Evolve Vacation Rental Reviews

I completely agree with these reviews. Evolve favors the guest/short-term renter most, if not all, of the time. When given a logical explanation, they are robotic in their responses/reading a script that doesn't consistently work with the homeowner.

Recently, they didn't acknowledge my updated owner-occupied schedule, which had a glitch, and after several requests to drop the charges, they still charged me 50% of the guests' stay (and they booked at 5 pm for a next day check in). This resulted in a $385 charge, and they continue to allow this poor booking behavior to benefit the guest while ignoring the homeowner.

They also charge 10% for each booking, which they conveniently add in all charges (i.e. cleaning fee, taxes, etc.). I gave them a chance to make peace, but they insisted to not do so and therefore writing this. I would not recommend them to anyone.

Atrocious experience. We have time-stamped documents to prove every claim made below, but I will keep it brief.

1- approximately 18 min after we (and our employees) checked in, we advised them of a large leak, water damage, falling ceiling, and mildew.

In an attempt at being patient, understanding, and allowing a bit of grace (because we own a business as well and understand that things happen), we decided to allow evolve time to clean up instead of immediately throwing a fit and leaving. That, however, was a massive mistake. We should have never assumed that they would care enough about their customer to address the issue.

2- NO efforts were made to clean up the water damage, the mildew, or the falling ceiling for 4 days - leaving the living room completely off limits for the entire stay. We had to find alternate locations to use as a gathering space, as this living room was so nasty and smelly that nobody could stand it.

4- after 5 nights the roof leak was so bad that we had to relocate. They canceled our remaining days but only allowed a 30% return our stayed nights? we think that it is ridiculous to charge us 70% for a space we never had complete access to. Even worse, they never acknowledged that they had completely neglected to clean up the mess inside the house. What a joke of a company.

5- on the last day, while we and our employees were at training, someone from the company dropped by the house and placed OUR COOLER under the leaking roof!!! Our cooler that we then had to clean out just to move our food when we were forced to relocate!

Again, we have pictures, videos, and messages to prove every word of this. We did not intend to take it this far, but they refused to speak to us about making it right. We feel like they have had ample time to address the wrong, so we have chosen to make this public for everyone to see. They clearly did not deserve the patience and understanding we attempted to allow them. It was a powerful teaching moment to show our employees on this trip exactly how we will NOT treat our customers.

Do not use them! Decides everything else I don't like about them, the worst part is that they list your house as if they are the owner.

Meaning if you ever decided to cancel, all your reviews get deleted also and you have to start all over. Use someone else who allows you to co-host only!!!!!

Our flight got cancelled from Boston and they didn’t reimburse the air bb

Our flight got cancelled from Boston, long story short Evolve refused to reimburse us 1100$ for a stay that did not happen due to the global IT outage. We called and the person on the other hand could care less and just said “sorry no refunds”. Are you serious? Mind you I booked it through Expedia so I had not even heard of this company…

Update-Expedia also tried contacting the property owner/manager to help with the refund and they were told no as well. Imagine even Expedia tried to help..

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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!!!!! 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.

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.