bad experience with hol cottage advice please

[manitz]

We recently stayed in a holiday cottage on the flete estate with our two dd's (1 and 3).

we were last to leave and cleared up for around 3-4 hours b4 leaving inc stripping beds and washing drying putting away and cleaning out real fire. All deco was pretty tired and shabby but location beautiful for walking so what you expect really.

We noticed huge burn on hearth rug and wrote them a note as we are pretty sure it was us. We also hoovered under rug, all furniture etc. They phoned us later about rug and said new one would be 100 -150. I suggested we gave 80 as it would be replacing a less than new rug was waiting to hear from them (depreciation etc). All very pleasant and adult really.

Finally a letter arrives saying that they want 100 for rug as cost 150 and 25 extra as house was particularly dirty following our stay and was really unpleasant to dispose of dirty nappies. Obviously we must have not emptied bathroom bin or left one in a dark corner (imagine!) but we really cleaned even tho' toddlers were about. anyway it was really curt and slightly aggressive.

If you've got this far, what I really need is a bit of advice as i don't know if we have to pay all the money for the rug or can just pay a proportion. I think they are really out of order and I've really changed my mind about going back there as they are clearly not family friendly. or maybe we are just filthy scum proles.

I am thinking of asking for receipt from their supplier so i can confirm the real cost of new rug and offering a fiver to compensate for having to handle a dirty nappy. whadya think?
ta

when you hire a holiday cottage do you have to pay for things like that then? I would have thought it would be covered in their insurance, no?

as for cleaning the place .. what's that about .. surely it should be cleaned properly before next holiday makers

Message withdrawn

I would check what your terms and conditions of booking say. Have to say that I'm very surprised that they can charge you for this.

Paying for damage is usual in holiday lets like these - lots of places abroad charge a damage deposit in advance.

The problem here is one of negotiation. If I were the owners I would accept £85 rather than have any further hassle. I think you should write to them saying that is your final offer. If they want more thay will have to take court action which, for the sake of 50 quid them I don't believe they will.

manitz, was it in the t and c that you had to clean the holiday cottage and strip the beds before you left? If not, then it is OOO for them to ask for extra money. I used to clean holiday cottages and you should have seen the state of them sometimes but it would never have occurred to us/the owners to expect otherwise.

And since you owned up to burning the rug, which you didn't have to do, obviously, I would suggest they are trying it on. I would do Cam suggests and say £85 is your final offer and you left the cottage in good order.

A bit cheeky about the dirt. Although I do leave it tidy I have never hoovered a holiday cottage!

This happened to me too recently!! after we left we got an email saying how dissapointed they were with the state we had left it in blah blah blah. i have stayed loads of places and had definitely done a reasonable ammount of cleaning (stripped bed, took out all reubbish, hoovered etc). probably spent about 1/2 a day of our week long holiday cleaning before we left. given taht it was a 5 star s/c place over the new year week and we had paid through the nose i did not feel inclined to sacrifice anymore of my holiday to cleaning. i told them this (in a noce way) and they accepted it. they had not asked for any money but if they had i would have refused. i think this mob have a bloomin cheek coming after you for more cash. i would not pay it. they can take a small claims if they want but i eally doubt that they would.

thank you all so much. My family and friends are so bored with my dilemma and none of them have actually had it happen to them or own/work in cottages that get rented out. I think its a cheek too and am going to try and find the ts and cs then offer a final amount. thought we'd want to go there again but they've really put me off.

Sounds pretty cheeky to me too. We rented an apartment for a week last month and although we left it 'tidy' I had no intention of cleaning it. We notified them in advance that we had a dog and had to pay £10 extra as a cleaning fee (we couldn't have done anything about the dog hair on the carpet anyway, as they hadn't left a hoover). I wiped down the kitchen surfaces and ran a j-cloth round the bath and washbasin, but nothing more. Also put the rubbish out.

They did ask that we could notify them of any breakages that occurred and as we cracked a (cheap) glass we left it and a pound coin on the table.

I'd offer them some money for the rug and tell them this is your best offer. And tell them that they've lost your future business.

Ok so copied below is the bit of the website which refers to this. I must admit that in the two twin rooms we had pushed beds together and hadn't put them back in place. but as stripping the beds was an extra bit i did can't those balance each other out??

