Name: Sykes Cottages
Address: Sykes Holiday Cottages Lime Tree House Hoole Lane, Chester
Rating: 1.20

“Arrived to find the apartment has not been cleaned. The cleaner was not aware of our booking. Tried to contact Sykes as did my wife both hanging on for over 10 minutes. No contact. I see that the CEO said that the company has been transformed in the last 5 years. Well all I can say Mr Donoghue is that it's a mess now so if you call your customer services an improvement then goodness knows what it was like before. Don't expect any help from sykes they are not interested.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“DO NOT BOOK WITH THIS COMPANY! I wish there was the ability to post 0 stars - I would for this experience with Sykes. Upon arrival at the cottage (Weavers Cottage in Clayton West) it was immediately clear the off road parking was too small for my car. It was not big enough for anything but a small / medium sized car - nothing about this in the property description despite previous feedback highlighting this problem. Having nowhere to park my car (and I always ionly ever book a property which states that it has onsite parking) I phoned Sykes who were not interested and immediately took the owners side - their default position if you trawl the hundreds of bad reviews this company gets across Tripadvisor, Feefo and Trustpilot. Wrote to the directors of Sykes asking for a full refund as we did not stay at the property. We could not park our car safely and we had no choice but to drive home. The directors didn't have the courtesy of acknowledging my letter let alone responding,I then sent photos and measurements of the "parking space" to fully illustrate that our contentions were borne out by the facts. Despite overwhelming evidence that the property is being mis-sold and the reality bears no resemblance to the photos on the website, Sykes just keep telling me the file is closed. I have contacted Citizens Advice who after consultation, advised that they will report this to Trading Standards on my behalf as "potentially misleading business practice." I will therefore continue to pursue my full refund via my credit card company, Trading standards and will go to the travel and consumer media next - I may or may not get my money back but one thing is sure they'll lose a lot more in lost bookings. My advice to all the other unhappy customers is to pursue the matter and maybe we can get something done about this appalling lack of customer service and a company that simply takes your money and then walks away.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“Left a neutral review last year struggled to get it on their website eventually they did, next year gave a mainly positive review but with a few small issues again not published. I would not use Sykes again as their reviews are obviously selective.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“AVOID THIS COMPANY You really need to read that bad reviews! 85% of people that have used this company have rated it with one star. We rented a house in Whitby through Sykes holidays this summer. I have only got round to writing this now as it's been a busy few months. We spent just over £2500 for the week and when we arrived the house was dirty and the bed sheets had not been changed. So, we complained to the landlord first and then to Sykes. Sykes did not care, they where not interested and took the side of the landlord. In the end, after the landlord made up some story about us breaking furniture so that he would not have to compensate us. It got to the point of either taking legal action or chalking it up as a bad experience and never using Sykes again. We opted for the latter. I cannot stress this enough. Do not use this company. They are terrible. They do not do what they say they will do, and when something goes wrong you are on your own. Believe the bad reviews! AVOID.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“AVOID THIS COMPANY You really need to read that bad reviews! 85% of people that have used this company have rated it with one star. We rented a house in Whitby through Sykes holidays this summer. I have only got round to writing this now as it's been a busy few months. We spent just over £2500 for the week and when we arrived the house was dirty and the bed sheets had not been changed. So, we complained to the landlord first and then to Sykes. Sykes did not care, they where not interested and took the side of the landlord. In the end, after the landlord made up some story about us breaking furniture so that he would not have to compensate us. It got to the point of either taking legal action or chalking it up as a bad experience and never using Sykes again. We opted for the latter. I cannot stress this enough. Do not use this company. They are terrible. They do not do what they say they will do, and when something goes wrong you are on your own. Believe the bad reviews! Over a two thirds of people using this company have rated it as one star. That means there is a strong chance of you wasting your money and having a bad holiday. AVOID.