Mulberry Cottages Reviews 112

We were a party of 8 Ladies on our annual 1 night get together. We booked Westwood (lovely house), Ledbury back in August 2017 for our stay March 2018 the cost was £615 (for the 1 night).
We arrived early and parked up and walked into the Town as we had booked a table at 'The Olive Tree' for lunch (highly recommended). We walked back to the property arriving at 3pm.
When we walked into the house there were lights on and it was such a mess! Cups in the sink, wet towels over the kitchen chairs, red wine splashes up the side of the units, even a birthday card on the work top - we were concerned that someone was still there but it was empty, when we checked upstairs the beds had been slept in and there were red wine stains on the bedding.
I called the owner who was the contact- as far as he was aware the house had been prepared for us and didn't know what had happened. After a few minutes he called back to say he had contacted the housekeeper (who was in the middle of her shopping!) and would call in. She was shocked at the state the place was in and said that it would take a good couple of hours to get the house ready again, and suggested we either wait in the lounge (which was ok) or go back into Town which we did ( it was a bitterly cold day). We were told t
that Mulberry had taken a last minute booking and not informed the owner/housekeeper (which Mulberry later said they had).
The housekeeper did a really good job of getting the place ready -considering she had been caught unawares as well!! We eventually had use of the house at around 6.30pm. This had an impact on our plans for the afternoon and evening and unfortunately we were rushed and didn't get to do all that we wanted, especially as we still had to sort the evening meal as well.
On the Monday I contacted Mulberry - the owner agreed to reimburse us for our drinks whilst we hung around in Town, but neither the owner or Mulberry were prepared to offer a part refund for the hassle of having to make phone calls, inconvenience and the lost hours.
After several emails Mulberry offered us £50 off our next booking with them as a good will gesture (as if!!!). If it had been a £50 refund we would have been happy with that, we weren't looking for a major refund but we did lose a large chunk of our time which we had paid for. We were very disappointed and dissatisfied by how this was dealt with afterwards. Any miscommunication between the owner and Mulberry was not our problem.
Customer service is all well and good when you are booking but you really need it when things go wrong-Mulberry cottages fell well short in this instance and didn't want to know. We would not recommend them to anyone especially not friends and family. Avoid at all costs!!
K.A.

I stayed at Little Duck Lodge which provides cosy accommodation in a wonderful setting. Mulberry Cottages were extremely friendly, helpful and efficient. Would definitely use again and highly recommend.

I have had the same terrible experience as a number of people below (wish I'd checked Trust Pilot before I booked). Do not use Mulberry Cottages or book Stag Farm Cheltenham.

We booked Stag Farm in Cheltenham for the days that it was available on-line. Our booking was accepted and Mulberry took full payment. Over the following week we received 3 e-mails confirming our booking, asking us the age of the children and what configuration we would like the sleeping arrangements.

Then astonishingly we received an e-mail stating that we could no longer have it for the day we booked it because someone was checking out earlier that day (note there was 5 hours between check out and in). We offered to check in later and even accept that cleaners might still be in while we arrived. I explained that we were travelling from Belgium and had already booked our return Ferries based on the days we had paid and had our booking confirmed. There was other expenditure committed based on staying for those dates.

There was however no flexibility (noting it was their mistake) and we were told we could check in the following day or they would cancel our booking (oh and by the way there was no reduced fee for checking in the next day as 2 nights is the same as 3).

I was then given an ultimatum to decide by close of business that day and if I did not then I could not guarantee my full fee refunded to me.

Needless to say we cancelled and rejected Mulberry's offer to find us a similar property. I have to say that the staff were polite but there seemed to be no acceptance that they were in the wrong and their system needs reviewing.

We found a lovely property on Trip Adviser instead, booked it and received an e-mail stating the owner would get back to us to confirm our dates before payment was taken. If only Mulberry initiated the same process. Avoid them is my advice.

Joined TrustPilot solely to warn others away from using Mulberry Cottages, who have a high-quality social media presence and modern user-friendly website but the worst customer service I have experienced in years. One key issue is that they have a named member of staff attached to their general email address so it appears to be a personalised service but after having to re-explain the whole debacle 3 days after it had started it was clear that they were different people replying to the emails.



I required a 10 person property for a big birthday celebration, found a beautiful remote property which advertised 8+2 people. I checked whether this was suitable for 10 adults on the LiveChat function which was confirmed, checked again in the details section on the booking submission form (a booking form rather than automatic booking surely implies a human checks the form?). After I'd received no less than 2 confirmation emails, one of which included a request for me to confirm what bed configuration we required, I thought it was safe to book the train travel for our group. After spending £260 on trains for 10 people, I received an email later that day telling me the booking was cancelled because there was only room for 6 adults and 2 children and that they've refunded my deposit. They offered a similar property in this remote location which was £230 more expensive.



