“Feel cheated and would not bother with this place if you have a”
My husband and I visited this property with our 8 month old baby for a week. It turns out this was an issue for the landlady as they later on reported to Sykes cottages( through which we booked this cottage) that they were 'never told that we were coming with a baby'. Well, I just think that's a tad ridiculous given that neither the online booking form on sykes expects you to list guests under 2 years of age (it specifically asks you to exclude infants when listing the number of guests) nor does the property specifically forbid children. So I can't see how or why we are supposed to report a baby guest!
We contacted the owners, as instructed, 2 days before our visit. The landlady said we could get there earlier than the scheduled check in time of 3pm and that they were very relaxed about timings unless they had back to back guests at the property. At that point I mentioned we might try and get there early as we we travelling with our baby girl. So yes, she was made aware during the course of the conversation that we were going with a baby. But she never once questioned us either before or during our visit or during our telephone calls during the week.
Anyway, the property seemed very well maintained on arrival. There were a lot of extras in terms of firewood, complimentary shampoos, soaps, cleaning agents, books, music cds etc, which was good. However on one of the days, mid way through a shower the water flow from the power shower suddenly stopped, which was a pain as one can imagine. the landlady was slow to respond when we texted her about the problem. So we ended up carrying hot water from the kitchen downstairs to the bath on the first floor to bathe our baby. It turned out that the fuse had tripped.
On the second occasion the bath water suddenly turned cold from hot. So the water in the bath turned uncomfortably cold as we could not get the water to get warm again. It turned out that we had to leave the boiler on for longer than it had been 'set' for. So although the charges included electricity and fuel, the landlady had 'set' the boiler and heating to come on only for 2 hours each in the morning and evening. It took us a while to figure this out and we were not happy about it, given that the booking amount included fuel and electricity. Also not having a warm place with no water in the shower, with a little baby is hard to manage.
We didn't sit in the garden chair facing the river as there were two nasty lumps of dog poo, possibly from the previous guests. The cleaners had not cleaned this and it was stinking. We also had to keep the kitchen window shut as a result, lest the stench would drift into the kitchen.
The worst shock came after we left the property. We received a nasty message fom the cleaning company about the 'horrible mess' we had left the property in and that there would be a charge. It was quite a shock to us as we had spent all morning cleaning all the vessels in the kitchen, arranging things and emptying garbage bins. yes, linen etc was a bit out of place and the place looked lived- in. We had also not cleaned the ash from the fire place. We of course did not leave it like a spotless hotel room. But it was not disgustingly dirty as it was made out to be. the landlady had an issue that we had used bath emollient oil for our infant who suffers from eczema. So she made us pay extra charges to pay her cleaners. I thought you hired cleaners to clean up a place before the next guest arrived. But in this case, clearly that is the job of the guests! So I wonder, why bother going on vacation?!! Might as well stay at home and scrub and clean after yourself!
Basically, don't bother visiting if you have a small baby. And if you do visit this property take a mop and loads of cleaning detergent. Ensure you scrub the place clean and leave it gleaming!!! Don't assume that the charges you pay include cleaning as you may end up getting charged extra for not leaving it spotlessly clean for the next guest to arrive.
- Sandhya S, June 2012
