Dispute with Holiday website company

Sa7y

I booked holiday accomodation based on a website that showed what I was looking for. It had a sea view with a balcony to sit and admire the view in privacy. The description and pics showed a small but private first floor apartment with balcony with emphasis that the ground floor garden was shared. On arriving we found that there was an adjacent appartment that also shared the balcony and were sitting there smoking. Not the peace and quiet that we wanted and the web page showed. The landlady apologised that although she makes it clear on her AirBNB page that the balcony is not private the holiday website company have not corrected their misleading advert despite emails from the landlady. The web company are technically not responsible for their misleading me as even though I booked via their website the contract is with the landlady. She is being held accountable for their false representation. If the property had been correctly shown I would not have booked it, the landlady offered to refund the money and even offered free usage of the apartment for the night as it was getting late but just because it would be free did not make it anymore suitable. The booking company would only offer a property far inland with another property attached and therefore unsuitable. We have been told that legally we can only sue the landlady (who has already lost out through refunding us) and as she has proof of informing the booking company that the balcony is shared then she is not responsible. It seems ridiculous that a web company can falsely portray a property at odds with the owner and not be held liable for this mistake. It seems a failing that such a situation occurred and wonder how often this happens and what can be done about. We lost half a day trying to resolve the situation with great stress to ourselves and ended up staying in hotels (due to short notice of finding any other self catering) at a greater expense than what we had budgeted for.

elsien

When you say it was a shared balcony, do you mean that that it was one long balcony split with a screen so you could still hear people, or that there was nothing separating you and they could wander along to your bit? 

Because the first is still technically private if no one else can access it even if you can still hear every word they say.

Sa7y

The balcony was barely 9ft long and this was not shown or described and we could not make an informed decision as we would definitely not have booked. The pictures they used did not show that anyone else would be sat next to us closer than you would be in a restaurant. Plus, as the staircase was on our side the other people had to walk through our area for going down the stairs or when coming back up. We would hope that privacy means that you can hide from view which was not the case and the fact that they were smoking and the smoke was coming straight through the screen was not acceptable. The landlady hadd told the booking company and gave the example that there is a hot tub on the premises but it does not offer privacy and therefore nobody is surprised when they arrive. Most annoying is that the booking company can misrepresent an accommodation and avoid any legal action as any legal contract is between the customer and the owner even though the owner could not control the booking page content.

Upsidedownandaround

It’s difficult to tell whether you have been led up the garden path by the landlady or not because you haven’t said where you booked or who the “booking company” is.

What is it Airbnb or another holiday website company?

There’s clearly a big difference between a “booking company” who has 16 properties that they manage or a “booking company” that is a platform that has millions of properties on it they will never have been to:

Sa7y

The holiday company HolidayCottages.com have been in contact. They have agreed that their web page was misleading and that I would not have made the booking if I had known the balcony was shared. The booking had been cancelled and the booking money is due to be refunded. They have also offered a settlement for the extra costs we incurred above our initial budget. They have also updated the web page to make it clear that the balcony is shared. Even though we are still unhappy for the loss of free time on the first day and the stress we felt at the time these would be hard to resolve in court so we count the matter closed

Voyager2002

Sa7y said:

The holiday company HolidayCottages.com have been in contact. They have agreed that their web page was misleading and that I would not have made the booking if I had known the balcony was shared. The booking had been cancelled and the booking money is due to be refunded. They have also offered a settlement for the extra costs we incurred above our initial budget. They have also updated the web page to make it clear that the balcony is shared. Even though we are still unhappy for the loss of free time on the first day and the stress we felt at the time these would be hard to resolve in court so we count the matter closed

Thank you for updating.

I think that Holiday Cottages have at last behaved well: the response that you outline is in line with what a court would order if you managed to win a case against them (a big 'if', as you explain).