Country Holidays / English Country Cottages - bad experience

[nappybrain]

We booked a cottage through Country Holidays back in March for a 3 night break - on arrival it was badly maintained and dirty (dead flies on windowsills...staples on the floor, torn paper lampshades..) They have eventually had the property inspected by their regional manager and have agreed that the property is "in need of some attention". After much complaining we have been offered a paltry £50 - not very impressive after dh and I both took time off work to go, the disappointment and stress of dealing with ds in a grubby house. They have been really slow and unhelpful about sorting it out. Just wondered if anyone else had had a bad holiday with them????

i booked my 30th birthday cottage through them - it was an excellent house in norfolk - really impressed - everyone had a great time - the owners were very nice, lots of wood for log fire in the shed, good music system, massive tv, that sort of thing - have booked another one for august for a uni reunion - sounds as if the owners were to blame not keeping it clean and tidy - and £50's a bit of an insult isn't? sorry you had a bad time, but possible you were just very unlucky with that particular house.

Do you mean Country Holidays or English Country Cottages? Not sure if they are the same company now, but they do still have different brochures with a different set of cottages. We have stayed in many lovely cottages with English Country Cottages, and just one which hadn't been cleaned to quite such a high standard as usual.

I think the £50 is a bit mean - maybe you could hint to them that you might write to Watchdog or something.

We had a bad time too with English Country Cottages (green brochure). Went to Corffe in Tawstock, Devon.

The owner and his 'partner' were downright rude to say the least, rooms were tiny and cost was over £500, he accused our kids of pooing in the pool when my kids are perfectly housetrained thankyou.

There was plenty of dust, cobwebs and dead flies too. Apparently all part of the charm!

We booked with Country Holidays which is part of the Holiday Cottages Group - English Country Cottages is another of their subsidiaries. I agree that the state of the house is the owners responsibility - however Country Holidays have been really unhelpful in dealing with our complaint and at the end of the day they advertised it and took our money - their brochure makes the usual song and dance about having fab cottages etc.....i am sure many are but this one was awful - and they dont seem that bothered by it. Their customer services dept are really hard to get hold of by phone and are usually stroppy!

That's quite a depressing story, Nappybrain. We've had a number of holiday homes through CH and while the standards of furnishing have varied, none of them has been dirty. I do get the impression from some that they are furnished with cast-offs that the owners would otherwise take to the tip!

I now only consider cottages if they have a Tourist Board key rating. That seems to be more of a guarantee of quality and we haven't had a bad one under that scheme.

We took a holiday about six years ago with Country Holidays. Never again. Dirty dirty cottage, ancient heating system sounded like it was going to explode, lumpy mattresses, ancient and unhygienic cot and highchair. The picture in the brochure was of the outside only, and no star rating. Alarm bells should have rung but it was the first time we had booked a cottage. We have learnt our lesson. We always enquire about star rating (3* absolute minimum required) and make sure we see interior shots. We have used English Country Cottages and they've been fine.

Went to Cornwall with Country Holidays last September and no problem. Accommodation very adequate althoug nothing to get excited about.

A few of you have referred to the star rating and this seems like a good thing to check up on. Will bear that in mind. The cottage we went to had a video tour of it on the Country Holidays website and it looked fine - must have been shot some time ago......the highchair in our cottage was filthy too and when we moved it there was a pile of sand under it - apparently that was still there when Country Holidays finally went to inspect the property although they have now "asked the owner that it be removed" !! We came back with some great photos of this place - including the dead flies on the windowsills, very mouldy shower curtain and bathroom carpet, numerous cobwebs............it was gorgeous! I definitely wouldnt book with them again as they just dont seem to care about how shoddy and dirty this particular cottage was.....it has taken them weeks to go and look at it and in the meantime I assume it is still being booked out. Even after the inspection they havent taken any real action as far as I can see - eg bathroom carpet was gross - black mould in quite a few places - and Country Holidays comment is "bathroom carpet marked due to previous water leak"!!!! Words fail me....