This holiday cottage is rubbish

[champagnesocialist11]

Can anyone sympathise? I will be asking for a full refund.

We came here for our honeymoon 8 years ago, it was absolutely lovely.

Haven't been on holiday since 2017 for various reasons.

Anyway! We've booked the same 'lovely' cottage In Northumberland; when we booked it it was owned by the same owner who really cared for it, since then she's sold it and now it's honestly awful. ( we booked before Covid)

It has an Aga, no oven glove or tea towel to get anything out of the damn thing, we have an Aga and I'd have bloody brought our own if I'd known; the 'flat screen tv' doesn't have a picture; just sound so that's nice, the garden is sold as enclosed but the fence has fallen over so it's not at all.

The smoke alarm keeps beeping because it needs new batteries. If we'd known I'd have bought one before hand. There is 1 non cracked glass, so we're drinking champagne out of mugs. There is no kettle or toaster. We had a kettle in the car by a lucky accident because i bought a new one for our Aga and forgot to get it out of the car before coming away but wtf???

It's a first world issue I know that, but I just feel cheated. It cost us £300 to rent this for the weekend.

Photos and record the beeping alarm on your phone. Not attending to smoke alarms is the biggest fail.

It does sound rubbish and you should complain, but is there any reason why you can’t use a bathroom towel or a folded up pillowcase or clothing or something as an oven mitt/aga handle holder?

For me if I arrived at the holiday cottage and found what OP has described it is not fit for purpose with many potential safety issues (ie risk of burning owing to lack of oven gloves), fire alarms about to pack up because they need batteries.. It's not always feasible to leave a property, especially if you've done a long journey so OP, complain in writing with detail and ask for a full refund

Presumably she is using her towel and pillowcase for their proper purpose? I would not use a t short or similar as an oven glove. It is likely to get damaged.

TBH I don't think the issues are worthy of a full refund. The cottage is still usable albeit not the standard OP was expecting. I'd want something like 20-30% back but number of bog rolls is never standard so don't mention that.

I think unless it would require a very lengthy journey home, I would not have even stayed there one night.

Small claims court if you fail to get all your money back. Worth a try.

AlannaOfTrebond · Now

Me too.

And to add insult to injury somehow when the previous (lovely) companies bookings were transferred onto Sykes computer system they managed to change the name on our most recent bookings to my husbands. I called them to ask why I hadn't had any arrival information for the holiday I had booked in my name and they said they couldn't speak to me only my husband. Not much use when he is currently away and in a completely different time zone.

I managed to prove that it was actually me who had booked the holiday, so they deigned to send the info to me with the salutation Miss "husbands surname" - which isn't my name!

Its mad but some guests just simply don't tell you. The guests who were staying when the pool went green, I had asked them two days before they left if we needed to come over and clean the pool and got told no, it's fine. Some people just genuinely wont realise. As for a form to fill out, again, some people just wouldn't care. One of my recent guests couldn't even leave the house before 10am or answer a text, instead choosing to stay in the pool until 10.30, ignore my lovely cleaning lady and sit on my wonderful soft (not leather!) sofa in dripping swim trunks. That's the bad guests. I've had wonderful guests who are in such a strong "holiday mode" that they dont notice or forget if something isn't working, so its tricky.

"I had asked them two days before they left if we needed to come over and clean the pool and got told no, it's fine."
It sounds they thought no it is fine as we do not want to use the pool.
Do you not have set days you do the pool?

I told them, as I tell everyone, on arrival that we are 10 mins away and to call or text us for absolutely anything. They were definitely using the pool, they left us a glowing review in our guest book as well as online - they just simply didnt notice.

We do the pool every Saturday on changeover day, the pool robot takes care of it the rest of the week. It's a very easy one that the guests just put in and take out whenever they fancy, usually once a day. 99% of the time the pool is pristine all week and barely needs a clean on a Saturday. The guests know that if they want a pool cleaning they can ask for one, no charge and all remain in contact with me throughout their stay anyway, so no issue. If there are storms or high winds etc then we will go over if necessary for another clean as thunder makes the algae react or something. We very rarely have a problem with the pool, were just so flabbergasted that people enjoyed the pool whilst it absolutely must have been green the last days of their holiday! 😂

If it makes you feel any better I’ll precis what happened at our holiday cottage in France back in May….it’s worthy of Fawlty Towers.

