Holiday Apartments in Porthleven with Hot Tubs

Reviews

What our customers say about their holidays

• John - Verified booking

  We are appalled by the lack of response and the extreme difficulty of contacting Sykes during our stay.

  We had three serious and one very serious problem with the apartment during our stay. 1) No hot water when we arrived. 2) No instruction or idea on how to deactivate the burglar alarm, inadvertently triggered whilst searching for means of turning on the hot water. 3) A very serious leak in the roof during a rain storm, where the water was pouring through the electric light fitting in the entrance hallway and above the second bedroom doorway. 4) Despite turning off the storage heaters, they remained on and very hot during our entire stay. This meant that we had to keep the windows open the entire week as a means of keeping the temperature to a tolerable level. This also led to us leaving the apartment a day early due to the discomfort. We travelled home on the 8th October, not the 9th. I attempted to contact Sykes for all of these issues above and on many occasions. The phone lines were either completely dead, or when it would connect, rang for at least 15-20 minutes each time before cutting off. On the first of two occasions when someone finally did answer, a message was taken and the owner himself phoned me back (from Bermuda!) 5 hours after the first incident. With the code he gave me, I was able to deactivate the burglar alarm. He told me he would send someone to sort the hot water for us, but no-one arrived. We therefore had to switch on the "full rate" switch next to the hot water tank, which seemed to eventually provide us with hot water. This would not turn off again! I could only finally get hold of someone for the leak incident on the afternoon of the following day. I called first thing in the morning, but was cut off. Following the online instructions, I had raised a chat incident immediately the leak occurred, but apart from an automated confirmation of receipt, I never received any response from this. The person I spoke to in the afternoon said he would speak to his manager, but again, I never heard anything else until the cleaner called me on the Wednesday. I was surprised at this, as I assumed the issues we were having were house maintenance, not cleaning problems. It remained though that none of the issues were resolved during our stay. There are electrical problems with the property, and there is a serious leak in the roof. This is the first time that we have experienced not only so many problems, but such difficulty in contacting anyone for help. The apartment itself is really lovely, but our holiday was spoilt by the time we spent trying to get things sorted that should not have been our problem, and the fact that we felt frustrated and ignored. I'm afraid we are very unimpressed, especially considering the severity and potential life-threatening nature of the leak. Had we been out and attempted to either activate the light switch for the light fitting through which the water was pouring through, or slipped in the dark in the water covering the floor, things would have been very serious indeed!

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• Tomas - Verified booking

  Myself and partner stayed here for a birthday getaway at the weekend.

  I was a little sceptical after reading a few of the reviews but we decided to go ahead. After making the 6 hour journey we arrived to a lovely little snug which is pretty small but compact and a nice outdoor area with the tub. Despite the set up, (and I’m not usually one to criticise) but I can confirm that the previous reviews are pretty valid. It’s very small (probably big enough for one person). the bed is horrendous to sleep on, like sleeping on a plank, and the pillows are so flat, so be sure to pack a duvet/pillows if you’re going! The downstairs area is pretty small and the sofa is tiny - which is only big enough for one person. Perhaps it would be better to put two chairs instead of the sofa, as we ended up having to eat either outside in the cold or up on the bed…which isn’t ideal! We used the hot tub (or should I say cold tub) twice and it was freezing..it seems like its stuck on option 1…so we’re unable to turn up the heat! (I know we have an energy crisis on but it’s slightly ridiculous that we sat in a cold tub - which was the main reason we booked the accommodation). You can also hear the neighbours really loudly next door and several times through the night there was banging and loud music going on. I know their on holidays too but it’s like living on top of one another… Had we not had such a long drive we’d have left a night earlier but decided to stick it out as we were both exhausted from the lack of sleep. It’s such a shame as it has quite a lot of potential but the negatives really out way the positives and really put a dampener on the holiday!

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• Andrew - Verified booking

  Private hot tub is a joke with 9 windows overlooking it in a terraced back yard.

  Parasol to make it private was broken and has been since Oct 22 according to other reviews. The hot tub was one of the main reasons we booked the Snug, we were very disappointed to find it so overlooked, we felt very much on show. The pictures make it look as though it is not overlooked at all. Also you cannot use the hot tub after 10pm due to noise restrictions, this was not mentioned when we reviewed the Snug to book. There is nowhere to hang wet swimming costumes when you come out of the hot tub, or coats. This could be easily sorted with a coat rack next to the bathroom door. Advertised as a self catering apartment, very difficult when the so called fridge is a drinks chiller which struggled to keep drinks cool let alone milk, butter or any other food. We had to eat out everyday which adds significantly to the cost of a holiday. This could easily be rectified by putting a small fridge under the stairs. Fire alarm went off due to people in another flat burning food, tried to ring emergency contact number to have the fire alarm turned off, only to find the phone number was incorrect, which was quite stressful and inconvenient. We rang the daytime office number twice to complain about these problems, and twice we were promised a phone call back which never happened. We came home a day early as we couldn't stay there any longer. This was our honeymoon and our only time away this year totally ruined by the Snug being misrepresented and the photo's being misleading. I would like our money back or at least part of it as we feel robbed of a holiday. I would not book through Sykes Cottages again.

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• Naz - Verified booking

  The snug was well presented and in a good location, very modern and the hot tub was nice but unfortunately that's about as much good as I can say about our stay.

  The space is quite alot smaller than is shown in pictures but that isn't too much if an issue. The real problem with the snug is the comforts and the privacy. The 'sofa' was very uncomfortable and small, the kitchen, although well ewuipt, lacked a decent fridge and it didn't get very cold.so had to rely on buying ice from the nearby shop. The bathroom was fine apart from the very small space for the toilet, meaning it was abit if a squeeze when it came to using it. The upstairs was nice and spacious but was let down by probably the most uncomfortable bed I've every had in a holiday home, this was made worse by the very cheap pillows so not much sleep was had. I came to realise we were actually sleeping on the bottom of the matress as it had been flipped. The outside space was lovely in principle and the hotub was amazing but this was let down by all the over looking windows from other houses, this has been helped by the umbrella that was installed but we were still overlooked. There was also a CCTV camera facing the hot tub which I understand is for security reasons but this made us feel like we were watched 24/7. All the above reasons lead us to leaving the snug a day earlier than intended because we just weren't getting any sleep ( we also had banging from neighbours both nights). A partial refund would be a good gesture seen as there are a few points raised that really shouldn't be an issue.

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• Amber - Verified booking

  Kind of made a mistake booking, did not read reviews accurately first then when I tried to cancel it I realised you lose the 200£ deposit.

  The location is good- Cambourne itself isn’t nice, but it is really close to hayle st Ives parran porth and Newquay. The hot tub is fab and the outside bit is nice. The place is clean, but as stated it is very very small. I have multiple bruises from the “stair case” I’m 5ft 6 and 12 stone and if your much bigger you would struggle to get up and down them I think. You can’t really chill out in the evening times unless you go and lay in the bed. I know it’s small, but would be so much better to have a small corner comfy sofa made or something where you can relax rather than just sitting on the two chairs. We purchased food for the first night and as we went to cook it the oven didn’t work it kept tripping the electric every time we turned it on therefore we had to throw the food we had bought. We did contact Sykes but only got a response the day we were leaving. Also would have been nice to be able to put the heating on at night especially to dry wet clothes as our clothes got wet from rain. We still had a good holiday, but I wouldn’t stay again and wouldn’t book with Sykes.

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