What should have been a 4 night treat for a special occassion turned out to be the mostly costly mistake I have ever made. Booked into Stags Mount in Pickering which looks lovely but I ended up enduring 4 days (including the weekend) of noisy construction work right next door which also included the workman (owners) radio. Then had no hot water one morning. The owners are completely uninterested as are Sykes Cottages. instead the owner liked to mention numerous times she is a nurse which I am assuming is supposed to make a difference. When I complained to Sykes they took nearly 2 weeks to get back to me, were lied to by the owners about the construction work, believed them and so nothing was done. I put a review on their page about the property but if they dont agree with it then it is never posted. Avoid both this cottage and the company at all costs read more

DO NOT - UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES - BOOK A HOLIDAY WITH THIS COMPANY. It's a scam. We had to cancel our booking because of a bereavement. An actual DEATH of a family member. They denied us any recompense despite us giving them a week's notice before our holiday began. They have four different phone numbers for customer service and I was left on hold for over 45 minutes on three of them. To my experience, they do not answer 3 out of the 4 numbers. When I finally got through to someone (using a UK number instead of my American one), they were completely unhelpful, remorseless, and unwilling to even consider our situation. After that call, I did receive a special case number via email. It did no good. They do not answer emails. They did not call back or follow-up as promised. DON'T BOOK WITH THEM. This company is ludicrous. read more

We booked Cedar Cottage through Sykes Cottages and regret every minute of our 14-day stay. The property was filthy, neglected, and nowhere near the standard advertised. From the moment we walked in, the house reeked of stale odors from dirty carpets, rugs, and soft furnishings. The vacuum was full to bursting, with no spare bags provided, disgusting. The main bedroom had no extra bedding or pillows. Dust flew off the ceiling fan, curtains were stained, and the fitted sheet looked slept in. No top sheet, so the duvet touched our skin--who knows when it was last cleaned. One bedside lamp didn't work. The en suite light flickered and buzzed like it was shorting out. The smoke detector didn't work. Peeling wallpaper, frayed carpet, and broken curtain hardware added to the chaos. The kitchen was a health hazard. Dirty floors, fridge seal caked with grime, faucet and counters wiped with what looked like a filthy rag. We had to buy paper towels and sanitizer just to feel safe preparing food. The oven tripped the breaker constantly and exposed wiring in the hood. The kettle and toaster were worn out and gross. The washing machine was full of hair and dirt. One tea towel for the entire stay. The conservatory? Smelly, broken fan, missing bulbs, bent blades. We avoided it completely. The downstairs bathroom was vile--black mold, broken blinds taped together, loose toilet seat, filthy toilet brush, and hair stuck to the tiles. We removed the rug and stored it in the garage just to breathe. TV didn't work. Owner brought a new one but couldn't set it up. We installed a new antenna and rearranged furniture ourselves. Living room smelled awful. Dirty couches, cobwebs, smelly curtains. We used multiple air fresheners just to make it tolerable. Outside was no better. Garbage bins half full on arrival. Gates broken and couldn't be locked. The whole place needs pressure washing and serious repairs. We've stayed at other Derbyshire properties and had great experiences. This was a nightmare. Sykes Cottages should be ashamed to list this property. It needs a deep clean, safety inspection, and a full refurbishment. We were stuck because we prepaid, but no one else should have to go through this. Avoid Cedar Cottage. Avoid Sykes Cottages if this is what they consider acceptable. Have submitted a formal complaint via email and phone call requesting a full refund, but still no response. read more

Before you consider renting this holiday house offered by Sykes Cottages, I recommend you think again. My family and I rented this beautifully situated house overlooking St Ives harbour - but the house had big problems and the service offered by Sykes Cottages was completely inadequate. The catalogue of problems included an overwhelming smell of sewage pervading the upper floor which meant that the bathroom could not be used and a gas leak which trickled gas into a bedroom where a 5 year old was sleeping which we, the visitors, had get fixed one night because Sykes failed to answer their emergency 'out of hours' service! The owners and/or the Sykes team clearly knew there were noxious smells in their property because there were 13 pots of room reed diffusers strategically placed around the house to mask the stench. In addition the fixtures and fittings hadn't been looked after which resulted in the nuisance of a broken downstairs toilet seat, leaking coffee machine and two broken hotplates on the hob. I asked for compensation but the answer I received from Sykes was to completely dissociate themselves from the problems and to state that the owners refused to pay. However, Sykes must bear some responsibility for not even running an 'out of hours' service. read more

