Section 75 claim help - Sykes cottages - eligibility?

Jumblebumble

Grumpy_chap said:

waitpatiently said:

MobileSaver said:

waitpatiently said:

Sykes rushed in with a menial and insulting 5% goodwill gesture. ... I accept that 60% is high

As others have said, percentages aren't very helpful in this instance, roughly how much did you pay for the week in the cottage?

£1700+
Is it reasonable to expect a fridge freezer as we deliberately paid more for a nice property to feed my family by cooking for a week. 

As my original expectations for what we should get back are too high, what would seem more reasonable?

You paid £1.7k for the week's use of the holiday cottage.
You had no fridge.
You have been offered 5% refund = £85
You want 60% refund = £1k
Cheapest fridge freezers on Curry's website are under £150.

I would suggest the £85, which is half the cost of a fridge freezer is more than generous.

I am genuinely curious as to what relevance either the fact that your company  can supply a fridge on presumably long term hire for £1.00 per week or how much a fridge costs in Currys to the OPS situation
If I am renting a cottage I have no reason at all to be concerned with  the cost of a fridge from Currys I just want what I have paid for
I do agree that 1K refund is a no goer but to call 5% more than generous is not in my view true

ThumbRemote

Alderbank said:

waitpatiently said:

DullGreyGuy said:

waitpatiently said:
We can quantify lost time and loss of value, and loss of enjoyment to try and reclaim directly from Sykes / owner 60% of the whole property rental fee. 

Is Sykes the owner?

Looks like they're not on most the cottages at least in which case S75 will fail because you paid a third party (Sykes) and not directly to the Supplier (cottage owner) but S75 requires a direct relationship between Debtor, Creditor and Supplier

No Sykes don’t own the property. After reading this, in theory Sykes could give you a bomb site when you turn up, then say they’re not the owner, and dismiss you as you never had any leg to stand on to begin with? Or am I missing something, because Sykes haven’t even really allowed us any route to complain even when we’ve read through and applied their complaints procedure.

the booking conditions are here: https://www.northumbria-cottages.co.uk/terms/booking

it gets even stickier as it’s Sykes, then Northumbria Cottages, who then handle it on behalf of the owner so whilst we were there, NC handled things such as the engineer and speaking to the owner. We never spoke to the owner. We never dealt with Sykes apart from at the start to call about the discovery and only now to complain for some reason, despite NC dealing with the issues during the week.

This is the business model you need if you want to squash any hope of consumer rights

However since it is so remote, they appear to have taken all reasonable steps to replace the fridge as soon as possible and the delays were entirely due to the engineer who was probably the only person available to do the job at that time in that location, so the delays were beyond their reasonable control. That will moderate their liability.

I disagree here. If they were able to supply a mini fridge, they could have supplied a standard under-counter fridge. Someone has clearly been to the property to deliver/fit the mini fridge. 

ThumbRemote

Grumpy_chap said:

waitpatiently said:

MobileSaver said:

waitpatiently said:

Sykes rushed in with a menial and insulting 5% goodwill gesture. ... I accept that 60% is high

As others have said, percentages aren't very helpful in this instance, roughly how much did you pay for the week in the cottage?

£1700+
Is it reasonable to expect a fridge freezer as we deliberately paid more for a nice property to feed my family by cooking for a week. 

As my original expectations for what we should get back are too high, what would seem more reasonable?

You paid £1.7k for the week's use of the holiday cottage.
You had no fridge.
You have been offered 5% refund = £85
You want 60% refund = £1k
Cheapest fridge freezers on Curry's website are under £150.

I would suggest the £85, which is half the cost of a fridge freezer is more than generous.

This is a very bizarre approach.

Any financial claim is based on the impact to the customer, not the financial cost of the faulty component. Or do you think that if a property had the water switched off to a faulty 20p tap washer then the customer would only be entitled to 10p?

The fridge was an integral part of the kitchen. The lettings agent knew about the problem in advance but didn't communicate it, then repeatedly messed the customer around - all presumably to prevent the customer cancelling the booking. The agent have been absolutely unreasonable.

I'd go to small claims court, and maybe put 60% of the cost as a starting point. 

Grumpy_chap

Jumblebumble said:

Grumpy_chap said:

waitpatiently said:

MobileSaver said:

waitpatiently said:

Sykes rushed in with a menial and insulting 5% goodwill gesture. ... I accept that 60% is high

As others have said, percentages aren't very helpful in this instance, roughly how much did you pay for the week in the cottage?

£1700+
Is it reasonable to expect a fridge freezer as we deliberately paid more for a nice property to feed my family by cooking for a week. 

As my original expectations for what we should get back are too high, what would seem more reasonable?

You paid £1.7k for the week's use of the holiday cottage.
You had no fridge.
You have been offered 5% refund = £85
You want 60% refund = £1k
Cheapest fridge freezers on Curry's website are under £150.

I would suggest the £85, which is half the cost of a fridge freezer is more than generous.

I am genuinely curious as to what relevance either the fact that your company  can supply a fridge on presumably long term hire for £1.00 per week or how much a fridge costs in Currys to the OPS situation
If I am renting a cottage I have no reason at all to be concerned with  the cost of a fridge from Currys I just want what I have paid for
I do agree that 1K refund is a no goer but to call 5% more than generous is not in my view true

The OP needs to bring some metric to the quantifiable losses they have suffered.
(I note the elements around loss of enjoyment are separate.)

If not related to the direct costs of the failed item - the fridge - then what metric for the quantifiable losses?
This could be built up, for example, intent to buy 4 pints of milk at £1.50 to last the whole week but, with no fridge, had to buy one pint every day at £1 per pint so £7 total because the milk went off every night.

