I stayed in a cottage / barn conversion in a hamlet in Worcestershire in May this year. I chose to pay more as I needed a dog-friendly property and I wanted and therefore expected a certain standard for the higher price. My ‘fruit’ cottage was not as the fancy photos showed on Sykes website and was disappointing. Half the ceiling lights didn’t work including outside ones and sockets were defective. The bathroom was in need of an overhaul… just horrible deterioration. When I arrived there were x6 piles of dog debris on the small front ‘lawn’. Owners’ kids constantly hassling the next door hired cottage social services ‘ward of the state’ kid (carers felt unable to tell them to go away) & playing noisy football in the small front garden and literally aiming for and smashing up the picket fence…. No parental control whatsoever. Actually the owner breaching their responsibilities in the T&Cs for the hirer. Ground weeds everywhere, plant pots bare or just hosting weeds, not as marketing photos showed… huge wooden box in kitchen of complementary drinks and biscuits - BUT all a year out of date… After I gave an honest review on the Sykes website about the lack of maintenance and minimal changeover checks and the owners’ noisy kids, the owner actually had the gall to reply via account messenger and ignored all points made BUT proceeded to review me!!! Also very naively declared that they had taken covert photos of me grooming my little dogs in a supposedly ‘private’ rear courtyard and sent them to Sykes - claiming I was breaching the T&Cs… just prior to that I was in a towel after a shower drying myself in the sun - were they spying on me then?????? I have since spoken to Sykes after that naive revelation and the woman said that didn’t sound right at all and she would speak with a manager and get back to me. However has not done so. That was two weeks ago now. Reviewing a holiday property is futile and a waste of one’s time. Sykes SAY they want an honest review. But Sykes have absolutely no interest, or control, over what an owner wants to, or does NOT want to do. The review request they ask for on one’s return from holiday should be made clear - it’s for THEIR website and booking system NOT for the property. There is nothing they can do regarding the property. There should be a second system for reviewing the actual PRIVATE property you just hired which is then sent on to the property owner. Join the Facebook page : Sykes Cottages Unhappy Customers Page. It has over 6.4k members. Two of whom were featured on BBC Watchdog this week when they did a piece on Sykes.