LHH Scotland cottage booking refund

Vegastare

On Monday I read the article in The Scotsman link that you posted and read that woman's response.....if she is hiding behind the stance that she is not a traditional booking agency as she and solicitor make out - one would conclude that it is the owners who are not willing to give the money back -so would requesting there names and addresses directly from LHH looking to them keeping the money and if Wynne Bentley refused this would therefore invalidate her stance that she is less involved .  She has been named so why not all her clients(or whatever she thinks they are) name them all etc.  If there names are posted on Trust Pilot, your Facebook page and Google reviews under LHH am sure they would not be happy and it would land back on Wynne Bentleys doormat.
The more I have read this over the weeks I really feel the owners are doing what she has  instructed them....pressure needs to be put on them too, they can't hide behind this woman.

Sutch

Vegastare said:

On Monday I read the article in The Scotsman link that you posted and read that woman's response.....if she is hiding behind the stance that she is not a traditional booking agency as she and solicitor make out - one would conclude that it is the owners who are not willing to give the money back -so would requesting there names and addresses directly from LHH looking to them keeping the money and if Wynne Bentley refused this would therefore invalidate her stance that she is less involved .  She has been named so why not all her clients(or whatever she thinks they are) name them all etc.  If there names are posted on Trust Pilot, your Facebook page and Google reviews under LHH am sure they would not be happy and it would land back on Wynne Bentleys doormat.
The more I have read this over the weeks I really feel the owners are doing what she has  instructed them....pressure needs to be put on them too, they can't hide behind this woman.

I know the details of the owners of our intended holiday cottage. I have copied them on all relevant posts, documents & legal advice. They have steadfastly ignored me! I take the view that as the CMA threatened enforcement action against the major Holiday let companies, then LHH is squarely responsible for sorting out the mess. I'm no better informed than you but the hostility and aggression from LHH and their solicitors causes me to still believe that as a group we are best placed to concentrate our efforts on LHH as the target. Wynne Bentley runs the business so she can square it with all her clients that she charges for representing them. That goes with the territory in my mind.

Sutch

This evening I received a standard 'cut & paste' response from Nicola Sturgeons office. In no way did this address my & your complaints and frankly was insulting. I therefore responded as folloes: -

LHH (Large Holiday Houses) Ltd - Inverness, Scotland.

"This is in NO way an even remotely acceptable reply.

It is clearly a ‘cut & paste’ response to anyone writing to you. 

Nicola Sturgeon is supposed to be acting in the best interests of Scotland and that includes its revenue stream from tourists, which is not insubstantial. 

If you had read my original email properly you would have seen that along with many others , I have been victim of illegal and corrupt behaviour by a Scottish Holiday let company - LHH. 

Please explain how referring me to the CMA who are already aware of this, as I notified you, will help the number of innocent tourists who wished to visit Scotland to recover their money for a holiday that is lost and with no prospect of a refund? 

Frankly this is not good enough. None of us is content to be fobbed off by a ‘form’ letter which seeks to pass the buck to someone else. The company of which we are complaining is profiteering illegally at the expense of many innocent individuals. 

Scotland is currently striving for independence, and a large proportion of your necessary revenue will derive from tourism. 

I earnestly request that you re-visit this and propose both to me and the hundreds of other customers who have lost their money, what you intend to do. If necessary I invite you to pressurise the CMA who so far have been equally unresponsive."

comeandgo

Sutch said:

This evening I received a standard 'cut & paste' response from Nicola Sturgeons office. In no way did this address my & your complaints and frankly was insulting. I therefore responded as folloes: -

LHH (Large Holiday Houses) Ltd - Inverness, Scotland.

"This is in NO way an even remotely acceptable reply.

It is clearly a ‘cut & paste’ response to anyone writing to you. 

Nicola Sturgeon is supposed to be acting in the best interests of Scotland and that includes its revenue stream from tourists, which is not insubstantial. 

If you had read my original email properly you would have seen that along with many others , I have been victim of illegal and corrupt behaviour by a Scottish Holiday let company - LHH. 

Please explain how referring me to the CMA who are already aware of this, as I notified you, will help the number of innocent tourists who wished to visit Scotland to recover their money for a holiday that is lost and with no prospect of a refund? 

