Holiday Cottages fiasco cost my 95-year-old mum £1,500

Times

a day ago

In February my 95-year-old mum and I read a glowing review of Ruth Hansom's restaurant in Bedale, North Yorkshire, and decided it was the perfect place to celebrate my sister's 60th birthday.
We looked for a holiday cottage nearby with space for four people. We wanted to make sure everything was on one level due to Mum being frail and my brother-in-law having Huntington's disease.
We found the perfect place through the website Gorgeous Cottages and Mum offered to book it on her debit card. She paid £1,499 for a week-long stay in May, which was a lot but we felt it was worth it for a special birthday. We later noticed that the confirmation email came from a company called Original Cottages rather than Gorgeous Cottages.
Then in March, Mum caught pneumonia. The medical staff said it was unlikely she would be fit to travel in May.
I called Original Cottages to postpone the trip (I have power of attorney for Mum). The agent was polite and said they would move the booking. As the cottage was booked up throughout the summer, we chose a week in November instead to combine celebrations for my birthday. I called the company again to arrange this and it said it would check with the owner.
In May I got an email from another company, this time called Holiday Cottages, saying the owner of the accommodation mentioned that I wanted to cancel. I explained that I wished to postpone the trip rather than cancel, but it claimed that the owner would not move the booking.
I had the owner's phone number on the booking confirmation, so I called her and she said she had no problem moving the dates and that the booking platform was preventing this.
I called Original Cottages again and it suggested that if I cancelled, it could advertise the cottage and if someone else booked it for the same dates, Mum might be able to get her money back. I agreed to this.
It then confirmed that the booking was cancelled and said it would let us know if the dates were rebooked. But since then the cottage hasn't shown as available on those dates, so unsurprisingly Mum has not had a penny back.
We didn't think to get travel insurance for a UK trip, which in hindsight we should have done, but we cannot believe the callousness of this company. Mum was seriously unwell and dealing with this has been an additional energy-sapping endeavour at a really distressing time.
I also feel deeply aggrieved that I don't even know which holiday company I am dealing with.Name and address supplied
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Thankfully your mum has been discharged from hospital, but she is still bed-bound. This holiday company was making things much harder than they needed to be for your family at an already stressful time, and I could see why you were so confused to get emails from what appeared to be three different businesses.
These three brands are part of the same company, Travel Chapter, which has brought them all under Holiday Cottages to simplify things for its customers. Travel Chapter said: 'We appreciate how this may have caused confusion during the transition. We're working to make this much clearer going forward.'
The cancellation policy of the booking would only give you a refund of £140, but Travel Chapter said that in cases like yours, it tries to be fair to both the guest and the homeowner by offering a refund if the dates are rebooked by other customers.
But it was impossible for anyone else to book a stay at the cottage when your dates were not shown as available on the website, as had been promised over the phone. Travel Chapter blamed this on a technical issue with the cottage's online calendar. This was hardly your fault and after I stepped in it agreed to refund your mum.
Travel Chapter said: 'We're truly sorry for the distress caused and have since issued a full refund. When the booking was cancelled, the property wasn't made available to rebook — something that wasn't the customer's fault and shouldn't have affected them. We fully recognise the impact this had, and we're taking steps to make sure similar situations are handled better in future.'
Considering you had spent so much time and energy trying to resolve this, I was disappointed that it didn't offer compensation. You felt let down by the company and said if your mum is in a position to travel again in the future, you will book with the cottage owner directly.
On May 6 my wife and I visited our local Land Rover dealership, operated by a company called Group 1, where we agreed to buy a new Range Rover Evoque for £51,000. We were offered a £1,500 dealership contribution, three years' warranty and Land Rover roadside assistance.
We collected our car on May 9, which is also the date of registration in its logbook. Then about a week later I noticed a post on social media saying that Land Rover had launched a ten-day offer on May 9 which included a £3,000 dealership contribution, four-year warranty, Land Rover assistance, and four years' free servicing.
I emailed the dealership to ask if I qualified for this offer, but I was told that I didn't. I said I was disappointed that, as a longstanding customer who has spent more than £100,000 on new Land Rover cars, I had not been told about this offer.
I feel that there were several missed opportunities for the staff to alert me to this deal during the sales process. I asked why I hadn't been told about this deal, but the company won't answer my question.Name and address supplied
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Your sales contract was entered into at the point you signed the paperwork and not when you collected the car, which is why you didn't qualify for this special offer. But you were upset that you hadn't been told about the forthcoming deal, which would have saved you more than £3,000.
Group 1 Automotive UK said: 'We do appreciate that our customer would have liked to have been informed of the upcoming special offer, but at the time he placed his order, the sales team did not have the details of the future offer. Despite this, we will be seeing if there is a further gesture of goodwill we are able to extend given his long-standing custom.'
The company offered to extend your warranty by a year and will provide the car's first service at no cost to you, saving you about £1,300, which you were happy with.
You said: 'Without your help I don't think we would have been able to arrive at a satisfactory agreement.'
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