The property was lovely - cozy, clean, exactly what we were looking for. I'd rather focus on that part of our stay but I don't want my frustrations to be repeated with any other customers - for the customer's sake and for the host's sake. We had added another night to our original booking. I believe the app wouldn't work to let us in because a booking was to be a minimum stay of 2 nights. We arrived at the property, unloaded our stuff in the rain and stood on the porch for an hour trying to get the app to work. The host wasn't answering her phone or texts - I found out later it was because she was at work. I called the app company and they told me that they could see that I had the app but that an invitation had not been sent by the host. I tried to contact vrbo but all the help pages I went to came up with an error message that the page was not available. There were no phone numbers ANYWHERE to contact ANYONE. 2 hours after check-in the host got back to us telling us where a key was hidden but it was dark and we couldn't find it. We finally left and went home, unloaded all of our things and decided to stay home for the night and hoped to at least get one night reimbursed. She offered only 1/2 night stay to be reimbursed, claiming that she also was frustrated - with the vrbo system and that she had also wasted a day on this complication and that because there was a key available to us (like I said, we couldn't find it in the dark) she would only offer the 1/2 night to be reimbursed. When I wasn't happy with that solution, she added a late check-out in addition to the 1/2 night but then retracted it a few hours later due to the fact that she didn't realize that someone else was booked to arrive later that day.
For this not to happen to another customer down the road, I would suggest that it be easier to reach vrbo, and that you make your system easier for the host to adjust so that they don't find themselves locked out of the property. I was able to travel home - what if I had been 4 hours away and had to find a hotel? AND I should have been reimbursed for a night that I could not spend in the property - that I paid for, that was part of my vacation. Precious time completely wasted.