the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke

The Berkshire Belle and I spent much of Sunday talking through our return to Duras next year. We are too old to do a lot of the tourist stuff, but we have not done much of that anyway down the years, it just isn’t our scene.

One of the things we look for in our holidays is to get away and relax, and another is to behave like locals as much as possible. It is not for us to seek out our fellow British holidaymakers, in fact we deliberately avoid them as much as possible. We like to shop where the locals shop, and buy food to take back to our holiday rental and cook our meals. On that basis we were planning our return to the Dordogne, to the lovely Gite that we had found from where we could shop in the local towns and bring back nice things to cook and enjoy with a bottle of local wine.

Such plans were rudely shattered later yesterday when we got an email from the Gite owners, eight days after our departure, to say that cooking smells from our stay had permeated the soft furnishings to the extend that chair covers and curtains needed cleaning. As a result they would be withholding a portion of our security deposit to cover dry cleaning costs.

We are staggered. Not once in 35 years of renting self-catering properties in Europe and the USA have we ever had such a problem. We cooked on eleven of our fourteen evenings in the property. None of the meals we cooked was especially aromatic and none took more that about 25 minutes cooking. At all cooking sessions we used the extractor fan over the hob, and on no occasion did either of us come downstairs the next morning to find lingering aromas of the pervious nights meal.

Everyone is different and has their own standards, but if you are renting out property on a self-catering basis you expect your renters to cook in it. The kitchen in this Gite was very well equipped, so there was an obvious expectation that we would use it. That said, we understand that the owners have their own standards, and that our occupancy in some way breached them, but the way that it has been handled is just poor customer service.

For nearly twenty years we rented out our villa in Florida, and would never have treated a customer the way that we have been dealt with. The upshot is that we will not, after all, be going back next year. The Gite is perfect for us in terms of comfort, but if we can’t cook in it without worrying about the consequences there is no point in renting it again.

It appears, from the email, that they have had this problem before, so why not warn renters? Were it us we would have just included the dry-cleaning costs in the rental price and then we would not have had to risk upsetting people. Their choice, and they have both lost a customer, gained reviews that mention this issue and lost our recommendations for their property to others we know.

What now for us? Well, many years ago when we were first a couple, we used to holiday in the Charente-Maritime, so we are looking to return there instead. It won’t be the same all these years later, but it is not as rural as the Dordogne and we are hopeful of another good French holiday. We enjoyed this year, it’s sad that it is an avenue that is now closed to us, but I am sure that we will find somewhere just as good in our old stamping ground.