Frankly this is not good enough. None of us is content to be fobbed off by a ‘form’ letter which seeks to pass the buck to someone else. The company of which we are complaining is profiteering illegally at the expense of many innocent individuals. 

Scotland is currently striving for independence, and a large proportion of your necessary revenue will derive from tourism. 

I earnestly request that you re-visit this and propose both to me and the hundreds of other customers who have lost their money, what you intend to do. If necessary I invite you to pressurise the CMA who so far have been equally unresponsive."

I see you have edited your original response.  If this e mail is the standard of your correspondence I would not wish to be associated with your case, you are letting emotions take over.    I think Nicola has other more important things to do. 

Sutch

comeandgo said:

I see you have edited your original response.  If this e mail is the standard of your correspondence I would not wish to be associated with your case, you are letting emotions take over.    I think Nicola has other more important things to do. 

I'm not sure I follow your response.??  We all know that Nicola Sturgeon will never get within a mile of seeing my comments, but  the response is so clearly a standard letter her office has issued to placate all-comers. They could have least attempted to a) read my complaint and b) framed a response that was less dismissive.
You bet I'm getting emotional - I'm almost £1,000 out of pocket. 

Sutch

Immediately after posting the above, I received the following from Money Saving Expert who run this forum: -
"

Thanks for coming back to me and I'm sorry to hear about this,

I've passed this across to our team, and we may look into this on the site in future. Any info or help we have will be updated in the guides, so you may want to keep checking back.

In the meantime, if you haven't already, you can raise a complaint with LHH if you wish, you can use Resolver (a free and easy complaints site which MoneySavingExpert works with).

MoneySavingExpert isn’t able to play a role in your complaint and so unfortunately we're not able to forward this for you, but hope this helps and feel free to keep us posted on your progress.

I hope this helps.

Thanks"

To my mind this is a courteous and sincere reply and while they are unable to get involved in individual cases as they say, they have at least treated the matter seriously.

Upsidedownandaround

I don't see that reply as being dismissive at all. You've written to the first ministers office about a matter which is clearly within the remit of the CMA. Clearly they are going to refer you to them. I think you need to temper your expectations a little. The First Ministers office is not going to employ someone to deal with cottage refunds or to write personal reponses to everyone who has an issue with companies providing refunds to them.

Sutch

Upsidedownandaround said:

I don't see that reply as being dismissive at all. You've written to the first ministers office about a matter which is clearly within the remit of the CMA. Clearly they are going to refer you to them. I think you need to temper your expectations a little. The First Ministers office is not going to employ someone to deal with cottage refunds or to write personal reponses to everyone who has an issue with companies providing refunds to them.

As this is your first post on this forum, I suspect you are probably not a victim and therefore taking a more dispassionate view. 
However, when I last looked Scotland was hugely reliant on Tourism for revenue and with good reason. I would have thought that the First Minister or rather her office would be a little more sympathetic to tourists that are being fleeced by unscrupulous businesses. Obviously you feel they have more pressing issues.

Delmeister

We booked a cottage on Harris, Scotland for a week in May this year with LHH Scotland. Deposit plus balance all duly paid then unfortunately COVID-19 restrictions kick in. We request a refund and we’re point blankly refused. LHHS were quite rude, aggressive and progressively threatening in their emails. They insisted we claim our travel insurance. Long story short, they have been a nightmare to deal with and the property owner has idly stood by despite my amicable telephone conversations where she stated she would contact LHHS to assist.  Shocking service and quite disgraceful behaviour. Legally and morally wrong. 

JamesStuart1

As one of the many LHH customers who have lost money (£481) I can sympathise with all those in a similar position. I can report the same obduracy and refusal. In my case I was offered a reschedule for next year on the basis of a 25% increase. Even worse was that they wanted the money now even though they had the full amount for 2020. When I posted the very first Trustpilot review in May, LHH did not claim it until July and reported it (it is now backup). To make matters worse a 5* review was put up and as the name of the reviewer was so unusual I managed to find her on LinkedIn. She was until recently an employee of LHH. If you are going to deal with this company, you are warned.