I think references to the percentage of the hire are irrelevant in this situation.
The OP paid £1.7k (100%) to hire a complete holiday cottage with all the stuff in that the holiday cottage should have.  Value of cottage with all the stuff in, say £250k.  Value of the part that was not there / broken, say £250.  A percentage of 0.001 would be proportional so will the OP be happy with £1.70 back?

You have said the 5% (£85) is insufficient but not what you think would be sufficient or how that would be determined.

Aylesbury_Duck

Now we know the values involved, £1000 sounds like a totally unrealistic expectation.  I agree that £85 is too mean, given the inconvenience and disruption.  My gut says that £150-300 feels about right for the trouble, and you might be able to get to that figure by adding quantified losses to a sum as an apology.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Grumpy_chap said:

The OP needs to bring some metric to the quantifiable losses they have suffered.
(I note the elements around loss of enjoyment are separate.)

I think loss of enjoyment is probably the only claim here.

This articles covers it well:

https://www.dekachambers.com/2020/06/09/general-damages-in-holiday-claims-a-recap/

Holiday-goers on ruined “run of the mill holidays” attracted between £83 and £876.

emphasize that using other holiday cases as comparators for assessing damages was “not a particularly fruitful exercise because the facts of one case will be infinitely different from the facts of the next

So case by case. The price of the holiday doesn't necessarily relate to the value of the damages as it is looking at trying to put a value on that loss of enjoyment specifically. 

Comments made also suggest damages should be directly related to that loss of enjoyment so if 2 of the party were young children for example they probably had a grand old time either way  

Assuming 5 adults and the holiday wasn't "special" maybe around £400 would be a price to pitch at but again it has to be against the accommodation owner. 

If Sykes are acting as a go between then OP pointing out they are claiming for loss of enjoyment as established under Jarvis v Swans Tours Ltd might see the offer upped a little bit. 

Money_Grabber13579

It sounds like the OP took a make do and mend approach and as a result, didn’t enjoy their holiday to the extent that would have been expected. In the absence of a working fridge, I’d have thought that the realistic options at the start of the holiday would have been to secure a move to an alternative property (at no cost to the OP) or to have decided that cooking meals was mostly impractical and so to order takeaways/go out to restaurants.

In the first case, the property owner would have had to have paid for the replacement property (unless they owned the vacant alternative property, but I’d still see that as being a lost opportunity cost, even if not an actual cost) and in the second case, I think the landlord should have been paying for the meals, to the extent to which they would have been more expensive than the basic ingredients.

The amounts involved in either case would be substantial so I don’t see £1k as being an unreasonable sum at all. The only difficulty is that the OP took the hit on enjoyability rather than on actual costs so difficult to put a definitive figure on the compensation.

To look at it another way, if the OP had turned up to no working fridge, would they have been within their rights to go back home again and claim a full refund on the basis that the property wasn’t as described? I’d have thought yes, if the owner couldn’t quickly rectify the scenario (which proved to be the case) and so starting point as a full refund and working back from there to determine what the OP did get value from wouldn’t, to me, seem unreasonable.

Hoenir

waitpatiently said:

We can quantify lost time and loss of value, and loss of enjoyment to try and reclaim directly from Sykes / owner 60% of the whole property rental fee. 

I'd be interested in how you quantify and arrive at £1,020.  

Alderbank

ThumbRemote said:

Alderbank said:

waitpatiently said:

DullGreyGuy said:

waitpatiently said:
We can quantify lost time and loss of value, and loss of enjoyment to try and reclaim directly from Sykes / owner 60% of the whole property rental fee. 

Is Sykes the owner?

Looks like they're not on most the cottages at least in which case S75 will fail because you paid a third party (Sykes) and not directly to the Supplier (cottage owner) but S75 requires a direct relationship between Debtor, Creditor and Supplier

No Sykes don’t own the property. After reading this, in theory Sykes could give you a bomb site when you turn up, then say they’re not the owner, and dismiss you as you never had any leg to stand on to begin with? Or am I missing something, because Sykes haven’t even really allowed us any route to complain even when we’ve read through and applied their complaints procedure.

the booking conditions are here: https://www.northumbria-cottages.co.uk/terms/booking

it gets even stickier as it’s Sykes, then Northumbria Cottages, who then handle it on behalf of the owner so whilst we were there, NC handled things such as the engineer and speaking to the owner. We never spoke to the owner. We never dealt with Sykes apart from at the start to call about the discovery and only now to complain for some reason, despite NC dealing with the issues during the week.

This is the business model you need if you want to squash any hope of consumer rights

However since it is so remote, they appear to have taken all reasonable steps to replace the fridge as soon as possible and the delays were entirely due to the engineer who was probably the only person available to do the job at that time in that location, so the delays were beyond their reasonable control. That will moderate their liability.

I disagree here. If they were able to supply a mini fridge, they could have supplied a standard under-counter fridge. Someone has clearly been to the property to deliver/fit the mini fridge. 

The OP said the mini fridge was tiny, '...at best, the mini fridge fit about 2 x 2pint milks in, some spread, and some cheese.'

That's one of these:

Nobody needs to fit it - you buy in Tesco or B&M and pop it into a carrier bag.
Holiday lets often leave one at the back of a cupboard for you to sit on the patio with a cool lager or G&T.

Largs

I have never dealt with Sykes but when I complained to Parkdean Resorts about similar experience on holiday, it was 15% refund I got.  I just wanted to draw a line and accepted.  A working fridge on a self catering holiday is essential in my book, especially as it was in a remote location and hope you get a resolution to this.