I wouldnt have given Sykes 1 star but none isnt an option. I booked a holiday and insurance with them end of september. I had to cancel and since then they have deliberatly, with intention, given me the runaround. To date theyve given me dummy policy docs, blag ref numbets to 3 different companys. None of them hold policys fro me and all have the same issues with Sykes. My bank told me that they also deal with customers daily who have the exact same problem. They still havent even offered me credit or a discount and only responded when I made a scathing review on another site. I STRONGLY advise people not to buy insurance policys with them or even book a holiday that would treat a decades long, loyal customer so poorly. GO ELSEWHERE. read more

We rented a beautiful house in Ambleside Uk from Sykes. The house was fabulous, but Sykes was not. We had not heat in the house, and northern England gets cold. The radiators were cold to the touch. I called both numbers Sykes gave me and left a message. No one returned my call. I wrote a review on Sykes website of my experience and Sykes contacted me to ask what numbers I called. I told them I called the numbers they gave me. A day later I get a form letter from Sykes saying the case is closed. No sorry, no explanation, nothing. In my e mail communications with Sykes, they take several days to respond. In the business world you reply to your customers within 24 hours. Sykes EDITED my review on their website and then at the bottom wrote that it was approved by Lynn. That is a lie. Do not rent from Sykes. There are too many other possibilities. read more

Really bad Customer Service. I am still waiting over a month for a call back and in between I have called 3 times and every person has promised they will not let me down and call me back. Never ever had a call back. Very frustrating and sloppy customer service. read more

"The inside of the property is lovely & has everything you need for a comfortable stay. The back of the house is impressive, but the front is a different story. It's like looking out on a busy street where you live, overlooked by neighbours. One caused us a huge problem. I have written evidence from the owners, that they knew was a prior safety issue. I don't know whether the property is aimed at children or adults. If children, the glass cabinets and open, toddler-height drinking glass cupboard, need to be removed urgently - as do the lighters, candles and wax melt burners. If it is adults, please correct your advert, because the beds are barely double. & in the room with the single bed, it's a ¾ adult bed at best. There are 3 bedrooms, but you can't reasonably sleep 2 adults in each. The issue with this property is the outside space & neighbouring properties. On the first morning of our holiday, a neighbour's trampoline landed on top of our cars, parked on the driveway. It was 6.30am & we had to physically secure the trampoline! This incident caused over £2000 worth of damage to 2 cars, including a completely smashed windscreen on one. I have written confirmation from the owners, they knew this had happened twice before. Sykes confirmed they were never notified of this (on a recorded call). The property needs a warning about high winds & potential safety issues, for all current guests who are booked in & future ones. We spent the first five days of our holiday trying to fix damaged cars. As a family we were stressed, upset, anxious and worried about the out-of-pocket costs. The owners & Sykes were no help whatsoever & offered for us to leave the property (whilst they were aware we still had a smashed windscreen on one car & couldn't safely drive) for a partial refund, of the days we wouldn't be staying! This only added more stress & upset to our family, including my four-year-old child. & caused us to be worried about the threat of being thrown out. When we did nothing wrong, but raise genuine concerns. It's fair to say we won't be staying at this property ever again, due to a genuine concern for safety on the driveway. And, because the booking agent clearly doesn't conduct safety checks, we will never book with Sykes or any of their affiliated companies again. 9 Pilgrims Way Roch read more

With 9 months notice, I needed to make a 1-day shift in dates, I was flexible and happy to add a couple extra days if that worked. On 3 separate attempts to reach customer service, I got "Hi, I'm whoever, how can I help you"...then nothing! I got up at 2:30am to be sure to catch an agent promptly and account for the time difference. But still, nothing beyond "Hi, how can I help you". I am planning a 2-month long holiday of a lifetime and this was a sad start. Eventually I cancelled the reservation at significant cost (equivalent to half my booked week) , despite the 9 month lead time. I guess it was worth it, since I didn't want to spend the next 9 months worrying if the on-the-ground service would be as bad as the online service. Disappointing to say the least. read more

The chalet ( no 7 ) at Clarach Bay was awful. You could press your hand to the bottom of the once upon a time mattress,feel the springs, and the wooden panel down the middle of the bed. Awful shower,toilet, smelly,musty. We will never book with Sykes again. They have not allowed us to leave our review in their site. read more

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 I hadn't lived in for five years - they had my current address on file - 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 co read more