Westi, I can relate to your "gardening = mowing the lawn" comment. When the house was being managed by a lettings agent while we were away, we said we wanted a gardener. We were ready to pay well for it but no, apparently that was "impossible". The so-called gardeners used to charge £100 a time to mow the 'lawn' and it's not a large garden by any stretch of the imagination. Cushy nunber for the grass cutters.
Another time we were charged £20 for "installation of toilet brush". I queried it and got some BS reply about workmens' time. I replied that I would have simply given the tenants a couple of quid to go across the road and buy one for 74p. They could have had a whole year's supply for £20.
When we did eventually get the house back we found that they had indeed "installed" a 74p one.

Another thing is that we paid quite a lot for a new shower, which we they chose not us and the workmen mounted it on the wrong wall, and not on the wall where the shower was previously mounted so now the water shoots out bounces off the base tray of the shower and soaks the window and floor. Also, you'd have to be around 6 feet to benefit from how the shower can be adjusted and I'm less than 5 feet. OK, so at least the place wasn't trashed. There are other niggles.
We were only an email away but the longer they managed the property the more autonomy they took for granted they had without consulting us. We always used to stay for at least some time in August (othewise a void) but when we said that we'd pick up the keys on whatever date we discovered that he'd already ageed to let it to the tenant for that month. This was without our knowledge never mind our consent. Later we discovered that we only got half the month's rent because there was only one tenant there for the August. I know things could be a lot worse but things like that just niggle.