I explained that I was amazed that this error could have occurred after I checked it multiple times and I felt that they should waive the additional £230 rental figure as our hands were tied due to the train tickets but I was told their cooling period allowed them to do this but they would knock off their £45 fees (generous!). After they promised to contact the owners of the new property to see if they would deduct anything (as if they would as Mulberry Cottages had messed up), I had to chase them up after the weekend whereby then claimed to have spoken to the owners allegedly said they couldn’t discount but could offer the property for 3 nights at the same cost for 2. This act of kindness is actually pure deception, as the website advertises the property for this price regardless of 2 or 3 nights so they are not very clever in their deception.


Thankfully, it looks as though a single admin cost of £10 will refund the train tickets but no thanks to this awful company, which basically tried to up-sell me instead of helping to resolve the error they created.

Terrible customer service, very unhelpful treated my as if I am stupid. The Pump Station Dungeness is in a fab location but much smaller than expected. Lots of things not working i.e. Bathroom door lock, flush on loo, kitchen lights. Wooden ladders tied with nylon rope to bunk bed not safe for my children. Property marketed for 8 NOWAY!!!! Tiny teapot small kettle, single toaster. Tiny freezer. No storage in kitchen. No tin opener, kitchen bin is a bin bag bulldog clipped inside a draw. We paid a lot of money for this property and its disappointing. Mulberry didn't want to know, they told me it was 'art' I laughed and said I didn't know broken kitchen lights was art. My husband had to use a head touch to cook with as we couldn't see in the dark.. still waiting to hear back from a Mulberry regarding compensation.

The property was very nice and I initially found that the company responded very quickly and efficiently to any queries.
However, I am appalled by their deposit policy, which, in my opinion, is tantamount to theft.
They informed us that there was a stain on the sofa after we had left. I concluded that it must have been a water stain where my young niece had sat down after a shower, without having dried herself properly.
The next thing I knew, £250 had been debited from my bank account. I completely accepted that I would have to pay for the stain removal, although I do seriously question the suitability of cream, fabric sofas in a property which allows children and dogs!! I assumed that they would organise a quote for the cleaning, let me know how much and then deduct that specific amount from my deposit. I would have happily accepted that. What they actually did was deduct the full £250, keep it for 8 days and then finally contact me to say they were charging £50 to remove the stain and £20 admin fee! What an absolute rip off! I was not shown any kind of invoice.
For this reason, I shall never use the company again and shall not recommend them.

By far the worst experience EVER!

Booked a nice cottage through Mullberry, price was decent and got the information for the cottage quick in my email, well.. that’s the good part..
A little bit more then a week before the date I’ve got an email from Mullberry saying:

“The owner has contacted us to advise that, due to personal reasons, they will no longer be able to continue with your letting. Therefore, it is with deepest regret that we have to inform you your booking can no longer go ahead.
We would still love to try and find you a holiday, should you wish, and will be more than happy to look for suitable alternatives for your dates.
We are truly sorry for any inconvenience or disappointment this may cause. Please do let us know if you would like to explore alternative options at all.”

Just an email, nothing more. This is exactly how you can get people angry, by not really giving a reason. So I replied that this is not an option for us, it was very hard to get some days of in that period of time. Next day I called them and suddenly the owner of the cottage has a big water leak. I won’t call that a “personal reason” but I will go with that.

The madam on the phone would sort it out and give us other options. within 15 minutes I got an email with other options, but not near anything we had booked, not equal of better, no, just less/worse.
So I called again that those were not and option so she sent me a few new ones, where I specifically asked for a cottage that is on it’s own, we wanted quite and piece.
Instead I got cottages that are adjacent to other houses and/or in the city, not what I asked for.

So I started looking myself for others because this was going nowhere. So I found a cottage that was bit more expensive but I was willing to pay some more, but I asked for a discount. In my opinion that is more then reasonable for this crap we got. Did not get a reaction on that so at the end of the day I called again. She told me that the current owner of that other/new cottage we have seen will not give a discount. Duh, I understand that the owner of the other cottage does not give discount, Mullberry should be the one to do that, but they are unwilling to help to resolve this issue. I have no idea why Mullberry should be a part of the booking, they only collect money and if something goes wrong, they are unwilling and you have a crappy vacation!

Not to mention that we got insurance for this specific trip and a boat trip for this specific date, those are now useless, Mullberry is also unwilling to sort this out for us, we have to take it up with the owner of the house that cancelled the letting, Really ridicules.

That is problem can occur is one thing, but if they would help us in a decent way for a new cottage with those specific dates I would be a happy customer, I would have praised them for the effort (that they should have made) and would return for the next time. Now they have an unhappy customer, that will not book with this company ever again and would advise friend and family to stay as far away from this company as possible. They promised the refund that same day, but that also came 3 days later, if you promise something, then do it. If you cannot do it, don’t promise it.

Watch out people, they will eventually give you your money back, but you are stuck with other costs because of this, a weekend full of agony and worst of all, no vacation!

I booked two cottages through Mulberry Cottages very recently and the staff were very helpful! Their LiveChat service is great! Can't wait for my stays!

In short if you want to go via mulberry cottages than don't expect your deposit back.