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“I have been ripped off, left without operational furniture, had guests arrive to no bedding or linen, had my business drastically de-valued due to lack of maintenance - all whilst paying a small fortune out to this company. This was an exhausting process and it all ended with me selling my business! I was on Syke's top tier, fully managed service (with their merged company Cornish Cottage Holidays since 2012). Below are some of the 'highlights' of my time with them. - walking in finding their housekeepers with the heating cranked on full, doors and windows open, drinking my guest's tea with their feet up watching tv whilst charging me for cleaning services. - being told I needed to buy a new BBQ because mine was broken only to find out the housekeepers had sold it to my neighbour and pocketed the cash. - been charged a sizeable amount of money for hours of cleaning each week only to find the cleaners were gone within an hour every time for almost an entire season - hundreds of pounds of false invoices - had numerous bad reviews on my property due to a lack of housekeeping quality. - been asked to pay guests compensation due to a lack of housekeeping quality. - had my photos from my property used for neighbouring property listings - been charged for broken and missing items and furniture because they didn't want to lose the guest's future business. My coffee table apparently collapsed when guests put things on it (it was a 100lb wooden table) - had the maintenance book ignored for huge parts of seasons and received multiple bad reviews due to it - had to visit the property and check for myself - had invoices and correspondence sent to old addresses even though I had notified them multiple times of change of address - from which I got sent threatening emails telling me they would be sent to collections as I hadn't replied to letters (sent to an address I moved from 5 years previously) even though other mail had been coming to my new address from Sykes for years so in short - I got sent a demand for payment for a mistaken overpayment reimbursement to an address I hadn't lived in since taking ownership of the business - they have the most unnecessarily complex payment system - even their own accounts department couldn't make sense of it. To this day I still don't know if I've ever been paid the correct amount - I regularly work outside the UK so I paid for the fully managed service which works out to around 20% of my income (25% with VAT) and I still had to regularly ask family members to drive a six hour round trip to find all the problems every month, check the guest and maintenance book comments had been addressed (which were extremely rarely actioned and almost never removed) - this was not a fully managed service at all. - My property was generating a large sum of money every year and I would end up with less than 30% of it - this is not a viable business after taking into account all the contacting housekeeping and accounts departments, checking things had been done properly, paying for repairs and replacements and hours of investigating guest feedback required to keep my business investment profitable. - none of the departments seem to want to communicate with one another meaning that if you need something sorting out - you will have to chase up multiple employees (hopefully you have their correct contact details, most of them bounce back with 'email address not found' notifications) - they just recently took on a client management company - 'helpful holidays' which makes it an even harder and longer process to get anything done or speak to the person you need to speak to. - housekeepers didn't notify me or Sykes that furniture was broken for weeks - leading to more negative reviews - to which I got the feedback - "we need to provide more training to our housekeepers" - they didn't inform me of a leak leading to damage of my property - "we need to provide more training to our housekeepers" - every time I had a bad review the only response was we need to provide more training. When I brought this up with the head of housekeeping for the umpteenth time - I got an incredibly offensive personal email from a member of their corporate team, talking about how much more money he gets paid than the housekeeping team and that I shouldn't be venting to them. Meanwhile nothing was changing, they had a new housekeeper in each week, my reviews and bookings were being negatively effected and I was completely powerless. To whom was I then supposed to 'vent'? In short - if you don't care about you property, your income, your guest experience or indeed your sanity - Sykes is the way to go. I ended up selling my extremely desirable beachfront property - which I had spent a year of my life and tens of thousands of pounds renovating for use as a holiday rental business - all because I just couldn't tolerate Syke's lack of professional management or have them dropping the ball any more times. It should all have been completely taken care of and fully managed for the amount of money I was paying and the services they had described in their sales pitch. This was the most stressful business I have ever owned - and it was almost entirely so due to the management. I would not recommend their services.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“Horrible Company! Horrible Company! Really bad and rude customer Service, they ask you to leave a review after your holiday, leave constructive feedback so other customers don't have the same bad experience then you get an email basically accusing you of lying and they stick up for the owner without even checking on the bad points raised. I even left photo evidence and because it doesn't have a time stamp they call it a one off. Nasty people I will never ever book with them again. If you have a problem you have no chance of sorting it out. A disgrace especially Luke in customer service!”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“Horrible Company! Horrible Company! Really bad and rude customer Service, they ask you to leave a review after your holiday, leave constructive feedback so other customers don't have the same bad experience then you get an email basically accusing you of lying and they stick up for the owner without even checking on the bad points raised. I left photo evidence too! Nasty people I will never ever book with them again. If you have a problem you have no chance of sorting it out. A disgrace especially Luke in customer service!”