“The cottage on our arrival was ridiculously hot, there were radiators turned up to the highest setting in every room, which was odd because it wasn’t cold outside.”
This made the cottage far too hot for about 24 hours and ruined our first nights sleep. The doors to the cottage don’t close easily. I couldn’t close the front or back door, both required my husband to do it with force. The wood in the doors has warped due to the damp and age of the cottage. There were small brown moths in every room, mainly around the windows, but also on the walls. We had to dispose of 50+ moths throughout our stay, it was horrible. Every morning we’d wake up to more moths in every room. There was also a lot of spiders, but this wasn’t as much of a problem as the moths, because they don’t fly about your head. The beds and pillows were uncomfortable and made sleeping difficult. But what really spoiled a good nights sleep was that there were no curtains to draw across the windows to keep the rooms dark. The light was streaming through some very old blinds. One of the blinds in the main bedroom had a broken pelmet when we arrived, the bits of which were on the tall drawer unit in the corner. We didn’t spend a great deal of time in the cottage because of the issues mentioned above, but if we had wanted to, the one sofa, angled oddly away from the tv wouldn’t have made things easy for my family to gather around anyway. We feel really mislead by the photos on the website and the description of the cottage. With the Smeg fridge freezer and the smart kitchen worktop and units, you expect a little bit of comfort and luxury and what you get isn’t like that at all. The floors were dirty, so we had to walk around in crocs all the time. Some of the other cottages around ours had very obviously had money and time spent on them to make them far more acquit accommodation. We looked online when we got home and found that for the same cost as your cottage we could have stayed in far nicer places and so we feel really let down. We actually came back a day early on Friday because our daughter was so upset at night, not wanting to sleep in a room full of moths and spiders. It’s the first family holiday we’ve been able to afford in two years and the only holiday we’ll have this year so the disappointment is huge. We now need a holiday to recover from the holiday, for all the wrong reasons. Really we feel we should get some compensation, but in this day and age we won’t hold our breath.
Thank you for your feedback - we are sorry that your stay wasn’t enjoyable. We wish you had raised all of these concerns at the time instead of asking us for compensation after you’d left and then posting a negative review when you were refused. As you can see this is the first bad review we have received in more than ten years.
I have addressed a few points below:
Heating - sorry you were uncomfortable with the temperature. The summer has been very unpredictable. In this instance the key thing is to just adjust the heating to your liking. The thermostat is clearly marked.
Pillows - It’s very difficult choosing the right pillow for everyone so we have a selection of both feather and synthetic (firm and soft) to choose from in the wardrobe. I would suggest you simply chose one you preferred.
Doors - The doors can unfortunately swell when they are wet. We have had someone out to resolve the issue following some heavy rain.
Blind - this was broken during your stay and has now been fixed.
Moths - we have been staying at the property since your departure and have certainly not had the same experience as you. Moths are normal for this time of year though so we will keep an eye on it.
Cleaning - This is the first poor feedback we have had regarding cleaning and have addressed this with our cleaner and we expect that this issue doesn’t arise again.
All of these issues could have been very easily resolved by our management team who are on call 24-hours a day and would have been happy to help.
Property Owner