Also I didn't clean out the cooker as it had foil in the bottom and i presumed that they would do that. I can't see anything that says I should have. Otherwise we did everything. I guess they'll have to expand on why they consider us so filthy.

Website says:
Tenants are liable to pay for any breakages or damage at replacement value.

5. Before tenant's arrival, the house will have been thoroughly cleaned, Tenants are requested to leave the house as far as possible in the condition that they would like to find it, i.e. all crockery, cutlery, kitchen utensils, cooker, refrigerator, baths and sinks in a clean condition and furniture in its proper place. The Owners reserve the right to make a charge for any tenant who leaves the house or equipment excessively dirty.

thanks redzuleika. I have just noticed that it says about the cooker (cleaned the top but not the oven). I don't think i'd have such an issue about thsi if they had either:

1. asked us for extra in advance as we are a family??!
2. mentioned it when we had a conversation 5days after we left. I feel like they've just bumped us on it and it really annoys me.

Also the ts and cs are a bit contradictory - if all cottages are 'thoroughly cleaned' then surely they don't expect guests to scrub. I mean I didn't wash the floors, just hoovered. Until I posted here I was thinking that maybe i am really slovenly and have lowstandards. Now I know you all have them too .

am going to finally write and send my letter tonight. x

Why would you have to pay extra for being a family?? Surely they expect the number of people for whom they have beds...??

I sure as hell wouldn't wash the floors. And I would take 'excessively dirty' to mean, say, mud left all over the floor/furniture from walking boots etc. They can't say that normal usage generates excessive dirt.

What disturbs me about their wanting it cleaned to such a standard is whether they're relying on each customer to clean for the next lot - and skimping on professional cleaning.

Yeah. I also don't think it's reasonable to pay more for a family but if holiday homes don't want families in their properties or regularly charge them more for so called 'excessive dirt' then they should either say not for young children or have an upfront extra charge rather than surprises at the end.

I just think they are (as my mil says) catchpennies who don't mind people renting their holiday cottages as long it's not obvious, nor interferes with the estate's pursuits. I think we might not have been genteel enough for them.

come the revolution eh?

For goodness sake - any holiday rental that didn't employ cleaners or whose owners didn't given a top to bottom scrub before new tenants came in would soon go out of business, in my opinion.

Yes, you should leave it looking tidy and reasonably clean, but to me that means just wiping surfaces over, a quick spritz round the kitchen and bathroom, and vacuuming the floor. PLus stripping the beds and putting the wahsing up away etc. NOT on hands and knees, scrubbing the floor. They (the owners) should expect to have to clean it properly before the next tentnat arrive. That's why you normally have to leave by 10 and the next tenants can't arrive till 3.

Re the damaged rug - did you pay a damages deposit? We normally pay about £100 for this and if something is damaged then you don't get it back (or you get it back minus the cost of replacement if it was something small and cheap).

Is it an owner-rented cottage or (as your post implies) part of a bigger operation? Either way their response to you is out of order and I would suggest they are trying it on.

This was a long time ago but I sent them a letter asking for a receipt of £150 rug from their supplier and told them I wouldn't pay the extra for the cleaning. Whaddya know the receipt is sent to me and is for £100. How cheeky is that?

Extremely cheeky. And bare-faced!

We're going away to a cottage next week. It all sounds very nice, but there's some clause about leaving the cottage in the state you found it (cleanliness wise) - which irritates me. I mean, I'll give it the once over - but I'm really not planning to clean it thoroughly for the next occupants.

Bizarrely, though, they don't charge extra for the dog - but reserve the right to bill you afterwards for extra cleaning. Which, since they don't take credit cards, I really don't see how they can achieve.

That's exactly the same as this place. I should have known, the documentation was banging on about new kitchen, installed at great expense blah blah. The laminate worktop was water damaged by sink and had clearly been installed 5-10 years ago (in a rented house) it was tired, the whole place was.

BUT i don't reckon we'd have had this trouble if my fool dh hadn't burnt the rug in the first place.

It really annoys me, the most you can expect with a holiday let is that there is no major damage and people don't leave food out - you know just up and leave without tidying up after breakfast or tread mud into the floor. I think they shoudl price for depreciation of assets, otherwise they are just creating bad pr headaches.

aaaaaargh. it's not flete is it? if so watch out.