Kate M
August 2019
“Disappointingly misleading description of Stylish, spacious, quality accommodation. Would be much more suited to 7; needs some TLC, attention to detail and a good clean. Whilst the Wifi issue I detail below is hopefully unlikely to affect others, I think it only fair to mention the response of the owner when I emailed to ask her to consider a small compensatory refund and to give feedback on the property (price of property is now halved and on sale which feels more of an insult). I received no reply at all from my email or follow up text. The owner didn’t even do me the courtesy of sending an apology or acknowledging our feedback. It felt very much like she had my money and was not interested if there were any issues with the accommodation or if we’d enjoyed our stay. The Wifi was down for our entire stay. Obviously this wasn’t the owners fault however in an area with extremely limited mobile signal this significantly affected our time away. After trying to get the Wifi up and running the owners last contact with us was a short line to tell us midway through our week, “they [BT] are sending a new hub which will arrive tomorrow”. No hub arrived, we let the owner know but she didn’t contact us again. We couldn’t book anything online (Alton Towers being more expensive on the door), look at places to go, at menu’s or book restaurants. This meant that for the week our 10 people party had to drive round in a 3 car convoy looking for signal to be able to discuss where we could eat or go. Although I recognise this is a first world problem it did significantly affect the enjoyment of our holiday. I would challenge the description of this property as Stylish, spacious, quality accommodation as this was disappointingly misleading. • The doors of 2 of the bedrooms upstairs do not shut, limiting privacy. • There is no mirror in the downstairs bedroom (small point but links into quality). • The blinds on the dorma windows don’t block out any light so they don’t seem to serve a purpose? Blackouts would be better especially as this would be the obvious choice for a children’s room . • A double and single bed are camp-bed style and not very comfortable. The 2 people sharing the double roll into the middle all night and end up squashed together. • Only 2 out of 4 bedrooms have wardrobes to hang clothes and the 2 wardrobes provided are so short I couldn’t hang a knee length dress without it gathering on the floor. It should be standard in all rooms to have an adult size wardrobe and a few drawers. • The sofa and table would benefit from rubber feet as the slightest movement and they slide all over. • There are only 7 mugs so not everyone could have a hot drink at the same time. • General cleanliness was lacking throughout (cobwebs in many windows and dust on ornaments) but the worst was the kitchen, I had to wash up a lot of the pots and pans before we could use them. • The size of the dishwasher meant that we ended up having to wash up after meals because we couldn’t fit much in; this is not a dishwasher for 10 people. As there was no drainer we couldn’t leave pots to dry, resulting in meal times being more work than they needed to be. • The dinner table does just fit 10 people round but is a squeeze (there’s no leg or elbow room and once those at the end are seated they are there for the duration of the meal otherwise everyone has to get out to let them out) • It was pointed out in a September 2018 review that there are no doors in the fridge, there still aren’t so there’s nowhere to put open bottles. The fridge itself was just too small for 10 people and half of it is freezer, when it would make more sense to have more fridge than freezer. (Though I recognise this is personal preference and may not apply to everyone). • Space to hang wet towels for 10 people is very limited and there is nowhere to put wet coats, clothes or shoes when you come in from the rain, we had to make a makeshift clothes dryer out of the fireguard. A few more hooks on the back of doors and a foldaway clothes dryer would help. Overall we thought Alveton just wasn’t ‘spacious’ or designed for 10 people and had extremely limited storage for that many people. When compared to other properties we’ve stayed in it simply wasn’t value for money. I’d give the accommodation 3.5 out of 5 if it was a maximum of 7 people and given a good clean, unfortunately I’d only give the owner 1 out of 5 for her lack of interest in improving her property or caring if the occupants had a pleasant experience.”