Wimdu Reviews 600

Totally unsafe, dreadful, shocking, dire. There you go you have been warned

I traveled between 9 European cities; Berlin, Rome, Milan, Munich, Zurich, Paris, London, Glasgow, and Dublin, across the span of 3 months last summer (May-August). The accommodations continually exceeded expectations and the hosts were wonderful. I recommend wimdu to anyone who wants to get more cultural exposure out of travel, and at an excellent savings.

They are thieves, it's one big scam. We lost hundreds of euro's!

Oh dear where to start, property was not in a fit state to rent out, we grew concerned when bizarre messages from the owner started coming the week before,such as you are not planning a party are you ? , we did say no kitchen but now no lounge as well , so as to not ruin our weekend plans we did indeed turn up early to find work men on site amidst the scaffolding and the building work on going, we made alternative arrangements for us logged with wimdu and moved on.
So that was the property, what happened next was worse, we only wanted our money back no extra for inconvience but our money back for a property that was in a state of disrepair, wimdu after 3 weeks and various emails offered me a 50 euro voucher off my next booking, the reason being we had turned up too early for the owner to get the house ready , so in two hours they planned to re carpet the stairs finish mopping the floor, clean the floor , mend the roof , remove the scaffolding etc etc
Avoid wimdu plus this property in b19

Avoid avoid avoid

We were supposed to stay in a house in Birmingham for a weekend in May. When we arrived at the property it was surrounded by scaffolding and we were unable to park on the driveway as the workmen were ripping off the roof and throwing it on the drive.
After 10 minutes of knocking the landlord came to the door with his trousers rolled up... A bit strange. He asked us to come back in 5 minutes.
When we returned he had found his socks and shoes and started to show us around. There was no lounge or kitchen as these had not been finished. The carpet on the stairs had been ripped up and there were holes in the ceiling where the roof had failed and water had poured through. The landlord had been ankle deep in water, hence he had rolled his trousers up, using a mop and bucket to stem the tide.
We walked out and found alternative accommodation at double the price.
We called Wimdu and amazingly we got no response but left a voicemail. Eventually they got back to us and asked us to send through an account of events and some pictures.
Below is a copy of their 'amazing' response:

"We consider the pictures you sent and evaluated your complaint, and regarding the constructions are outside the house and not inside, we can not say the accommodation was not suitable. Also, the host confirmed you arrived earlier than the check-in time agreed, and the operators where still finishing the works.
We consider a compensation of 50 EUR voucher discount that you can use when you want to book with us again.
Please, accept this voucher as a goodwill from us. Your voucher code is: xxxxxxx (minimum amount of booking 100 EUR).
Thank you very much for report your experience, which helps to build the website everyday."

Yes we arrived 30 minutes early than stated - In 30 minutes they would have finished the kitchen, lounge, repaired the roof, removed all water/damp and then finally taken down the scaffolding.

This company is a joke and we are taking legal action against them - be warned these guys are truly useless and should not be in business. They offer their customers absolutely nothing.

My experience with Wimdu
I booked accommodation in February 2015 through Wimdu in Malta for the summer. The price, Eur 250, was blocked on my bank account. In early May 2015 my host cancelled my booking. I followed Wimdu’s instructions and immediately contacted the Support Team– actually several times because apart from automatic replies I haven’t heard from them. My first e-mail went about 10 days ago, my last 5 days ago. (The website says they have a 24/7 support service, and that they take cancellation by host very seriously.) My money has not been refunded, no help has been offered, no contact has been made, whatsoever. None of the telephone numbers /e-mail addresses found in various databases on internet work / are answered.
What Wimdu does is OUTRAGEOUS! They are a bunch of THIEVES!
I am contacting the European Consumer Center.

End of the story: Wimdu finally contacted me - two days after I posted my review here and on several other review sites. And in another week they refunded my money.
Their whole approach gave the impression that they were prepared to ignore me forever and keep my money, which only did not happen because I took action.

