Really disappointing experience with Sykes. We booked a holiday cottage in Worcestershire for our baby daughter's first Xmas. The directional information to locate the cottage was not correct. Upon arriving at the village it took us almost 1.5 hours to find the place - in a one-road village of no more than 40 properties. We only found it (down a dirt track off the main road) after knocking on doors around the village and speaking to neighbours. Another family who were renting the cottage next door (part of the same development) had also been driving around for an hour or so, as had their Tesco food delivery driver. Yet when we located the property, it was quite easy to find and would have been had simple directions been made clear. If the neighbours hadn't have been able to give us the location we'd have turned around and gone back home. Upon arrival, we noted there was soap scum left in the bathroom sink, the glass shower screen had been pulled from the wall and was hanging on by a thread, the wooden floors were very dirty, the cutlery appeared to have been rinsed but was still soiled, dog mess was on the outside yard gravel, animal hairs were on the bedroom rugs, animal hairs were beneath the pillows etc. etc. etc. Anyway, after cleaning up ourselves we weren't too fussed and got on with our holiday. Now the cottage had feature spot lights set within the floor to illuminate the drapes across the back wall. These lights were not easy to spot - even when turned on - but particularly of a day time. On the first morning of our stay our 9-month old daughter was crawling on the floor and placed her hands on one of the lights. After being switched on for a matter of seconds the lights were hot enough to boil eggs on. Our daughter received burns on both hands, requiring medical treatment at Evesham Hospital. In the course of 7-night stay, we had to take her back and forth 4 times to the hospital to have her wounds re-dressed and treated, burnt skin removed etc. We've had two further appointments since returning home. We politely contacted the cottage owner to alert him to the problem with the lights and he was very cagey about it. Very business-like and mono-syllabic, but essentially he was clueless as to what to do or how to handle it. Upon our suggestion that he'd used the wrong type of bulbs in the lamps, he sent round a worker the next day while we were out and changed the bulbs, declining the opportunity to see us face-to-face. We never received an apology or a courtesy call to check on how our daughter was doing, but we weren't particulary troubled by this and thought he may have been inexperienced in handling such matters. On our final day we had another appointment at the Hospital to have the wounds checked but attending this clashed with the 10am latest leaving time. We asked the owner to allow us the necessary extra time to leave, which he gave us. In the end we left the cottage about one hour 20 mins late. Upon returning home, Sykes contacted us for feedback on our experience so we sent them a private message to let them know what had happened. The intention of this being that better checks could be put in place and/or discussion with the owner to ensure another family didn't go through the same drama in future. We were contacted the following day by Sykes' complaints department, which was frankly a bizarre experience. We were told that our 'complaint' was effectively meaningless because we have no direct contractual relationship with Sykes and therefore they have no liability towards us. We were told that if we wanted to pursue our compensation claim then we'd have to make a private claim against the owner's insurance policy and we weren't entitled to vouchers and the like from Sykes so none would be offered to us. It was also implied by Sykes that we may have exaggerated the injuries to our daughter in order inflate a potential claim, and that we should be grateful that we were allowed to overrun our stay on the final morning to attend the Hospital again to the inconvenience of the cottage owner's 'cleaner'. First of all, we never made and have not made a complaint against anybody despite what has happened. We were asked for our feedback and we gave it to Sykes hoping they'd use the information to improve their service to others. Secondly, we never and have not asked anybody for compensation or vouchers or anything of the sort. Only Sykes has mentioned this - which suggests they are hyper-vigilant against such matters and knee-jerg to conclusions. Thirdly, I've uploaded photographs of the left hand of our daughter as it was when it was re-dressed on the third occasion on Boxing Day. Out of interest, I've also uploaded a photograph of the spot light hidden beneath the drapes and welcome people to try to spot it. At no point have we exaggerated the injury. In fact, the only information that we've offered to either party is that we were advised by Evesham Hospital the burn would be classified as a Second Degree burn in their file notes. We're by no means experts on skin burns nor do we know the specific differences between the burn categories and so we'd welcome feedback from more learned others on this as to whether Evesham Hospital are correct or not. Evesham Hospital wanted to refer our daughter to the burns unit at Birmingham Children's Hospital as they were concerned about how it was developing and suggested our daughter may end up with visible scarring on her thumb. We were advised to have an appointment with a plastic surgeon to explore whether the scarring could be prevented with surgery. We did not disclose any of this to Sykes or to the owner at the time so to imply that we were exaggerating is quite insulting given that we have withheld details that potentially make the situation more serious. The take-away from our dialogue with Sykes is this: - They are a 3rd party agent introducing holidaymakers to property owners. They have no direct contractual liability with the holidaymakers. - As such, checks on the properties being offered for rent seem to be at best rudimentary. - Sykes aren't particularly interested in constructive feedback on the properties they're offering for rent as since they don't have contractual liability with either party they are disinterested in matters occurring within the properties. - In the event of a 'complaint' being raised, Sykes is likely to take the property owner's side instead of doing the right thing and remaining impartial until the facts have been clarified. Needless to say this will be the last of our dealings with Sykes and we'll be more careful in future to make sure that any property we rent is not being managed by Sykes in any way.