HolidayLettings UK

As a villa owner, I follow all HL advise on how to be high in their search rankings. I recently tried to find out why holiday lettings has stopped customers searching on the area they wanted. They are now allowing a 20 mile radius of searches in the area a potential renter searches. It isn't even as though the villas in the rental area appear first. So my villa now appears on page 10 when it used to be on the first page for that area. And villas 20 miles away appear before it. After several messages of them trying to convince me that this is "ok" and wont affect me I reminded them that January was usually the busiest month for enquiries and I had received none. I then asked for the complaints procedure and they are now ignoring all messages from me.

I have recently booked an apartment through Holiday Lettings and was astonished to find that I paid 71 euros in a booking fee on a rental of 561.05 euros. I only found this out as the invoice from the owner showed the rental as 490 euros and the owner confirmed that 490 was the correct rental price and that Holiday Lettings had added their booking fee. I guess they are also charging the owner a subscription charge. I understand that this is covered in the Ts and Cs but you would have to read every word to find it. I wouldn't use them again. Retired from Somerset.

I advertised 3 properties with HL. Having outsourced their customer services dept overseas I find it impossible to receive any help or understanding of whatever question or problem I have had.
The price of my subscription listings having been increased by 75% over 3 years is another reason to avoid them.
They are squeezing the business to inflate short term profits to flog it to some unsuspecting mug buyer.

3 years ago 5 stars, now 1.

Absolutely abysmal.

I have a holiday rental to let, and holiday Lettings have made a booking at the wrong price (I hadn't even set a price), and now want to charge me 120 GBP to cancel the booking as the bookers don't want to pay the full correct price!

We hadn't set a price for 2018, but Holliday Lettings took a booking anyway. And they set the price (mid summer) as the lowest price that we had ever charged. We told the bookers that Holiday Lettings had assumed a price as we hadn't set one, and told them the correct price. This was more than the bookers wanted to pay, and wanted to cancel. I completely understand, and thats fair enough.

Holiday Lettings however want to charge me 120 GBP for the cancelled booking! It was them that assumed a price and told the booker, and let them book! So why should we pay a fee for them cocking up our booking price. If they want to assume a price, then at least assume the price for the same time the year before!

Not happy at all with them and am cancelling our advert with them.

If you want happy customers then do NOT advertise with Holliday Lettings.

HL has "bounced" its payments to me 7 times. This is the first time I have used HL/TA. So far they have bounced their payment 4 times for my first guest and 3 times for the second. Only businesses that are insolvent act like this. I have cancelled the other bookings so HL has wrecked their holidays too. It is beyond words to describe their dishonesty in dealing with me. As described elsewhere, contacting their customer "support" is like trying to grab a piranha swimming in oil.

Advertised since 2015. No issues last year paid direct into my bank.
This year I have been advised that payment has been sent however 15 days later I am still waiting.
The company have stated 3 different payment dates, I have spent 20 hours on phone and sent numerous emails.
My cottage is booked June, July and August we simply can't let cottage free and will be cancelling all bookings
Do not use this company, they tell lies have appalling service and don't pay

This was the worst decision of my life. Customer service put me in harms way by not acting responsibly and tried saying that the rebooking of a hotel at the same price was a matter of goodwill, but when in reality it was a contractual obligation. The lady owed the booking service for a previous short term cancellation. She tried to withhold my luggage when I refused to give her any money, when I told her that I paid the booking in full through ****************************** and she needed to contact them. The reason why I believe they are in part responsible for this is that they cancelled her account before I was able to get my stuff from her. 2. I was put in the default position of being tripadvisors/booking.com's agent, by having to inform her that she needed to contact they agency to see why she was not getting the money in full. I told her what she is doing is illegal and I would call the police. I guess she heard me call the police, because she threw my personal property all over her lawn and then threatened me by saying, "She is going to get her boyfriend to kick my ***."

