Holiday Lettings www.holidaylettings.co.uk

Don't use this site- booked an advertised holiday for summer 2024 for Henley house in Weymouth - put in my card details to be told I had to wait for the owner to confirm - Then got a reply to say that the price indicated by the booking system does not represent the likely cost !! ie...they are not accepting bookings for 2024 as they will be putting their costs up ... WHY advertise it at all then ??? Very disappointed and will not use this site again.

Not happy that I have put my card details in .. they say my card will not be charged ???

Do not book this apartment you have been warned: Apartment Jean Jaures 1 Massena. Promenade Anglais, Nice.

Do not expect or trust Holiday Lettings to help you.

This apartment had not been cleaned. Mould in the shower and on the kitchen tap. Cockroaches in the kitchen. An electrical socket hanging off the wall in the kitchen with bare wires showing. Cobwebs on the ceilings. Handles falling off drawers. Water leaking from the ceiling into the apartment. Holes in the bedsheets. Noise every night from outside the master bedroom from revellers till 4/5 in the morning. A brothel 25 metres away. Complaints made to the agency office in person 3 times. They came to clean after the second complaint 6 days later. Although they told Holiday Letting that they came the next day after the initial complaint. They are liars, as I have proof with dated photographs. Then they offered us a derisory offer of compensation and Holiday Lettings only offered a discount on their commission as compensation if we booked another holiday with them. Fat chance.

Don't trust their cancelation policy.

I had to cancel a stay after realising our flights would miss the last ferry to the island we were staying on.

I cancelled with in 2 hours of making the booking and received no refund whatsoever. What's more they only took the payment for the stay out *after* I had cancelled.

I rang up and they firstly said it was up to the individual owner to refund the booking fee not them. Then after pressing them they seemed to change their story and said it was because the booking was made 59 days beforehand and they policy only covers 60 (even though they were fine with taking the deposit after it had already been cancelled).

Bottom line is they treat their customers awfully.

Avoid.

We have been customers with Holiday Lettings and then Trip Advisor for almost 12 years now. Initially we were very please with the volume of enquiries we received from Holiday Lettings and we felt that we were getting value for money. However ever since Trip Advisor arrived on the scene things have deteriorated. We have three properties so we are paying them well in excess of £2,000 each year but the customer service you receive is poor to say the least. They are obviously a very large company and they do not care about customer service. We have had many problems with emails which were not being delivered to enquirers when they were routed via the Trip Advisor web site. When we did try to complain, we were given the royal run around and they always say that they are going to "escalate" your complaint but nothing gets done. Recently we have felt under pressure to move on to their "commission only / pay per booking plan". They have emailed us and even telephoned us supposedly in response to our "request" when we have never expressed any interest in moving to this system. We have noticed a very clear fall in enquiries in recent months and it becomes apparent that little or no prioritisation is actually taking place now for people like us on the "old fashioned" system of payment. It would appear that they are desperate to get owners on to the new system because they know that they can make much more money that way. When the time comes for our renewals we will certainly not be staying with Trip Advisor.

AVOID, AVOID, AVOID - as an owner

As an owner I have been with 'HL'for 6-7 years and TripAdvisor has changed the format, entirely to their advantage, to the point where I have had enough - many owners are looking elsewhere.

I was a customer when 'holiday lettings' ran the site - before TripAdvisor and their greed ruined it. Specifically I find the complete lack of communication channels for owners unacceptable. Then the imposition, without notice, of a 15% booking fee that has led to an 70% drop in bookings for us for 2019. We already pay a 3% + vat charge. Then all monies are held until 5 days after client books in. A deposit paid June 2018 will only be paid to me in mid September 2019 - what other business would dare do this? I know - other USA owned giant booking site who put greed before service.

TripAdvisor has turned 'Holiday Lettings' into an evil, cowardly and greedy goliath.

They should consider:

Step 1: establish a line of communication for owners - one that is accessible and accountable - neither a non-existent tel.no. nor an email address that never replies.

Step 2: pay owners - those with an exemplary record of replying to bookings, with excellent reviews, who have only been praised by customers - on time. Owners such as myself.

Step 3: curtail your greed and abolish the hidden and unfair booking fee imposed without warning that diminishes our bookings.

You will not do any of this as you are consumed by greed - it's the American way.

I have outlined the details below but here is a summary of what to expect from Holiday Lettings: emails ignored as standard, hours spent on hold on a premium rate line at your own cost, a fight and a long wait to get your damage deposit back, customer service team reading from a prepared script (they are of course very sympathetic to your problems and understand your frustration but nothing gets done) no escalation to manager if you are unhappy with how your complaint is being handled - there seems to be one supervisor in the call centre but you will never get to speak to anyone more senior. They also never call you back when they say they will - they repeatedly claim that they tried calling but it went through to a voicemail which is complete rubbish as I do not even have voicemail on my phone. It's just another story on top of all the other stories to fob you off. In all, I've never dealt with a company with such appauling customer service. It is obvious that they make the whole process as frustrating and ineffective as possible so that you give up the fight and go away. Just in case you need it, the quickest way to get the damages deposit back is to contact your credit card company who will launch an investigation and that seems to do the trick.

