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Vacation homes: How to rent without regret

There are a lot of choices, so while shopping around, look very carefully at the reviews - and check for hidden fees.

GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. - It’s spring break time, and for many, that means heading for a rental vacation home.

Online booking has become increasingly popular with travelers. Twin Cities Consumer’s Checkbook has some advice for renting without regret.

Two major companies have listings you may want to check out: VRBO, and Airbnb.

There are a lot of choices, so while shopping around, look very carefully at the reviews.

"The first thing you need to understand is, it is pretty easy to game the system," said Kevin Brasler, executive editor at Twin Cities Consumers' Checkbook. "It's fairly easy to manufacture reviews. You know these places, they could basically rent the place from themselves so that they can later leave a review. So, the more reviews you see, the better."

Brasler said both VRBO and Airbnb and pretty good about refunding money when there is a big problem.

One last thing to keep in mind: Watch out for hidden fees.

"They kind of hide the taxes and the cleaning fees and stuff like that behind the listing," he said. "They show you a per-night rate that's not really the per-night rate at all."

KARE 11 viewers can access Twin Cities Consumers' Checkbook for free, for a limited time, at this link.

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