Place House

I booked Place house for myself and my granddaughters. We arrived on Tuesday and found the property in an appalling state. The smell hit me at the door. It was absolutely disgusting, like someone had died and been left there, and it had seeped into the floors. It made me gag. After unloading the car, I was shocked by how bad it was. We tried opening the ground floor lounge windows, but they were stuck shut, which I'm sure is a fire risk. Leaving the doors open to air it out didn't help. We took all our belongings back out and put them in the car, but they'd all absorbed the awful smell and needed cleaning. The house wasn't clean either. The downstairs floor was very grubby, there was dust everywhere, the lounge curtain rails were broken, and huge cobwebs stretched across the bedroom windows upstairs. We tried to reach the owners and couldn't. They called me back more than 24 hours later, a period when I would have had nowhere to stay with my young granddaughters. The owner admitted she knew there was a problem with the property and that the cleaners hadn't been able to remove the smell. She also said she'd had this problem before, and I wasn't the first person to leave immediately after arriving. The owner offered a full refund because I wasn't using the house and they knew about the issues. I accepted that in good faith and waited. I can provide screenshots of our messages about it. Today I've found out they're refusing to honour the refund, even though I didn't stay a single night because of the disgusting smell. Now I'm out of pocket. Sykes cottages have been completely unhelpful and told me there's nothing they can do. I've been a loyal customer, but I'm unsure what their purpose is as an agent, and I won't use them again. It's clear they haven't inspected the property and don't care about customer experience. This house has been removed from Sykes for now, so beware, it may change names or show up with another holiday letting company.