erictrotter
October 2012
Stayed with a group of friends including children.The owner demanded £100 cash as security deposit on first day, without any details of what this covered (or a receipt). When we left the property it took over two weeks to receive a cheque back, and a deduction had been made for an item that was already broken on our arrival. The owner refused to even take our calls or return our texts and Sykes holidays were no help whatsoever.
Be warned,DO NOT GIVE THIS MAN YOUR MONEY, there are plenty of other holiday cottages that do not have this policy, choose one of them. The owner behaved outrageously and we have no way of getting our money back,
Other points: the owners son took upon himself to shout at one of the children who dared to cross an invisible line into the owners garden (she was in fact in the 'shared paddock area')
We were told to keep the noise down (it was a 12 person family house in summer with outdoor bbq)
On the last night we were informed (by text) that we were expected to take all our rubbish and recycling to the recycling centre, a 45 minute round trip) before departure at 10.00am The oven would not work on the first night, so we had to order an expensive 12 person takeaway, the owner arrived the following day and showed us how to make it work (switch was broken) and said, "I should really leave a note attached to explain that",
On last day when confronted with all these queries we were told by the owner that we "should have referred to the guest manual", which (by the owner's wife's admission) the house did not have.
If you choose to stay here, good luck, because I do not know how you will ever prove that the items allegedly broken in the house were not down to you. It is our opinion that the owner sought to recondition the house at our expense.We paid a lot of money to rent this house and we would never rent a holiday home from this owner again. We have given him many opportunities to clarify why part of our deposit was retained, but now after 2 months we have given up and this honest review is our only way of expressing our disappointment.