LHH Scotland cottage booking refund

Butts

How have LHH slipped under the radar ?
The opprobrium directed towards Sykes Cottages at the outset of the pandemic ensured they did a quick u-turn and started refunding people. 

Sutch

Butts said:

How have LHH slipped under the radar ?
The opprobrium directed towards Sykes Cottages at the outset of the pandemic ensured they did a quick u-turn and started refunding people. 

I really don't know. LHH is legally in exactly the same situation as all the major holiday companies, who as you say were compelled under threat of enforcement action by the CMA to offer full & unconditional refunds promptly.
Their argument that they are only an agent is fanciful.

Nebulous2

Butts said:

How have LHH slipped under the radar ?
The opprobrium directed towards Sykes Cottages at the outset of the pandemic ensured they did a quick u-turn and started refunding people. 

It must be down to their size. As a relatively small specialised agency they have escaped the level of attention that the large ones have had.

I’m surprised at their assertion that thousands of people have been covered by their insurance. Normally insurance companies insist that you reclaim costs elsewhere first, as we have seen many times in this forum. 

Sylvestris

Nebulous2 said:

I’m surprised at their assertion that thousands of people have been covered by their insurance. Normally insurance companies insist that you reclaim costs elsewhere first, as we have seen many times in this forum. 

Nebulous2 - Their claim is complete and utter nonsense. It is a total lie and says something about the integrity of the co-owners and directors Wynne Bentley (aka Wynne Shilland) and Sarah Louise Fraser. They claimed that 4,000 bookings were cancelled and fully recovered on insurance. Facts:

(1) The claimants would not have fully recovered the costs as they would have lost their insurance excess, in some cases up to £250.

(2) With the huge back log of claims in the insurance industry there is no way that 4,000 claims would have been settled in such a short time.

(3) Many people are reporting on social media that their insurance claim against LHH Scotland has been rejected by their insurer

(4) And last but not least, LHH only had 126 properties, lockdown was for 15 weeks, so if they had a 100% occupancy (which they didn't) it comes to 126 x 15 = 1,890. If my maths is correct, that is way way short of 4,000.  

Butts

Sylvestris said:

Nebulous2 said:

I’m surprised at their assertion that thousands of people have been covered by their insurance. Normally insurance companies insist that you reclaim costs elsewhere first, as we have seen many times in this forum. 

Nebulous2 - Their claim is complete and utter nonsense. It is a total lie and says something about the integrity of the co-owners and directors Wynne Bentley (aka Wynne Shilland) and Sarah Louise Fraser. They claimed that 4,000 bookings were cancelled and fully recovered on insurance. Facts:

(1) The claimants would not have fully recovered the costs as they would have lost their insurance excess, in some cases up to £250.

(2) With the huge back log of claims in the insurance industry there is no way that 4,000 claims would have been settled in such a short time.

(3) Many people are reporting on social media that their insurance claim against LHH Scotland has been rejected by their insurer

(4) And last but not least, LHH only had 126 properties, lockdown was for 15 weeks, so if they had a 100% occupancy (which they didn't) it comes to 128 x 15 = 1,890. If my maths is correct, that is way way short of 4,000.  

They really need to be "named and shamed" - The Sunday Post would probably be a viable conduit for this purpose.

Thrugelmir

Butts said:

How have LHH slipped under the radar ?
The opprobrium directed towards Sykes Cottages at the outset of the pandemic ensured they did a quick u-turn and started refunding people. 

Isn't Sykes one of the many brands under the Hoseasons Banner. Not as many independents as people may imagine. 

Sylvestris

LHH Scotland are up early this morning and have already removed the latest 1-star review published on Trustpilot yesterday evening. Luckily I copied it as soon as it was posted in anticipation of it being removed. Being taken down in less than 12 hours I think is a record and shows how desperate they are becoming.

They have also responded to a couple of 1-star posts where the author can be identified. Like a stuck record LHH are still basically saying that it is an insurance matter, tough luck, and not their problem. Why do they think that it is acceptable that the customer loses their insurance excess and the property owner and LHH lose nothing, for providing nothing?  They just don’t get it do they?

This was posted by Rosana at approx. 9.00pm on 3rd August and was removed by LHH Scotland at approx.. 7.00am on 4th August:

We booked and paid in full for large house, Poyntzfield House owned by Sarah Fraser, for my husband’s 50th, we could not travel as we had to follow government guidelines during COVID 19, LHH Scotland refused to give us our money back. They even ran a competition on their Facebook page giving a weekend away in the same house to key workers but they are quite happy to keep their existing customers’ money, there were 4 key workers in our group whose money they are still keeping. Disgraceful behaviour. The owner is a high-profile writer who writes about Scottish history, in particular Clan Fraser. We wonder if she realises the extent of LHH Scotland damage for Scottish tourism and in particular for her professional credibility. LHH needs to pay us our money back.

