emptied and scrubbed down, refilled and shocked. There was blood and dirt all over our new living room couch. The entire underdeck area had to be bleached and pressure washed because the food left attracted animals, especially birds and mice, to come and crap on everything including all over our new outdoor furniture, fireplace, bar, and concrete area.

When I went to claim this on Evolve I found out you can only use receipts from contractors or actually money you spend to replace something. The 5 hour round trip and 12 hours spent cleaning and repairing, extra supplies and extra cleaning fees can’t be claimed for insurance. They refused to charge the renter for the extra people, the renter never got any negative feedback or anything for doing this to our house!

My neighbors were kind enough not to call the police, video, or send pics into the local paper, this could well have been a political nightmare.

Nicole October 28, 2021

This review was and is sadly happening to us as well. We are new to the industry and went with evolve. First guest ever to rent too through a party, second one I just got debited 900$ for using a fraudulent credit card (though their stay was 10 days ago) and the next guests another party.. 0/3… we haven’t had anyone normal rent our property. I think it’s a 3 month commitment correct?

elle April 21, 2022

Hi Brian, I am having the exact same experience with Evolve - same with Nicole - fraudulent booking through bookings.com; I asked to be removed from bookings.com, they said no.

After 5 minutes ago having another dead-end conversation with Evolve (my listing on airbnb links to an error message, so no one can book it, it's been this way a month, and they keep telling me they are "waiting on a response from another team" ) I just decided to start an investigation into them (I'm a journalist).

Can you tell me where you know of that Evolve is being banned? Thank you!

PeterDee August 12, 2023

Please do your journalist job on this company. They completely lie about their pricing algorithms. My very beautiful home is listed by them for an unusually minimum amount. They will tell you that it's seasonal and that the minimum rarely comes into play, but my experience is that it always comes into play. It is the only rate they use!

Owners Beware!
March 3, 2021
For those considering choosing Evolve to manage your property as a short-term vacation rental, you should know what will happen: 1)Lots of bad guests will book your place. Your property will be disrespected.

DO NOT USE EVOLVE TO LIST YOUR HOME!!!
January 18, 2021

Worst company ever. Do not list your home with evolve!!! There are zero protections for homeowners. The renters pay no deposit and you cannot review them. I have had my home trashed 4 times in 6 weeks.

Local renters who only come in to party and trash the place. Evolve has done nothing to help. People smoking in my home, booze on the walls, broken furniture, destroyed linens. And they do nothing to help. DO NOT LIST YOUR HOME WITH THIS COMPANY!!!!

Brian September 30, 2021

Seems to be a pattern here, sorry you had to put up with this, we can't get away from them fast enough. Our home was trashed multiple times also with no recourse. I hope others will head our experience and stay away from Evolve!

SaraM October 04, 2021

As a new mountain rental owner about to sign on with Evolve, this is terrifying! May I ask which area your place is in?

Takes the hassle out of renting
October 10, 2020

We have two rentals and coordinating schedules is a bear - evolve does it for you and the photographers are excellent - I wish we could adjust rates more easily, without having to go through evolve, as I am more aware of the patterns in our discrete market - but I can’t complain - when we ask to have rates raised they have done it - Nick is very helpful and is my go-to guy - I would strongly recommend -

Brian September 30, 2021

I really do hope you don't have the terrible experience many of us have had with renting our property through Evolve. Just be warned, one bad renter can destroy your house and you will on your own!

Evolve Vacation Rentals are Scammers!
September 3, 2020

Do not use Evolve, they will not communicate with you at all. There was a glitch in the website that put my reservation thru at the wrong amount. I immediately cancelled and informed them. They will not refund my money! I’ve tried repeatedly to contact them with no response.

The reservation wasn’t on the site for three minutes, how am I being charged for a week stay? It seems that there company is in deep financial trouble if this is how they have to make money, shame on all of them. Do not use them, you will regret it!

FRAUD ALERT
July 27, 2020

ZERO STARS. This company has scammed 1000s of people out of their money by promising refunds during COVID than ghosting them. My final payment of $1290 was due after COVID started. I asked them what would happen if we could not travel. Was assured not to worry, we would get a FULL REFUND and i also rec'd an email stating we would get a full refund (got that in writing too).

Let my final payment go out and guess what - A no travel order comes down for both our state and the state of the rental. So guess what happens next - NO REFUND. NOTHING. NADA. They are $2000 richer and we are $2000 poorer. I was told - OOPS my bad, we changed our policy... REALLY? so now over 554 people have lodged complaints with the BBB and the attorney general. STAY AWAY.