I am a holiday property owner who has advertised on holiday lettings for 10 years, in this time I have been very happy advertising with them. However since they were bought out by Trip Advisor things have changed not only for the property owners but for the booker and not for the better. HL/TA are clearly trying to force all owners to sign up to their 'free listing' which costs the owner 3% (not bad you think) and the booker up to 18% (yes thats right!) on top of the rate the owner is asking. Up until last year the annual fee an owner had to pay was £359 ex VAT for 12 months listing but they have also increased this significantly. They chanel the whole process of booking in their favour, they wish to hold all monies paid until after the arrival of the guests (I can take bookings over a year in advance) they scare bookers away from paying the owner direct by constantly stating Never Pay by Wire Transfer. As someone who has invested a lot of money and time in my holiday letting business it is frankly jaw dropping how HL is treating its owners. The most recent bullying and controlling tactic is to email owners who aren't using their 'free to list' 'rip off to bookers' rates and state that their properties would be eligible to win a Trip Advisor Certificate of Excellence if they convert to this heinous/covert booking method. ALSO be aware that in order for a holiday rental to be even listed on Trip Advisor it MUST be their customer - i. E. if you don't subscribe to the HL site you CANNOT be listed on Trip Advisor (I thought there was a law against Monopolies!) I do not wish my customers to be ripped off in this way, I object to HL trying to force all bookings to take place on their terms, after all it is NOT their property! I advise all holiday makers to search for owners personal websites and book DIRECT with them. Lastly their customer service is now crap - they employ people who are ineffectual and couldnt care less... The word is out!

I put a villa i managed in 2014 and after the first booking (i have to say it was pretty immediate), HL contacted me and asked for more information about myself (which I was pleased to give it).
They even asked me to send them a picture of myself standing and showing my id document.
I did it and after 1 or 2 days, they informed me that my property and ad were removed because i wasn't the real owner.
I told them I wasn't the real owner and specified it, but there was no way they listened to me.
My property was removed, my booking was deleted by them without letting me explain to the "future" guest what was happening.
So, I sent them an email where I was explaining that if the didn't reactivate my account, I would have spread my disappointment all over the net (which I didn't do it until today).
I called them today to upload another property I manage and after 3 customer service operators, 2 in italian and the final in english and 32 mins of conversations, they informed me that my account has been blocked and I won't be able to work with them anymore!
Yeah, they could have waited some more years to inform me!
Now, I'm really highlighting what they are doing!
Not only for "my bad behaviour" with the guest, but also because I had to call them to understand why I couldn't move through the website!

You know what happens? I posted my property to the competition HOMEAWAY!

Loosers!

We have always used Holiday Letting until it was taken over by Trip Advisor. The whole process became a nightmare as three currencies were involved: Dollars, Euros and Pounds. There was even a column of figures in Euros with the total shown in Dollars.
Also as an American company was involved all dates were shown in US format i. E. MM/DD/YYYY
As I was booking from the UK perhaps a bit of common sense could have come into play.

Dorothy Ward

I have been with Holiday Lettings for over 2 years and until this week everything was ok, and then, the guest no one wants arrived. They left the apartment in such a mess it took over 7 hours to clean the apartment, the walls has grease all over them and items in the apartment had been broken. I have less than 8 hours to get the apartment ready for the next guest. I contacted Holiday Lettings and asked for part of the damage deposit to be given to me and sent photos of the damage... remember I had a guest in the apartment so I was unable to paint. Holiday Lettings told me that they would only give me the damage deposit if I showed them an Invoice... The photos I sent were not good enough for them, I asked how could I get invoices for the work if I could not have the work done until the guests that were there had left. After 2 weeks of emails and over 3 hours of telephone calls, Holiday Lettings told me that they were going to cancel my damage claim and give the deposit back to the guest that had made all the damage. I was told by Holiday Lettings that they had not received the photos, then I was told they had received them... I was told that they had tried to contact the guest but was unable to. I was told they could do nothing with regards the review they wrote, damming me my apartment and the town after I had received 40 5* reviews. When I asked them to close my account with Holiday lettings they said there would be a fine of over £1500 to close the account and refund the guests that had booked. So at the end of the day Holiday Lettings are God, they run a call center from India, they send out the same email 10 times and do NOT get back to you. They care nothing for the people that use their site to advertise their property and there is no way of leaving them unless you pay £150 per booking. I have blocked my property after September 2017 and the Holiday Lettings can go to hell! I can not see of any other way of getting out from under this Disgusting Company