Holiday cottage cancelled, no refund, no option to reschedule

[Whereareyourshoes]

We had booked a week at a cottage at a site in Northumberland for the end of June and had paid in full. As they will still be closed due to restrictions at that time we asked to reschedule to a date when they are open. They have refused to allow us to reschedule saying we need to claim on travel insurance for any refund.

We had another booking at Easter time for a cottage in North Yorkshire and were able to reschedule to next year no problem.

Am interested in people’s experiences when they have booked cottages directly with owners. Has anyone else with a booking while restrictions are in place had a request to reschedule refused?

Thank you!

I had this with Suffolk Cottage Holidays/The Origanl Cottage Company. 4 months of point blank refusing to give a refund even when threatened with small claims court. I took out a dispute with Barclays, they still refused and dragged out the investigation.
Then 48hours after I spammed all their social media pages saying what a disgusting thieving company they are... suddenly I get my refund.
I also reported them to trading standards and the CMA, who recently got Sykes to backtrack and issue refunds.

I would look to leave a factual review of your experience with them on other sites then if trip advisor won't take it. Bad luck. Hope your section 75 claim succeeds.

My parents are having the same with a very expensive week we had booked for May half term.
There was a clause in the booking contract that they had to have insurance and the owner (it was booked direct as he was between agencies) has simply told them to contact the insurance and keep him updated...
Surely the insurance will not pay.
We would actually be happy to potentially defer to next May half term but those dates are not released yet and he is with a new agency for next year so it’s more complicated .

It's so shortsighted of these holiday let owners to act like this really. People have long memories with this kind of thing.

I really hope you get a good outcome OP.

I'd name and shame them everywhere I could!

If you paid on credit card and the service wasn’t provided then you can claim via that route.

Definitely claim via your credit card for services not provided.