Woohoo - I have a greenie!! <ew> Many thanks to all who helped me shed my whitie status!!
Woohoo - I have a greenie!! <ew> Many thanks to all who helped me shed my whitie status!!
Member since:04.02.2008
Reviews:11
Members who trust:1
My husband I have used Welcome Cottages five times now to book a week long holiday in the UK for us and our two dogs. We have stayed in four lovely places, but the last place was rather grim, so I thought I would share our experience so others can try and avoid doing what we did!
Welcome Cottages lets properties in Ireland, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Croatia. The properties are owned by private owners who let them through Welcome Cottages, with the company taking a fee for this service.
The website, www.welcomecottages.com is very easy to use, and will allow a property search to be carried out based on the number of people in the party, the dates accommodation is required and the area the property is in. A detailed search will allow other criteria to be specified, such as whether a pet friendly property is required.
The properties are graded for quality with 'Beautiful' being the top accolade, followed by 'Lovely', then 'Good Quality' and then 'Comfortable'. When booking our properties, I always looked at Lovely or Beautiful properties as after all,
who wants to go on holiday to a place that's not as nice as your own home, right?! Indeed we did stay in some lovely places - a quant cosy tumbledown cottage in North Wales with fantastic views over the sea, an enormous brand newly converted barn in Scotland, a tiny rustic cottage in the Yorkshire Dales all on its own (v Wuthering Heights!) and a fisherman's cottage on the coast in Cornwall.
When it came to booking our fifth cottage, I had left it rather late in the year, and so combing the website for pet friendly properties of Lovely or Beautiful status, yielded nothing, so I hesitantly decided to have a look at Good Quality properties. I found one in North Yorkshire which looked good. I carefully examined all the photos and the reviews of the property and it looked good, so I rang Welcome Cottages, paid my £24 booking fee and made the booking.
So at the allotted time, we all piled into the car and off we went from London to North Yorkshire.
When we first got there, we didn't really notice the extent of the vileness of the property, so just dumped our suitcases and went to the local supermarket to fill up the freezer for the week. When we returned, we found that the freezer that was listed in the property details wasn't present and there wasn't even an ice box in the fridge. Rather annoying as we'd bought a load of freezer food which ended up mostly being binned. The dishwasher and the downstairs toilet that were listed in the property details were missing too. Not a big deal, but slightly irritating the property was not as described.
However, as darkness fell, the full horror of the place became apparent. I went into the living room for the first time and switched on the light. Switching on the light illuminated swathes of cobwebs that were festooning the ceiling like macabre garlands, in every direction. It was like a Hammer House of Horror film set. Having successfully suppressed a scream, I shut the curtains and was enveloped in clouds of dust. OMG. We ventured upstairs and switched on a bedroom light. Same garlands of cobwebs stretching for metres in all directions across the ceiling. I gingerly peeled the duvet off the bed to check the sheets. As I expected - stained sheets. Yuck.
When we left the bedroom, I noticed the landing light had a number of dead flies hanging from it and the venetian blind hadn't been cleaned for years.
We huddled on the sofa to sleep that night as it seemed the least filthy place. Anyway, you get the picture - I could go on and on and on, about the clapped out, communist style bare sticks of furniture etc but I will revert to trying to make this a review rather than a complaint.
I rang Welcome Cottages in the morning and explained, and to give them credit, they were very helpful and tried to find us alternative accommodation straight away but there wasn't any nearby, so in the end we went back home to London. I wrote and complained to Welcome Cottages and they refunded the cost of the holiday plus our petrol money.
So, the lesson has been to always book accommodation that is graded 'Beautiful' or 'Lovely' and be very careful if considering booking accommodation that is 'Good Quality' or 'Comfortable'.
I've given Welcome Cottages three stars, because four out of five properties have been wonderful and they were very understanding and easy to deal with when I made my complaint. However, on the other hand, after I had made my complaint and sent them lots of accompanying photographs showing how awful this property was, it was still graded as 'Good Quality' the next year and seemed to still be in the same condition from the photos on the website. In addition, the property was still being advertised as having the freezer, dishwasher and downstairs toilet, which it didn't have.
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Oct 28th, 2009
very helpful by (100%):
