“Not what we expected from description.”
It’s a lovely location, and the property looks nice, walking in it looked great. However, it lacked a lot when looking closer. It is advertised as no pets, great, as we have a pet fur allergy in the family, and that point made us pick it over another property. On arrival we were pestered by a cat, that was very familiar to the place, trying to get in as we were. It didn’t stop. Every-tine we came and went it tried to get in. As others have stated there are annex doors, locked, in the kitchen area. This was not mentioned in description. The owners reply acknowledged these doors. However we were aware somebody was in there, could hear them, lights on and off, as well as their rubbish in the bins, so clearly being lived in. It was very uncomfortable to know someone was just a door away, we wouldn’t have booked if we had known this. There is also an exterior door in the children’s bedroom, hidden behind the curtains. With our son being autistic with issues of doors being locked, security, he was not happy and didn’t sleep because of all of this. I would consider the property in breach of contract, it’s not what we thought we had booked. We were out for a couples of days so didn’t spend time sitting on the sofa, until Christmas Day. We noticed the removable sofas covers were very dirty. We also noticed after our daughter started with streaming eyes, itching skin and sneezing that there was cat fur on the arms of the chair and sofas. This for her made Christmas awful. The kitchen looked good until you looked closer. The kettle had a fur coat inside, desperately needs descaling. We couldn’t make a hot drink as the fur came out with the water. The toaster was pretty burned out and rusty inside, so not even a slice of toast could be done. The pots and pans in the drawers, what little there was of them, were mouldy. The fridge has issues as it is frosting up. We had planned to cook a good size roast for Christmas dinner, but we couldn’t as kitchen was poorly equipped. Christmas Day ruined. The washer dryer has an error, it wouldn’t allow anytime over 12 minutes drying time, so was useless to us. The property was generally unclean, not hoovered, dusted, questionable if bedding was changed as there were marks on them. Dirt and hair in the bath, dead bugs in the shower, conkers in with the 2 toilet rolls. Very poor. The description states fuel provided, which as the only fuel user is the fire,that should be logs etc, there was only 2 that were damp and small. Empty fire lighter packets. The property was cold as heating didn’t warm it at all. As others have said, there were no instructions for anything. The welcome pack lacked anything required. There was no means to contact owners, which could have helped ease some issues. The issues of cat fur on sofas, needed the change over clean to be much better, incase a guest let it in, as some from reviews suggest. Perhaps state the cat is not to be let in. Too late for us. our Christmas was cut short as we left on Boxing Day after trying to contact Sykes to report issues and try to resolve, but Sykes didn’t answer or respond, even to the emergency contact. We had no choice but to leave as our daughter’s allergy was getting worse. Since leaving Sykes has been useless, infact they are making it worse and pushing us to take legal action to resolve as they have been unreasonable. The property has great potential as it’s a nice location and building, but needs extra work to maintain it as a whole and concentrate on the details of being fully cleaned and providing full information, a welcome pack of maybe milk, bread, biscuits etc etc would have be nice.