Travelling down the motorway at 7 am here we receive an email telling us the cottage is inaccessible due to a flood…kind of OK and they found us alternative accommodation with a small cash reimbursement, bearing in mid we’d already agreed that, as the second bedroom had had a mishap a few weeks previously, we wouldn’t need it.
A week later we receive an email saying can we get there later on the Saturday as the en-suite had flooded?
Okay…we head off to the supermarket to get a few bits as I’m not convinced we have somewhere to stay aaaand we get a call .

The electronic (yes,really) toilet has exploded , can we get there after 2?

Umm, well, now I have food in the boot so can we drop it off and come back?

Come back at 4pm….we end up helping them build our bed , wait for them to fit door handle in the bedroom and THEN he announces he’ll need to access his tools in the spare room in the next few days and also put the curtains in our bedroom up. (Bear in mind this is a “long established “ gite).
So I put my foot down and said no, but agree he can do so when we are out on Tuesday…and then poogate happened.
The toilet was so pressurised it emptied and spattered the out of use en-suite in our bedroom with poo. The sound of poo hitting a wall at speed is not one I want to hear again!
They did fix it immediately and were mortified, but everything was a Heath Robinson affair by a retired British couple…
When we left they asked us to give them a five star review! (It was a beautiful location with a fantastic pool, but deluded doesn’t even cover it)

In my case the cow of an owner threw us out on bank holiday Saturday. DH told her if we couldn't find somewhere else we would be staying (we'd booked through an agency not her thankfully). I would have still expected a bloody big refund for no working fridge or locking door! We'd spent one night but got refunded for that. DH had managed to fix the door for her so that was payment!

My age is different on each booking and they can't even get the county right on the listings. Lyme Regis, aka The Pearl of Dorset, is now in Devon according to those idiots. I just hope I don't need to speak to them, my cat is more helpful.

That's such a shame OP. Hope you get at least a partial refund!

We were a bit disappointed recently as our holiday house didn't have a dishwasher 😂it sounds very 1st world but when you're used to one at home and cooking 3 meals a day for 5 people plus baby bottles etc there's a hell of a lot of sinks of washing up to be done...

We're staying very nearby there over the summer in a rental cottage but I've just checked and I'm fairly sure it's not the same one! (No aga in our rental)

@ObviouslyNotAFan it's Madera cottage in Hedley on the hill. It looked lovely on the photos. Oh well we went to the feathers inn and can really recommend that! Absolutely beautiful meal and we're leaving tomorrow with a very nice refund. It's not worth the hassle to stay here, better to go home and enjoy leave at home

Sorry to hear about your bad experience, out of interest I did a quick Google search of the cottage and found several uncomplimentary reviews so you're not the only one to have experienced issues, just ridiculous that the owners clearly don't care about offering substandard accommodation.

I saw a review from July 2021 that complained about the lack of oven gloves for the Aga!

They've had a year to sort that and haven't.

I think I'm more annoyed I don't see the review that was on Monday that the tv didn't work 😂🤦‍♀️ oh well you live and learn ! Honestly it was so nice in 2016

That staircase looks lethal. And you to the oven glove missing back in 2021, though there is one shown in the pictures, what a mystery, maybe oven mitts are the new towels and people have to take them for posterity 😁.

Yes they’re the worst because you can’t just take the battery out, it just keeps beeping! (We tried when ours died at 1am one night!)

Ah thanks. Just googled it and there's very little indication of any issues with it. How annoying.

This is where we are staying later this year, which is a bit closer to Hexham:

www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/54238256?source_impression_id=p3_1656225561_IAqWKyn2yVOcTYAT

Checked last night in a mild panic but I can see there are recent 5 star reviews. Phew!

Think we might have to make a stop at The Feathers at some point as the reviews seem great 🤩

Complain now while you're there. If you leave it until you get home they'll just say "well, you stayed and never said a word". Sounds awful and I'd be complaining to be the agents and the people who own it.
Hope you get sorted X

Whatever refund you get, make sure you google every single website that publishes holiday reviews and detail every failing on every one of them.

@ObviouslyNotAFan I know that house and area - you'll have a lovely time! PM me if you want any local knowledge 😊