In a Consumer Champions special, Anna Tims tackles online rental disasters, from a tree collapsing on to a cottage to being trapped in a flat
T
he 100-year-old oak fell on the first day of the holiday. It crashed on to the terrace where James and his partner, Andrew, had been breakfasting minutes earlier, smashing the table and chairs and crushing the windscreen of their hire car.
The Airbnb cottage in Provence, France, was engulfed by the branches that broke the living room window and damaged the roof. “I was sure the ceiling was going to come in,” says James. “If it had fallen minutes earlier we would have been seriously injured or killed.”
It took a day for the host to winch the tree off the cottage and make emergency repairs, but the traumatised couple feared the property may be structurally unsound and decided to book into a hotel for the rest of their week’s holiday.
