Well sorry I don't stay at the dumps that you do, apparently. I have a decent sized group of big dudes, and we don't like sleeping on couches, or with each other. Losing half of your money 7 days before is a ripoff. Especially since they want ALL of your money before that. A lot of things can happen in 7 days. A house on Lake Gogebic pretty much has ONE purpose in the winter. If snow conditions are marginal to begin with, and then there is a huge meltdown, or rainstorm, most renters would understand and offer a refund--OR hold our money for a later date, which we offered to THEM, and they refused. Trust me, if we didn't book this place for that trip, nobody else was going to. I'm not going to look it up, but there were new fees added by VRBO recently to pay for their service. The fee is non negotiable. VRBO also does not offer refunds based on weather, which probably makes sense for your average vacation. They do not "get" that snowmobilers actually need snow to vacation. I believe they do offer some kind of insurance, which is the ONLY way I'd use them again, but still don't plan to. By the way, I've used VRBO for fishing and sledding trips for years, and I still have NEVER cancelled a trip. I know that you are the most famous, epic snowmobiler of all time, but I've been around a bit myself.
Your best bet is to avoid services like VRBO as much as possible and try to book places from the owner direct, which in fact is getting harder to do.