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“So 2 holidays booked with Sykes and both cancelled with 2 weeks notice for each.. Have totally spoilt our whole year of holidays now. The fact we have a child who is on oxygen and tube feed so we have to pre-arrange the equipment with the local hospital makes it even worse to be let down at short notice. With the disgraceful experience they have put us through this year you would expect they would bend over backwards to help us. What do we get, no holiday with no time to book an alternative! They won’t bother getting in touch with you to offer some kind of compensation.I don’t think they actually care about customers. I will never ever be booking a cottage with Sykes again in the future.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“Absolutely appalling company to deal with. Sadly we used to deal with a very customer focused and very professional holiday company called Helpful Holidays, who we have been customers of for many years now, but following their amalgamation with Sykes, the standard and service received has really gone downhill. We stayed in a cottage recently but the place was dirty, and in need of a lot of maintenance. We listed in their book of breakages, our concerns about things we felt needed to be addressed and some which we deemed as potentially dangerous, as had other holiday makers. The same faults and issues had been noted numerous times, but it appears no-one takes any notice of this. A telephone conversation with a Sykes operative was utterly fruitless and we were then charged for alleged damage to some items at the property! There were no checks made regarding these items prior to our arrival, and so it was our word against the cottage owner! Sykes have hundreds of properties on their books and most of these and their owners operate a high standard so this generates a sizeable and healthy revenue for the company. In this regardn the properties and owners who do fall short have little impact and this is why any complaints are met with apathy. I will never use Helpful Holidays or Sykes again as a result of this unprofessional and incompetent experience.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“We are cottage owners and signed up with Sykes 4 years ago after being given an estimated turnover which they never achieved, in the first full year they got to approx 80% then the footfall fell away over the following years to a figure of approx 25% of the original estimate they gave, as a result could no longer sustain the business and forced us to give notice and withdraw the property for sale, we had 3 bookings that once sold we cancelled, this cost us over £2100 in cancellation fees and commission, compensation etc all of which they tie you up in knots with, so despite the business failing due to false estimates and poor performance, they have you with small print!! in the end the property owed us so much money in turn rounds, insurances and maintenance that we did actually lose money when we sold, all the equity swallowed up in the thousands it owed us and Sykes fees, their argument was to quote the contract and "we cant guarantee your bookings" Due to my experience I could never recommend this company to others, they will take 24% and give you no support, be your best friend until your hooked on that contract, then misery and costs for the duration was our experience.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“awful customer service, cannot even provide a simple vat receipt for my stay for the whole trip, only the booking fee portion. As I stayed on business and booked through travel portal, this should be the very basics”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“1. Charged too much money at point of sale 2. Customer support staff unhelpful and failed to communicate as promised. 3 Failure to give satisfactory explaination for over charge 4. virtually impossible to contact customer support team by telephone. 5.. No response to request for complaints procedure Other than that they were great”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“We stayed at Stabl Bach in Anglesey this summer, and had an appalling experience with Sykes Cottages. As other reviews state their service and policies are woefully lacking and unmodernised, they are focussed on income only. They take no responsibility for knowledge of the properties they advertise, as you will be able to see from our experience. The company also disregards GDPR – I have subsequently been sent marketing emails urging me to let Sykes Cottages help finance my next holiday, without the requisite consent having been given. There are so many professional companies out there – book your holiday with them instead. Our experience On arrival we were greeted with a building site next door to our property. A number of workmen, vans, a cement mixer, JCB and their radio were all in full flow at 4pm on Saturday afternoon. On speaking to Becky at the Chester Office we were informed that Sykes Cottages had no knowledge of any building work and that no other guests had complained to date but that they would try to investigate. The builders left the site approximately 2 hours later. The next morning, a Sunday, work began just prior to 8am. My husband and I were in the back bedroom which completely overlooks the site and so were woken by the works. Again, the site was in full flow all day with all the noise that this entails. Becky called back in the afternoon and left a voicemail to say that again, no one else had complained and that the “farmer” in question only undertook work on the weekends. Additionally, it was