vrooje<BR>Cheers,<br>-Brooke<BR><br><B><A TARGET=blank HREF="http:www.experienceburgundy.com">http:www.experienceburgundy.com<A><B>

Our enquiry and booking rate have dropped significantly too. Last year we were fully booked using only FC as an advertising resource. This year we advertise on two other paid sites as well, and about 7 of our booked weeks have come from FC. Without those other two sites, we'd be looking at a pretty bad year. Earlier in the season Karen Viney and other FCers were giving us the "bookings will pick up; it's just a fluke" line. I didn't believe it then and I certainly don't believe it now that bookings from FC have not, in fact, picked up. 7 weeks booked is certainly worth a renewal for this year, but it's disappointing compared to the results from the old site design. I wonder if there is some denial going on at FC corporate -- loving the new site so much that they're fooling themselves as to its effectiveness compared to the old site. I like the aesthetics and features of the new design too, but there is no doubt in my mind that the old one was better at bringing in the bookings.

Ah yes, I found it at http://www.gites-de-france.fr/fr/formules/gite/centre.htm#classement (Note that the gites-de-france.fr website is frame-based and the above is a page that's supposed to be in a frame.)

The KISS principle is absolutely brilliant. I think I would say, though, that there is one case where the simplest thing is not the best thing: mailto e-mail links. If you use those on your webpage you are just asking to be added to spammers' e-mail lists. Much better to use a simple javascript e-mail link, which functions the same way as a mailto link but is not harvestable by spammers using auto-collect robots. (I use this type of script all over my gite's website, but you have to view the source to see that it's any different from a mailto link.) I completely agree that you should ask your designer to stay away from all things Flash and animated-gif.

Ooh, that sounds useful. Is that information of a short enough length that you could share it here?

I don't know about the Western Union thing... I seem to remember the fee was a whole lot more than a few dollars for international transactions. But then, that was from the US to Canada (and it cost around $30, if I recall correctly). Maybe it's different to Europe, though I don't see why that would be. Most of our clients use PayPal. It's great for deposits because you don't have to sign up to make a payment of E750 or less. We e-mail them our contract in PDF format, and they print it, sign it, and fax it to us. We sign it and fax it back. It works really well, and we have a clause in the contract explicitly stating that for legal purposes a "signature" can be a fax signature. Another option would be a direct bank transfer -- if you have an account that you're comfortable using.

What's the approximate price range for getting termites taken care of in a house? We have a house in 21 (Cote d'Or, Burgundy) and saw a few holes in a wooden window sill in one of the bedrooms. Each of the holes had a little ring of sawdust around it, and it seemed like termites to me. We plan on having it taken care of in the next couple of months but were just wondering how much we should plan to spend... How does one get termites in a house with walls made of stone?

The French owners we purchased our house from used it as a maison secondaire, and we paid a reasonable price for the area. We try whenever possible to frequent local shops instead of big chains, and to hire local workers to do repairs, gardening, etc., when we are away from the property. I think this article/quote is a bit alarmist. The environmental damage caused by air travel? I'm not completely informed on the topic, but I'd think there are many things causing worse damage than air travel...

We have a welcome pack that we send to clients when we receive their final payment. It includes directions from the highway, illustrated directions, instructions for key retrieval, and a list of our favorite area restaurants to help the client anticipate their arrival. Once they arrive, our information booklet details any specific instructions or quirks for each room, as well as information on supermarkets and farmer's markets, rubbish collection days, information about the fuse boxes, emergency numbers, etc. There's also some information about local sights, but we have also provided brochures for that purpose.

Dick is right, it is a complete coincidence. The event itself is very interesting, though -- very rare. I'm sure there will be more work on that in the future. If you're interested in the effects a stellar explosion might have on our solar system, the star Betelgeuse (which is in Orion) could explode in a few hundred years or so. It's about 500 light-years away, so a factor of 100 closer than this neutron star quake. Plus, it would be about a million times more powerful in terms of energy release. That type of explosion would be easily visible during the day. Scientists love to say stuff like "if it were on our doorstep it would have killed us all" to make it newsworthy, but as Dick said there are only a handful of stars that close to us, and none of them are going to explode anytime soon, if ever; none are neutron stars.

Hegs, What drugs do you mean when you talk about legalization? All drugs? As in, I can just drop by the pharmacy and pick up some heroin?

Has anyone had experience with both Michael Thomas and Pimsleur? If so, what are the differences? I have the entire Pimsleur French course (units I, II, and III) on two mp3-CDs. I like them quite a lot; the listen and repeat stuff can get boring but I certainly learn it, and it's more practical than what I learned in my French classes in high school... Anyway, I'd be interested to know if the Michael Thomas courses are far better or something... I'd look into them!

Legalizing cannabis and legalizing other drugs are completely different things. The argument that cannabis is a "gateway drug" to other, harsher things could probably be weakened quite a bit by legalization. Legalizing ecstasy, a drug which eventually causes the brain to cease production of serotonin (a chemical that makes you happy), is not a good idea. E is not in the same class as MJ, plain and simple. Although ecstasy is widely available at many clubs, it can cause severe permanent harm not associated with the dehydration effects previously mentioned. Cannabis doesn't do that, as far as I know. I'm not an expert on this but I know that cannabis is just NOT the same as cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, or other drugs. It's probably a little worse than alcohol, but not by much. Maybe it's a North American perspective, but I'm frankly shocked that anyone would consider legalizing any drugs harder than cannabis. I never tried drugs as a teenager because I have always been mindful of the long-term and didn't want to get arrested. I wonder what would have happened if those drugs were legal and even easier to get than they already were.

