Rooftops Cottage, 2 Morrison's Yard, Brunswick Street, Whitby, North Yorkshire, YO21 1RD

This ?holiday? cottage is far from habitable even during ?normal? times. Considering you cannot access the property until 5pm due to extensive cleaning during COVID, this is far from the truth, it is filthy beyond belief.

We spent time cleaning the kitchen ourselves but the filth continued upstairs to the bedroom and rooftop terrace.

We complained to Sykes (to whom we had the contract with for the letting and paid directly to), they advised us to leave the property for a couple of hours whilst they sent the cleaners back in. We returned to find none of the issues had been dealt but there was a strong smell of bleach! The place was so bad, we could not stay even one night.

Sykes have not accepted responsibility and insisted that we liaise with the owners however they will not disclose the owners details! We have lost just under £1,000

The property was dirty and shabby and the photographs used to advertise it are very misleading and out of date. Literally everything in the property was long overdue for replacement, ranging from the stained couches to the cracked, smelly fridge to the soiled, saggy mattress. There would have been a nice view from the top bedroom window but the windows were caked in bird faeces. The property smelled strongly of mould and was in need of a deep clean. The only positive was its location, right in the centre of Whitby and a few minutes' walk to harbour and beach.

DO NOT (and I cannot stress this enough) book this cottage/your holiday via Yorkshire Coastal Cottages. They're actually owned by Sykes Cottages. We booked this supposedly 5* cottage in Whitby called Rooftops Cottage, paying £1100 for 2 people/one week. On arrival, what we found was a shabby and dirty cottage in bad need of a thorough clean and full update. The furniture was old and stained, there was a bizarre hole in the lounge floor and the bed had sand and stains on the fitted sheet. The bed mattress also seemed very worn and was totally unsupportive. The guest book in the property contained lots of comments from previous disappointed customers too. We contacted Yorkshire Coastal Cottages (which we hadn't realised is just a branch of Sykes) & they were APPALLING. Simply forwarded our messages to the owner & then sent back her reply, saying we could leave by 10am the next morning & she'd refund us £600. So we'd be out £500 for staying one night of our holiday and having made a four hour journey?! I was genuinely astonished by their attitude and rudeness and total lack of effort to resolve the problems. I asked them to confirm WHEN the property had last been inspected and received its 5* rating but they refused to answer