We booked a holiday rental in Portugal through Holiday Lettings for the dates 20-29 August 2018. Before our holiday even started, we contacted Holiday Lettings by email on 16 Aug to inform them that the owner was requesting that we paid the £400 damages deposit in cash on arrival. However, we noticed that a previous traveller reviewed the property on 5 Aug to say that their deposit has not been repaid and the owner had ignored all of his emails. This traveller believed that they had been robbed. We did not want to pay the deposit in cash and have the same problem getting it repaid as the reviewer of 5 Aug. We requested urgent advice but there was no response from Holiday Lettings. In the end we had to spend the day phoning their premium rate number at our cost to sort it out the day before we were due to travel which was very stressful and time consuming. In the end we paid €400 as a damages deposit to Holiday Lettings rather than the sum in cash to the owner on arrival.

As soon as we arrived on holiday, we experienced problems and tried to get assistance from the owner but he made no attempt to resolve the problems with our stay. There were no chopping boards - the owner told us to cut up on the stone worktop but not to bang too hard as this will damage the stone. We didn't really want to do this because it might jeopardise our damages deposit. In all other rental properties we have stayed in, chopping boards have been provided.

There was only one wine glass - we were a family of 5 adults who wanted to enjoy a glass of wine with dinner on holiday and this is not acceptable. The owner said that wine glasses had been broken by previous guests and he would not replace them.

There were only 2 sunbeds - as above, we were 5 adults. 3 sunbeds are pictured in the photos of the listing of the property. Again the owner said that sunbeds had been broken by previous guests and are not being replaced.

When we arrived, we found the BBQ dirty and full of ash from the previous guest. The coffee machine was also full of coffee which had gone mouldy. Again, this had not been cleaned. We had to clean both the BBQ and the coffee machine before we could use them.

There was an ants nest behind the couch in the lounge. The owner told us to use ant spray but the ants still kept coming.

There were also faulty items such as a wall socket on the landing, wires hanging from the ceiling in the bedrooms which looked dangerous and a faulty shower screen in the ensuite. The swimming pool also had several tiles missing and sharp cracked stones which was a real worry because we had 4 small children. There was also mould growing in and around the tiles in the pool which was very unpleasant. We contacted Holiday Lettings every day on holiday to ask for assistance. At first, they agreed to not release our funds in payment to the owner until the issues were resolved but after a couple of days, they informed us that they had looked into our case and had decided that Payment Protection did not apply and the funds were released to the owner. After this point, Holiday Lettings stopped communicating with us and proceeded to ignore all of our emails requesting assistance. We feel very let down that we experienced these problems on holiday and were not given any help from the lettings agent.

We feel that the property was described as 'luxury', 'new' and 'well equipped' and we paid a lot of money to stay there but it was not as described. Therefore, we feel that a refund and an apology is required because we did not go on holiday for problems and complaints. When we returned from holiday, we lodged a complaint including supporting photographic evidence with Holiday Lettings. However, the owner immediately lodged a complaint against us on 31 August claiming that we had stained the couch and €200 of our damages deposit would not be refunded as a result. We absolutely refuted this fake claim and had to wait 48 hours for the owner to provide evidence before our damages deposit was returned to us. After this time expired, I had to constantly chase Holiday Lettings for our deposit to be returned with hours spent writing emails (all of which were ignored) and on the phone again at a substantial cost to me. After a week of chasing, I contacted my credit card company to investigate the matter and the deposit was finally returned to us on 11 September.

Holiday Lettings still have not responded to my complaint about the property being substandard and I feel that as the lettings agent, they bear some responsibility to ensure that complaints are investigated and customers are reimbursed if a property is not as advertised.

I would like others to be made aware of this awful customer service so that they do not have to suffer such treatment when booking a holiday. I will never use them again - I have booked several holiday rentals through Owners Direct and never had a problem. I will now pursue my claim through the credit card company because I have had no response from Holiday Lettings. And for Tripadvisor to own this company, they should be ashamed of themselves as they are taking complete advantage of people's trust in the reviews and recommendations which come from this site

We stayed at a below par villa in Spain and gave in 3 out of 5 stars and it was a balanced review. We wondered why all others had given it 5 stars and were a bit suspicious of only 6 reviews in 6 years. Ours has still not been published and it is long beyond their time scales. I suspect it is because it is not favourable and we would not recommend the property. No response to our e-mails to Holiday Lettings. Would never use them again.

I tried to book several different properties but when I checked with the alleged owners the price was far greater than advertised for them dates.Please avoid !don’t waste time and effort booking with them.

stayed with friends for a long weekend,very comfortable beds/sofas Very clean and plenty of space .Everything we needed was there, plus handy coop shop on ground floor.Although on a fairly busy road ,we were at the back so very quiet.Close to beach and shops ,what more do you want.?

Holiday leettings ( Trip advisor) seem totally unwilling to help us wdith the issues that we experienced. We would have thought that under stanard consumer protection that we would have had some reimbursementas a result of these issues.

We had some initial issues with the booking not going through properly, however, this was dealt with.

Our main concern was the total lack of help in resolving some quite serious issues with the standard of the place we stayed in. When sending emails questions were not answered and the response came back each time. You are not eligible for payment protection, contact the owner directly. Given that the owner had been most unhelpful during our stay, this was not going to work. Also we could not even leave a rewiew on the property since the owner had removed it from site and it was up for sale.

Issues with property included bare wires on extractor fan, no catches on window so could not be opened, during heat wave, owner told us to be creative! Fire escape in heap in cupboard with no instructions. Sofa propped up on books, cushions ripped, garden furniture falling apart, carpet not hoovered properly, toothpaste stains on dresser, cracks in kitchen floor tiles and water running down wall from leaking shower!!

I would NEVER book through this company again, I paid in full 7 months before the stay, which meant I could not use my credit card to help either and got no help at all.