Historic Houses reviews

1652628270

William Kidd

google

1

Consumers should be aware before joining HHA, that some owner members do not adhere to their own published terms & conditions, as should be required under HHA's own rules & also by consumer regulations & trading standards. We travelled a considerable distance to the Castle at Hutton in the Forest, which was confirmed & advertised on the owner's website as being open, with no charge for either parking or admission to the property for members. However entry was shared with a plant fair and parking charged at 8. There seemed to be no alternative parking for the Castle & even if there had been, we were not advised or directed to it. Upon stating we were not happy to pay a parking charge & despite showing the HHA cards to the member of staff who conferred with someone who appeared to be the owner, there was no negotiating on this point but rather & a rude & curt 'follow your nose' to find the way out was his answer. To have paid 8 would have been no problem & prevented wasting a day & fuel costing far more but the principle was simply unacceptable. This misrepresentation unfairly wasted our valuable & irreplacable time & around 40 worth of fuel & prevented us getting value for our membership.

1622555994

A Bear

google

4

We found this subscription to be very good value and enjoyed many happy visits to various houses and gardens during 2019. Our only complaint is that we are often disappointed to find that some of the houses do not allow free entry, some allow only one visit per year, and some only open on a minimal number of days a year. The ones - and there are quite a few - that generously do welcome HH members on an unrestricted basis are very much appreciated.

1600260709

Jonathon Hampson

google

Hi Jonathan, thank you so much for the lovely write up! It's wonderful to hear you've been able to go out visiting, this year of all years! Gardens, certainly, have been a welcome escape after lockdowns. Thanks again and hope you've many more plans to go out visiting this month.

1602077053

5

Hi, Just a quick message to say both myself and my wife are enjoying using our memberships to visit the beautiful homes you provide access too. The tours that are provided are superb and are significantly better than national trust tours who we are now ex members of. The gardens are beautiful and on site cafes are lovely. I would also like to thankyou on how quickly you have opened your sites during the pandemic and how good the social distancing has been implemented.

1589127414

Carolyne Beckwith

google

Hi Carolyne, thanks so much for the feedback (and apologies for the delay here - we're still clearly trying to get on top of our various digital presences!). Sorry to hear about your experience though. It's been an extraordinary year for everyone. When you purchase gift membership there currently isn't an option to extend it for a later date apart from in the run-up to Christmas - for specific logistical reasons, although it's clearly something we'd love to introduce when it's technologically possible. It doesn't say this is an option on the checkout page, but we can certainly look to make this clearer. Apologies for the confusion on this, but hope your friends have been able to visit lots of places this year. Historic Houses places began opening again in May, and many have extended their seasons to make up for the lost time (and income) given many houses are so reliant on visitor income to keep going. We're doing our best in a very challenging year.

1602079645

1

Very, very upset with this organisation. I bought a gift membership for our friends as a Golden Wedding present about seven weeks before the event. Instead of sending a voucher for them to activate their membership HHA activated it immediately. The country went into lockdown the week before their Golden Wedding so I contacted HHA to ask for the membership to be put on hold until they could use it.i explained the circumstances of it being a Golden Wedding present but they refused to move. We had intended joining ourselves but after such shoddy treatment we certainly wont be doing now!

1569229614

Stanley Bernard

google

5

Enjoyable day out, needed much more than the couple of hours we had.