Karen L
May 2022
On arrival at The Little Paddock we were most impressed with the location, the property and the facilities, however the property proved that you should most definitely not judge a book by the cover. Issues in the holiday included:
• The main house had two showers available, potentially to host 6 people, with a further double room and shower in the annex. Sufficient indeed provided of course you didn’t have the issues that we had. Shower 1 could not be turned up above tepid, shower 2 could not be turned down from hot, fine if you like a hot shower – not fine for a pre-teen. Shower 3 in the annex had enough hot water for one person.
This was reported to the landlord after the first night when we discovered the issue. We were advised this had only been reported to the landlord on the day of our arrival – what a lie – given that there was a review of the property from the previous month, visible on the Sykes website reporting the exact same issue.
• The water pressure was ridiculous, water either spurted from the tap or dribbled.
• Halfway through the holiday the boiler failed, leaving us with no hot water at all, not that we could have showered anyway, but we could now no longer even wash, in addition the temperature of the cottage fell below 16 degrees – official guidance for workplaces is that the temperature should not fall below 16, so to have it fall that low in a cottage that’s marketed with a 5 star rating is absolutely disgusting. We then spent over 3 hours trying to contact the owner and sykes to get this actioned.
• One shower between 6 not being enough, the bathroom in the annex that we were forced to share (by no means a 5 star facility), has a faulty lock. Resulting in my son being trapped in a bathroom for almost an hour – sykes are aware of this as we did call to try to get help. Fortunately he was able to use the cotton buds in the vanity kit provided as a makeshift lockpick however had he not been able to get out, with no spare key or ability to get in to the building we would have been stuck.
• The hot tub was cloudy – not unclean, but not encouraging.
• The property has maintenance issues, with peeling paint in places, it looks tired and in the dining room a patch of plaster missing – are we to be blamed for that too???
• We were offered £150 compensation due to having no heating or hot water. We have not received that, although given that we had two children with us I think £150 is a pathetic offer for a property with no heating at this time of year. School classrooms cannot fall below 18 degrees but it’s acceptable for us to house two children below 16 degrees???
In short I left the property incredibly disappointed, and am now left completely disgusted with the treatment and attitude of the owners, who had clearly failed to action a repair of the facilities reported to them in March and now accuse visitors of damage that they did not inflict.