stated that the work could not be seen from our property which was odd as I was looking out of the bedroom window at the work as I listened to the message. The works also completely overlooked the garden as is visible from the pictures attached. Whilst the builders mainly kept away for the week – save for 2 hours of rubble rearrangement from 4-6pm on Tuesday and similar work past 7pm on Thursday evening, they again arrived at 7.30am on Saturday 29th, leaving us woken early by works with no chance of a lie in on our final day. Becky did follow up on the Wednesday to check how our week was going, and to also forward apologies from the owners for the food waste being left rotting at the entrance to the cottage on our arrival. There were other cleanliness issues. The bins remained overflowing and unemptied throughout our stay. The kitchen was dirty, and we found hairs in our bed, as you’ll see from the pictures. From our arrival on Saturday afternoon until Monday morning when the builders thankfully did not arrive, our time was ruined by noise and disruption and most impactfully worry as to whether we would be disrupted all week. We were also impacted by noise and disruption on Tuesday and Thursday evening and the following Saturday morning. After pushing the issue, we received £100 as a “gesture”. Note that this was from the owners and not Sykes who grab on to every penny for dear life. Sykes facilitated the correspondence between ourselves and the owners initially and then said they were unable to do so any further. My lasting impression is a company that takes no responsibility, offers no customer service in the true sense of the term and is solely profit focussed to the exclusion of all else.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“We had a couple of nice holidays through Sykes, but once you have an issue with something they don't want to know. On our arrival to our holiday this year we found that the shower wasn't working. Although the owner sent someone the next day to have a look at it, it took 10 days to have a plumber turn up and a new one installed. As invigorating as an ice cold shower can be, we raised the issue with Sykes, who informed us that they saw no problem. After such bad customer service, and having seen other similar comments on here, I would stay well clear of these cowboys.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“My booking for 4 people was cancelled by Sykes one and a half hours before check in. Whilst the unforeseen can happen Sykes were USELESS in helping a suitable alternative. I needed a ground floor property due to mobility and was offered properties with only one bedroom, a bunk bed, two counties away or were houses. By 5pm I asked Sykes to pay for a hotel for us so we could commence our holiday the next day. They said no in no uncertain terms and explained we would gave to pay this plus any cost for a property that was more expensive. Terrible, insensitive, inflexible and unhelpful customer service. Not interested in genuinely helping solve a problem. Avoid.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“Bad experience using Sykes. We rented Osprey cottage in Portland Dorset & the en-suite shower had seized on, plus the second bathroom pull switch light had broken & the shower curtain stunk of stale water with the extractor fan faulty. No maintenance guy arrived after our call & we left 4 days early as the house was basically unusable. We asked Sykes 3 times for a partial refund but had only an automated reply to emails & a promise to ‘contact the owner’ which came to nothing. We will never use them again & advise others to book elsewhere.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“Stayed at a cottage in Aberaeron, Wales. Cottage was a health and safety issue. I had to leave the cottage because of damp issues, as I am an asthmatic. The website said there was with Wi-Fi but it was non existent, the phone signal also non existent. Sykes cottages were not interested. The aftercare is abysmal. I got know where. The cottage is still on their books even though it is a health and safety issue???? I took out their insurance and got no where with them also. Do not book with them.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“Do NOT use Sykes, instead of being ripped off, take your business elsewhere. Do not trust their website as they also like to mis-sell you. Pictures, star ratings and tick systems are all lies. When you tell them this they do nothing to make sure it's corrected. Their "Customer Relations Team" are terrible and can't wait to get rid of you, they lie, don't deal with complaints and fob you off every step of the way. Nothing will get resolved. They will say "I'm here to help you", they really aren't, I'm two weeks into my complaint and they have just closed the case without even resolving it. They only care about taking your money and don't give two fudges if you have a good holiday or not.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“Do not use this company. When dealing with a complaint they took no action, lied about speaking to the owners and failed to resolve anything. We had been unable to access the property we had paid to stay in and the owners refused a refund. Sykes told us to send them our call log to prove we had phoned for over 2 hours before deciding we needed to find another hotel as it was late at night. Even then they did nothing. Disgraceful.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

Shipping & Delivery
Delivery Methods	Own Driver
Customer Service
Communication Channels	Telephone, Email, Live Chat
Queries Resolved In	Over A Week
Customer Service	1.1 out of 5
Returns & Refunds
Refunds Process	Difficult
Returns Process	Could Be Better

Sykes Cottages Reviews