Problems with Holiday Lettings?

A question about : Problems with Holiday Lettings?

On Monday night I booked us a week's holiday in this flat in Worcester, costing Ј350 + Ј35 booking fee, having checked with the owner that it had parking. On receiving the email confirmation, which contained the flat's address - we discovered that the actual location of the flat is over a mile from the location indicated on the map in the listing. It looks like the owner just gave Worcester as the map location for the listing.

I immediately emailed the owner to confirm the actual postcode, he confirmed it. I contacted Holiday Lettings via their website chat to complain that it was in the wrong location and to ask to cancel the booking and for a refund (we specifically wanted to be in the centre). The chat adviser said they would contact the owner for confirmation of the location, and that we would receive a full refund if it is indeed not in the location specified. The adviser said we would receive an email with all the details in.

Two days later, no email has shown up. I asked the owner to cancel the booking but he said he can't and we have to do it. If I do the automated cancellation process we automatically lose over half of what we paid (refund would be 50% minus the Ј35 booking fee). I emailed Holiday Lettings, and got a response that we could cancel via the website or get the owner to do it for us (which isn't what he said), but that we would only get back whatever the cancellation policy says - which would be Ј175.

This doesn't seem right, as the listing was wrong. Does anyone know what our rights are, and what I should do now?

Best answers:

• Where is the flat located?
• It's in the St John's area of Worcester, whereas the map on the listing indicated The Cross, which is right in the centre of the shopping area. The postcode of the flat indicates that it is over a mile both from the shopping area and the cathedral area.
  I eventually managed (via the Holiday Lettings chat) facility to 'chat' to the same person I'd dealt with on the night we booked. He confirmed again that we should be due a full refund, but said that the owner needed to instigate this by cancelling the booking for us. So, the email response from Holiday Lettings was wrong. That person then said he would email instructions to the owner as to how to cancel. That seems to have worked, as the next day I got an automatic response saying the holiday had been cancelled (except the reason it gave was "change of booked dates", presumably the owner had a list of options to choose from and "I gave the wrong location" wasn't one of them?! ;-) ). Apparently the refund is on its way (3-5 working days) but the cancellation email said it was in line with the owner's cancellation policy. Now, that might just be the automatic wording of the email, but hopefully the full refund will arrive back in my account.
• Thankfully the full deposit has now appeared in our bank account, so it's all sorted. In the meantime though I have received two emails from Holiday Lettings with different information in. We have also now booked a holiday in the real centre of Worcester, via a different holiday website, don't think I'll be using Holiday Lettings again - especially as the original flat is still listed in the wrong location on their website.