“Unfortunately, our stay was not the relaxing one we had hoped for.”
Online the swallows nest appeared far more suited tom our needs than the bluebird loft we had stayed in before. On arrival, the toilet was noisily continually on flush. Whilst we appreciate that we arrived on a bank holiday and instant maintenance would be difficult, we were left feeling less than cared about. Sykes team did what they could, but we had a running toilet for the whole of that night. It would have been nice if the owner had at least got in touch, apologised and promised to do what they could the next day. But unfortunately, no. Nothing. We were left with what amounted to Chinese water torture for the night on what might be the most uncomfortable bed I have ever slept on. So soft, we were almost on the boards. I joked that we should have got the air bed we had camped on before we arrived and slept on that. I should have done. Both my wife and I have very uncomfortable backs upon our return. Fast forward to Wednesday I think and whilst cooking dinner the smoke alarm went off. The door of the alarm unit is broken and I was unable to turn the alarm off. I also could not at first get any answer from the alarm maintenance company or Sykes. No answer from the maintenance company and every Sykes phone number went to the same answer phone message, even the emergency number. Eventually we found one that asked us to leave a message. Which we did and eventually we got a call back. Eventually we also got through to the alarm company too and they came and stopped the alarm. It had been going for an hour and a half. We had half the neighbourhood coming to see what was going on. Never mind eating a cold dinner in the front garden. It was a good job it wasn't raining. On top of all that, it happened again on Sunday morning. We were that upset that we decided to go home a day early and whilst cooking breakfast off the alarm went. Even though I had been shown by the technician how to turn the alarm off I still had to do it three times because the door was still unrepaired. This holiday had its redeeming features, but they weren’t the swallows nest.
We are sorry that your stay has not gone as well as expected, please let me respond to your issues.
1. This was unfortunate that the toilet was running continually, we responded as quickly as possible to solve this, but unfortunately it was bank holiday Monday evening when we had the notification, the earliest opportunity to fix was 9.30 on the Tuesday morning, which our caretaker promptly fixed.
2. As you have mentioned the bed is medium soft in Swallows Nest, which suits most people, if you prefer a firm bed, I would suggest to mention when booking and we could have advised accordingly.
3. We have an integrated fire alarm system with heat sensors, which responds to excessive heat or smoke. As this is an integrated system you cannot stop the alarm once it has gone off, in the usual manner by opening windows, it has to be turned off at the alarm box. This must be done by the service Engineer, the emergency number on the box should be rung for an Engineer to turn off the alarm and this could mean a long wait. This does not happen very often, but in response to your problem. We have now put a notice in Swallows Nest to inform Customers, if they are creating excessive smoke/heat by cooking then they should open the window, turn on the extractor fan, but ideally try and cook without excessive smoke/heat then this problem would not arise. As far as the lock on the alarm box, I have again spoken with our alarm people to fix the lock and will persevere until this is sorted.
Property Owner