Richard, We just got finished putting in our own tile in the family room, kitchen, hallways and bathrooms of our house. We were quoted at about US$50 per square meter and didn't like the idea of paying so much money... so we hired someone to teach us how to do it and make the difficult cuts, and we were off. It looks very nice now, but it was physically very difficult work. My knees, arms, back, and stomach muscles ached terribly after the first couple of days. I don't know how my Dad did it! (We were primarily the ones working on it.) In any case, perhaps people charge more here in the States than in Europe... but either way we decided that next time it will be worth it to pay someone to do the labor if it saves us the pain!

I agree, #1... not my style. Maybe they meant Paul Newman in his Butch & Sundance days? 'cause he still had it then, and boy did he, but I'm not sure now. Then again, a lot of his time is devoted to charities, including the Hole in the Wall Gang camp (which helps children with life-threatening diseases), and men with a good heart and soul are sexy. I fully agree with the outrage at the lack of a Colin Firth or a Hugh Jackman. mmMMMmmm... (Choosing Kevin Costner over Colin and Hugh... I just... don't understand...)

I like Gmail a lot. It has an interesting way of keeping track of message threads. Do people still need an invite to sign up for it? I've got half a dozen that I'm not using...

Hi, My parents own a rental house in Burgundy. We have a rental contract and until now have not accepted fax signatures as legally binding. This is quite inconvenient for us as we are in the US and most of our clients are from the UK, and while each postal service runs well internally, the two do not talk to each other well. It's not unusual for letters to take a month to arrive from the UK. We know that fax signatures are legally binding in the US, but does anyone know if they are (and where I should research this) in France? (and also in the UK too, I suppose...) Thank you in advance...

Bonjour Nicola! Good idea -- maybe they would be interested to try a California wine, since they typically are very different in flavor from a French wine. I was treated to a glass of expensive CA zinfandel and it was almost spicy, totally unlike an expensive French wine. California also makes some nice cheese -- but we initially thought we would be crazy to bring wine and cheese to the French! But, maybe they would also enjoy a nice block of cheddar. Alas, we can't bottle the "fun in the sun" that CA is so famous for!

Likewise -- our contacts started at our immobilier and have continued from there. We have an excellent housekeeper who looks after the property and visits regularly in the off-season and whose husband is a general handyman, a plumber who arrives on time, does quick work, and charges rates so low that plumbers here in the US would be shocked. It has been wonderful. Related question: We would love to buy some nice bottles of wine for our French friends as a way of saying thank you, but as we are uncultured Americans, we don't know what to buy and so have never done this -- how do you purchase a nice bottle of wine for someone who knows much more about wine than you do? We have thought about bringing them an expensive bottle of California wine (we're from CA), but weren't sure how this would be received.

Angela, please allow me to bow down and worship you. I second Andy's post -- clear and helpful, thank you so much! This will really help my parents when they talk to their French accountant (who should have everything in hand, but it never hurts to be informed). Now, if the forms have changed, this could get interesting...

Well, if you were in Burgundy, we would hire you! So there must be a market for it... We were also advised to be careful during long-term winter lets. We have a contract that specifies that our property is a furnished vacation rental with the letting period not to exceed six months. Supposedly that will keep us in the landlord-favored part of the law, but if we have a serious inquiry on a longer let this winter we will certainly be contacting a lawyer, just to be sure.

Charlie, I prefer front loaders, myself -- they usually can handle higher capacity loads than top loaders because there's no need for a drum, and they're also better on water consumption. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about this when I was looking for input on what type of machine to buy for our apartment. I found a laundry forum, where people really just talk about their laundry preferences all day. I think it was a subset of a gardening website (not sure why), but if you were to google "laundry forum" I'd be willing to bet you could find it.

I love PayPal -- we use it for almost all of our payments, since nearly everyone chooses to pay with a credit card. What we do is use the "Merchant Tools" section, and create a "Buy it Now" button. You can include that button on your website, or (if you choose not to encrypt the button), they will create a link for you that you can paste into an e-mail. The latter is what we do! PayPal has an extensive help section -- but of course, you have to know what to look for. Try looking at the Merchant Tools and Buy It Now help.

Alcazar, We just laid tile in our kitchen, right on the concrete. We only put membrane down in two places where there were cracks, so that as the cracks settle they won't shift the tile. We had no problems with the tiles sticking. We were going to tile our study/office as well, but the cracks there were large and numerous enough that our tile layer didn't feel comfortable risking it. One piece of advice: if your floor is very slightly off-level, it's not a big problem. If you lay out the tiles and they wobble at all, consider using a leveller of some kind... one portion of our floor was noticeably off-level and it was a bit of a nightmare. It looks fine now but to our eyes there are inconsistencies here and there. Of course, we were using very large tiles, so this exacerbated the problem...

Hi Deby, I'm new to this forum and will be browsing around a bit... ...however I did want to post that I'm with you -- our enquiries have dropped by more than half this year compared to last year. We've joined two other sites to try and pick up the slack. How upsetting -- initially I liked the new FC design!