Sutch

Sylvestris said:

LHH Scotland are up early this morning .................................

Implies you think they can sleep at night??

Etch

Another one-star review from "Andy H" "an hour ago":

Some free advice

I am exactly the same as all the other one star reviewers on this site. Couldn’t stay in the property due to Covid-19, no refund from LHH, no rescheduling to an alternative date, unfriendly and curt emails from LHH etc. So no need to go into further detail, readers on this site have by now got the gist. However the directors and co-owners of LHH Scotland obviously read these posts so that they can either refute the claims or flag them for removal. So in accordance with Trustpilot’s advice to give constructive feedback here is some free professional advice.

In my 35+ years as a business adviser I have never witnessed a company so intent on self-destruction. You are clearly not acting in the spirit of fairness and as a consequence you are progressively alienating your existing customers - both the holidaymakers and the decent, honest property owners. With the growing negativity in the press and on social media, your brand is becoming irreparably damaged and you will find it hard to replace the customers you have lost. People just don’t trust you.

So the first thing you need to do is ignore the legal advice from your lawyers. Lawyers live in their own little bubble, out of touch with the commercial world, and won’t have a clue (or don’t care) about the collateral damage their advice is causing to a consumer focused business. You need to immediately stop playing the “well we are only an agency and your contract is with the owner, not our fault, speak to your travel insurer blah blah” card.

Secondly you need to publicly apologise and fess up that you got it wrong. You will earn respect for being honest. You need to put out a communication where you state that the Coronavirus pandemic was unprecedented and the legal position about holiday lets back in March was unclear. Initially, in good faith, you followed the advice of your lawyers but it is now overwhelmingly clear from the likes of the CMA that a full refund should be given to those customers who were unable to occupy their holiday lets during lockdown.

You claimed in the press that 5,800 impacted customers either happily rescheduled their holiday or reclaimed in full on their insurance (by the way, based on the number of properties on your books that number is impossible and is probably overstated by at least x8). Therefore by your own admission and reasoning, the number of remaining customers who have not recovered their losses must be miniscule. You can therefore easily afford to reimburse them and you should therefore state that you and the property owners will fully refund them, with no deduction of an admin fee, in accordance with the provisions of contract law and consumer protection law.

I think that it is worth mentioning at this point that you are sadly deluded if you think that if a customer managed to reclaim their rental back from their travel insurer they are happy punters and will rebook with you. There are a lot of really cross people out there who feel that it was grossly unfair and immoral that LHH Scotland kept all of their money for providing absolutely nothing, while they (the customer) had to endure the hassle of making an insurance claim and losing their insurance excess. And please don’t excuse yourselves by thinking “well our T&Cs told you take out insurance”. People take out travel insurance if they themselves have to cancel.

Thirdly as a further apology for the distress and anxiety caused, and to stop the haemorrhaging of your existing customer base you should offer a discount on future bookings, against any property, for anyone who was unable to take up their holiday let during lockdown.

Last but not least I would recommend that you invest in some coaching to improve your communication skills with ordinary members of the general public (i.e. your customers). Other reviewers have stated that you come across as self-righteous and rude. I must admit that I agree. Indeed the tone of some of your communications infers that you have a complete disdain for your customers. I am sure that this is not intentional, but as someone else said, you just need to show a bit of empathy.

This may be just enough to save your business. The additional benefits include:
(1) You save shed loads of money on solicitors’ costs.
(2) You can stop wasting time searching the internet to refute or remove comments from unhappy customers.
(3) The morale of your staff will be lifted. They must be so fed up dealing with unhappy customers and must be concerned for their jobs.

You have some superb properties on your books and your brochure and website are exemplary. Don’t ruin your business for the sake of defending a misguided legal principle or for trying to ingratiate yourselves with a few rich property owners. These rich property owners don’t care about you.

Warren14

The Scotsman article about LHH Scotland refusing refunds https://www.scotsman.com/health/coronavirus/scots-holiday-firm-referred-watchdog-over-covid-19-refund-refusal-2924267 can also be found on the Scotsman's Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/TheScotsmanNewspaper. You can make your feelings known and leave comments on the post.