Absolutely no telephone support when things go wrong.

A very bad Customer Service, slow in reply and totally unhelpful. If you have any problem with the landlord then you are on your own, they will not help you at all. The only thing they will suggest, after a long waiting for reply (24hours plus is a norm), is to cancel your booking - just because they will take a charge of about £50!
So simply speaking AVOID them, there is thousands of website around letting flats directly (Wimdu is intermediate service) and Wimdu is not as cheap as it claims.

At this point Wimdu is a fraud. They do not pay property owners and do not respond to customer service requests. They also do not have a phone number that functions.

I have to say that this company has gotten steadily worse. I first registered my property with Wimdu back in 2012 for the Olympics. Back then they were great. Someone was on the phone when I needed them and super responsive to emails.
NOW? An email goes unanswered for days, searching their website for a telephone number is a joke!
The worst thing is that I've had a set of guests staying for 3 days...and I've still not been paid.
The phone number which I did manage to fine cheerfully tells me that all customer service agents are busy (for 4days??) and to leave a message that no-one has responded to. It's disgusting and I will be taking my property off the site

Got a nasty surprise with the settlement of the payment of the rent of my first guest. Although WIMDU claims on its website no to charge any fee to the landlords, in fact they do. In my case they charged an amount representing 7% of the net rental price, on top of the allmost 20% "service" fee they charge to the guest. So Wimdu is cashing in twice, for more than 25% of the rental price! So owners and renters be aware and consider other alternatives for your holiday rentals!

We booked an apartment in Paris over new year but just before we left we realised that we had been scammed when the "property owners" stopped corresponding. The scammers advertised their property on Wimdu, who claim to have checked all listings and all correspondance was sent on fabricated Wimdu headed paperwork. When we complained Wimdu took no responsibility and we are £2000 out of pocket. We have since alerted them to other scam properties they are hosting but still no compensation. We are experienced travellers but were still caught out by the professional scammers who use this site to advertise. BE VERY CAREFUL.

very unprofessional company, feels like the work out of a garage. Actually worst because I work with some companies that started in a garage and offer better system and support.

first of the web page is very buggy, I can't list my 2nd property because google maps is not loading, and any way to correct the address does not work. A support number popped up but the only had answering machine to look for support online, (perhaps the support person already left the company)

Other listing I was lucky to bypass the google maps bug.. But found out after 3 months and getting no request that the listing was not published, apparently my description was to short... Maybe the wanted some money from me? Because I used the same description on AirBnB and get plenty of bookings... in those 3 months..

I would be very careful if basic function don't work on this page, then can you trust them with money and booking??

It was amazing it was clean the host was very accurate with every detail and it was A great stay. Thank you so much.

Booked apartment through Wimdu. No problems at all. Excellent service throughout.

When I had a problem because the host had not replied wiithin 24 hours Wimdu were very quick to respond and take action. At all times they were quick to answer questions.

Navigating Wimdu's website was a very smooth experience and everything was quite well explained. The description of my holiday flat was very accurate and reliable. The communication with the owner/manager of the flat was also very good and she was very helpful.

One thing, though, I really hated about the Wimdu website set-up was that it looked like I had to make the payment straight away, without even knowing whether my booking had been accepted yet. (Luckily, in this case, the flat owner responded within 24 hours). But I need the flexibility to send out a number of requests per day and then see which one is accepted. If my payment, however, goes through automatically when one booking is accepted, I am losing control over which booking I want to accept and, more importantly I am losing precious time if I - by this method - am forced to make only one request per day. So, it would be much better if I could book straight away without having to wait for a response. After all there is a calendar that shows which days are available, so the booking process could happen pretty much instantly.

We have booked an apartment in London, but we could not get in contact with the landlord.

When we wrote to Wimdu, all they did was to cancel my booking.

1st of all the phone number of the guest can not be shown and you can not contact wimdu by phone as they dont provide phone number.....
I am waiting for a guest over 2 hours. They are maybe lost and i have no phone to contact them...