We've lost about £600 - is there anything I can do??

[berri]

We've just come back from 11 days in Tenerife, we booked a villa through Owners Direct in Fanabe and after 3 days had to move out because the place was overrun with cockroaches!!

The pool steps were also badly cracked and my husband cut his foot, and also all the rooms had the sockets and wires hanging out of the walls - not great for a 1 year old crawler!

So we had to move to a new villa.....

We called the owner of the villa and she said she'd come round to see what the problems were but she didn't arrive and we haven't heard from her since, despite leaving loads of messages. We've even still got all the sets of keys as we had no choice but to leave when she hadn't turned up!

So basically we just want the money back for the nights which we didn't stay in the villa, which I think is more than fair considering the state it was in - this adds up to about £570.

Owners Direct have been useless and just said that money issues have to be sorted out privately, but what can we do if she won't return our calls and all the money has already been paid upfront!

I feel sick at the thought of losing so much money

Please let me know if you can think of any avenues I can take.

Did you pay by credit card? It might be worth contacting your cc provider?

I know this is a bit after the event, but did you take out the free guarantee that ODirect have on their website?
I rent out my holiday house through them, and bad owners make me so cross. It is a bit of a lottery choosing a house.
For the future a good owner should be helpful all the way through the booking process. I like to have a lot of contact pre holiday, so that I know what sort of people are going into my house, and also to reassure my guests.
I would hang on to the keys until she contacts at least.
( and also try the CC providor,although if she is like me, you will have paid direct)

Re Owners Direct, tell them it is not so much a money issue as a Health and Safety issue, they should not be advertising a house not fit for purpose.

Thanks for your replies, the cc company were useless at best, pretty annoying to be honest! But expected from Natwest...

I'm not sure about the guarantee, which makes me think my husband didn't or he would have mentioned it, I'll check though.

It just seems so unfair that you have to pay upfront for accommodation which is just completely not as described, and there's nothing you can do about it - so wrong!