Sykes Holiday Cottages - refusing refunds

[inmylifeIlovedthemall]

I am wondering if anyone else is caught up in the ‘no refunds’ policy that Sykes Holiday cottages are adopting in relation to Coronavirus.

Despite Boris imploring us to stay at home and numerous representitives of the Travel Industry asking us not to travel to tourist hotspots, Sykes are refusing to allow cancellations and refund holiday payments. They are offering rebooking options, but at massively increased prices for the same period in 2021.

They have sold Insurance alongside their holidays, but those policies do not cover the current situation.

So for me the choice seems to be ‘do the right thing’ and stay home, losing the total cost of the holiday.

I was travelling to meet a group of friends & family and all have been able to cancel at no loss to themselves. It just appears to be Sykes taking this stance.

Is anyone else caught up in this? Are there other holiday companies taking the same stance?

They just kept saying we could move it. But we'd have to pay not only extra. But also an admin fee.

Ridiculous. I already paid £500 for 3 days. I wasn't going to pay another £225! For 3 days.

I just kept saying about profiteering! How they were marking money out of this. How that was illegal. How I'd get my solicitors involved. (I also have a friend that was going to do it!)?

Just to say holidaycottages.co.uk have been fairly good I feel. They’ve let us change the dates to one year’s time and only charged us an extra £50 booking fee. I have no intention of paying that and hope it’s just been added automatically. It was very easy to change, they set up a form on their website.

I want to give praise to Air BnB. I had three bookings with them - at Easter abroad, London In May and Sussex in July. I was able to cancel all three with the click of a button and 2 mins later I had an email saying I had a full refund.

So it can be done. And of course they are agents for the owners just like Sykes.

id love to see your email hoggle if you dont mind sharing it.

Me too hoggle.
Really annoyed.
Do not book with HEMERA holidays!

I booked through Westbay cottages in Yarmouth.
They took a c£400+ deposit. Remaining £££ payable this week.
Booking beg of June.
Today they updated their website to say that they won't take remaining payment until closer to the time.
If travel advice is not to travel at that date, they will issue a credit note for same property future date within 12 months. But if cottage more expensive, customer has to pay difference!!!
Surely this kind of contract violates consumer rights.
They say if you want refund, there is none, talk to your travel insurance.
I am going to talk to my credit card company who will litigate with them.

@SureOkThen Sykes is huge. Turnover of £23,000,000 profits after tax and other costs £6,000,000

We've got a holiday booked with them at the end of July!!!! Selfish bastards

It is possible to check consumer right on a site like MSE and see what advice there is? Sorry I can’t be more help but surely if you can’t receive the service/product as paid for then it’s a refund? I would send lots of emails and go straight the CEO or head office. Try ceoemail.com for their contact details. Quite unfair of Sykes to offer the same at an inflated price!

= Holiday booked at Bashley. Been going now 2-3 aa_ year for about 4 years. Park currently closed. Yet due to open the day we go. I want to change my holiday for another time. Seeing as I’m one that the nhs has decided is high risk and to stay inside for 12 weeks. This would include the holiday date. You want me to pay EXTRA to change the date PLUS administration fees. In normal times this would be the case. However in my opinion I Consider you are profiteering in this unfortunate situation and I will be getting legal advice on this Other companies are willing to exchange weeks or days and are offering their customers full refunds. I await your response

Excuse the no grammar etc

It didn't go through on their website late.

So, tonight a few glimmers of hope for those who have not already cancelled or moved their booking with Sykes.

Boris answered questions about how the Government will deal with Profiteering in his 5pm briefing tonight. Hopefully Sykes took note.

Certainly tonight they have apparently written to owners of Cottages with bookings over the next three weeks, to ask them if they can refund money to customers unable to rebook.

Too late for me, but hopefully may help some others on this thread.

Who is they in you PP OP? Do you mean Sykes? I am holding tight for a few days despite having had an email from them urging me to rebook.

Yes, for Certainly tonight they ..... read Certainly tonight Sykes ....

Interesting....

I thought about somehow drawing Simon Calder's attention to this but not sure how!

Twitter.

There are a lot of people complaining on Twitter. Customers are writing Trustpilot reviews and there is a thread running on Facebook (details in the attached picture)

Same experience here. Booked a week in Cornwall in the Easter hols - all fully paid - but Sykes say no refunds given. It would cost £110 more to move it to next Easter (an increase of 15% - how is that in line with inflation?) - and as a self-employed person who is currently taking a financial hit from the Covid-19 situation, this is not welcome news.
So, Sykes will get money from the government to help pay their staff wages, the cottage owners will get their three-month mortgage holiday (and probably an insurance pay-out for loss of business), and full payment from the customer on top. They can't even pretend that the cancellation has left them out of pocket on the basis that they could have let the cottage to someone else, as they clearly say on their website that they are not taking any bookings between now and 4th June. It feels like daylight robbery.
I've used Sykes many times in the past (the cottages are usually lovely, although I've found that Sykes themselves provide atrocious customer service). Well, never again! As someone else said on here earlier, who will go back to them after this? Very short-sighted of them.

I can't even log in : the password isn't recognised and there is no email forthcoming to reset it.

There are a couple of suspicious tweets on Twitter about how great Sykes have been about amending bookings. All people in 'the North' right near where their offices are....

I bet lots of people with Easter bookings are people observing school holidays : it's not like we can just pick any random date out of a hat to reschedule.

Just looked it up. My cottage is booked for Easter next year. To do the week after is £150 more.

Just to say we had bookings with Unique Home Stays, and they offered a full immediate refund or to change dates, not only were they calm and very professional but made the whole stressful experience quite effortless.

There are decent companies out there, and I am sorry for everyone on here that is having to deal with cancelling their longed for holidays at a massive loss to themselves, through no fault or their own - whilst also coping with job losses, coronavirus AND then being fleeced by holiday cottage companies in the process.

It is truly despicable.

I just emailed Simon Calder.

We had a booking for last weekend with Sykes.
They refused to cancel despite us having two people over 70 , one pregnant and two families self isolating.
They tried to get us to rebook for a vastly inflated price.
In the end the owner agreed to honour a date next year for no extra cost.
It took them to contact Sykes to arrange this for us.
Looks like we were lucky. Don’t give up guys and contact the owners yourselves if you can.

Alton Towers also were amazing, refunded immediately through an easy cancellation process on line.

It is not fair that people are being exploited like this, no matter how worried the company may be about its profits or viability to expect guests to foot the bill during a lockdown is really unfair.

Contact Martin Lewis too, he is very good at this sort of thing.

So latest update.

Tonight some of the people due to travel in the next three weeks, who have previously refused to rearrange have received an email offering then a Credit Note. Not a refund just a credit note.

Many on the FB site are declining on the grounds that there is no guarantee Sykes will survive and the credit note might be worthless.

If you are due to travel in the next three weeks check your Junk box. Apparently a lot of the emails are ending up there.

Thanks for the update. We don't travel until August but due to pay the majority of the balance in June.