This is everyone's personal horror story, if they offer accomodation. Double booking.
Saturday evening last. Arrive home to find 2 emails waiting for us through this brilliant co-operative email service which Glencoe owners use between us. When there is no room at the inn - or b&b or cottage then the visitor's need can be circulated to everyone in the Glencoe area so they can find somewhere to stay.
In our absence, the Glencoe people were trying to find somewhere for a French family who had turned up at our cottage thinking they were booked in only to find that existing people had arrived earlier that day.
Aarrgh! The French family were now at the Pineapple House in Duror. They were out at dinner but at least I had their name. Worryingly they were clutching a piece of paper with our cottage details on it. I searched the computer for them, nothing found. I checked Paypal, nothing. I knew we had had no bookings nor enquiries from France in the past year. But I can be notoriously inattentive sometimes. Can you imagine what feelings the poor family had on the first day of their holiday in Scotland?
Gillian and I each woke up in the middle of the night worrying about it. If it is our fault then we would have to find somewhere good and pay for it. Would the Holly Tree Hotel have vacancies for a week? Unlikely in the middle of the school holiday. Then the Clachaig said they might have a cottage available.......
In the morning, Jan the new owner of Pineapple House rang to say that it was all a false alarm. When they looked for their papers, they found they were booked in a cottage in Strontian, across the water, and were on their way there. Oh, the relief.
How did it come about, how did they come to us, why did they have our cottage details with them?
I'm guessing, but this is what I think may have happened. Three years ago I signed up with a big French Holiday directory to list our cottage. When I raised questions with them about their trading I received no reply. I even tried to reach their Chief Executive in Paris. Nothing happened. We seemed to get a number of unsuitable enquiries from them and more just before our renewal date. We asked to be taken off their site but WE ARE STILL ON IT. They send us enquiries from the clients, but we are not enabled to reply, presumably to encourage us back in to this directory. So their clients are disappointed to receive no reply and book elsewhere. The Directory is on our Spam list.
I think this family tried to book with us, received no reply, but by mistake brought a printed copy of the website listing with them.
Tricky this modern world. Keeps you awake at night sometimes.
John
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