Do I charge half or full amount?

[Cassis]

No, you're not alone.  Having read it through, it seems to be a contract couched entirely in terms applicable to gite rental, not B&B. 

[Miki]

The greater part of it is really aimed at Gîtes.

Caution is just another word for a deposit of any kind, Cd'H or a weeks

or longer stay in a gîte. We often get asked for how much the caution

will be for their stay.

We always charge a minimum one night deposit for our stays, as do many

of our colleagues. One nighters pay in full on booking. We all see this

as the best forumula and it is the  same one nights deposit for 2

night stays and 25% for stays 3 nights or more.

I have said it on here before, I talk fairly often with one of our regional top bods and live just a stones throw from Madame

who has a wonderful C d 'Hôte who who has the lughole of the regional

Director and who knows it all (she told me so !).She is normally very

rigid in her reading of the rules but some of the things we have agreed

upon that are plain madness are :

Sending out and receiving signed contracts for B&B......gorrocks.

They do even supply a couple to see how they read...We doubt we would

see the potential client ever again,  if we sent them one of them !!

Home made Jam (sufficient for all year for a 5/6 bedroom B&B !!!) Mmm... gorrocks again !

One table only.........Total gorrocks!

There are more but I am trying to get a bet on the weekends St

Leger and cannot get anyone to match with me !! So gotta go...........

Our regs are different I must say and, No Cassis, I ain't going to type

that lot out and as they are not on (still the icon sits paralysed !!)

the regional site, I can only say they are similar but cautions are

different, as are cancellations but nothing too drastic.

[Cassis]

[quote user="Miki"]

Our regs are different I must say and, No Cassis, I ain't going to type

that lot out and as they are not on (still the icon sits paralysed !!)

the regional site, I can only say they are similar but cautions are

different, as are cancellations but nothing too drastic.

[/quote]

Oh, go on, Miki!  [:D]  Get those digits dancing!

I think strictly speaking a caution is a refundable deposit against possible damage etc.  I've only seen them required for gites and car hire.  Mind, the state some people leave their rooms in, and the stuff they pinch, it could be an idea for B&B as well! 

[Miki]

We really do get many clients ask what caution is required for them to reserve and don't forget we are in the B&B biz, so caution as you think is not of course what they are asking about.

We ourselves always turn it to speaking about arrhes or depot ourselves. As for strictly speaking, how many times do you (we) get asked if we have a gîte pour  louer and

they mean a room. Reason, as explained a while back, a gîte really

means a  resting place, so a room is covered in that demand.

Funny old language but someones gotta speak it and Je dos..................badly !!

No ain't gonna type out ten thousand words just to end up saying common sense [:P]

[Cassis]

Know exactly what you mean Miki - even friends who know what we do still call it a gite!  We have just recently (following some sound advice from someone whose name escapes me) started asking for 'arrhes' or 'acompte' for anything over a one room, one-night stay.  I still can't bring myself to ask for it for one-room, one-nighters, though.

[Quillan]

Scan and copy so there may be some funny characters in there.

I agree that it seems more for a gite than a CDH which is what I said when I posted the first bit although its clearly marked for CDH but as I said then I think somebody just copied it on to the CDH forms.

I would not consider sending one of these out to a English client because, as has been said already, I think they would fall about laughing then book somewhere else.

Personally I think I will just total up the cost of booking (accomodation + food) and ask for 25% deposit in future. I have sent the contracts out to French people who book one or two weeks who do sign and return it and have not lost a (French) client this way. In fact I was asked once (and only once) by a client to ensure I did send a contract. The problem is that I can't help wondering if GDF ever do a sly check to see if you do send them out, i.e. get a person to make a booking and see what they get. The thought of that keeps one on ones toes as it where. Bit like you don't know exactly who's staying with you either.

I agree with Miki (again) about some of the rules and indeed he has given me sound personal advice on them over the years and when asked during the inspection what local produce I use I pointed them to the then full veg plot in the garden. They also asked if we sell regional produce, I said no and they didn't seem that bothered. I was not ready for that question and thought 'hang on I'm a CDH not a shop'. Who the hells going to make 6 months worth of jam when you can by it for half the price in a local supermarket and it's far less work picking it up of the shelf and putting it in your trolly. Ever thought of steaming of the labels and putting your own on Miki [:)] ?

I think you just need to apply a bit of common sense with some of the rules applying what you can to the house you have. We can have one table for instance but I know of others that to have a long table for all their guests is just plainly silly, it would never fit.

I do think it's possible to condence this lot and incorporate the bits you need to by law in to your own Terms and Conditions and perhaps put it on the bookings part of your website.

The bit about not giving out invoices/bills is important. If you are registered as a Micro BIC you must keet copies just for them regardless of what you think of the CDH rules. It only takes two minutes to write one up and it could save you a fortune (in fines) in the future.

[Cassis]

Quillan and Miki - if you need vast quantities of home-made jam, can I rent Jude out to you? 

[Quillan]

Is she cheap, I like cheap [:D] .

[Cassis]

Cheap.  Not a word I would dare apply to Jude.  Good value, yes. Different, yes.  Funny, yes.  Forthright, yes.  And one of our gay friends did say that if anyone was going to turn him straight it would be Jude.  Is that a compliment, or not?  I like to think so!

[Catalpa]

Difficult for her to know what to reply, I imagine. "Why thank you, friend, and if anyone was going to be able to turn me gay, it would be you..."[:-))] Hmmm... that doesn't work...

So what's the most bizarre / irritating / expensive thing that's been thieved from your B&Bs / CdeHs? [blink] (Someone mentioned stuff disappearing earlier - Cassis I think.)

[Cassis]

I don't know why, but toilet rolls seem quite popular as collectibles.

[Dick Smith]

Is collecting toilet rolls like stamp collecting - they only have value if used?

[Miki]

We must have our coat hangers spread World wide !

We bought 6 dozen strong coloured plastic ones,  for use with , shirts, skirts and trousers etc. We took all the mixed bag of hangers

out and put in a dozen of the same colour in each wardrobe/cupboard,

result, within 12 months we again have a mixed bag of hangers !!

Good friends of ours with 3 hotels of differing sizes, decided to put

in those hangers where one part stays on the rail and the hanger part,

clips back on to another part on the rail. Good idea.....well yes you

would have thought so but still some go missing and what possible good

is half a hanger......It must be the tea leafing bit that turns them

on, doesn't matter if it's no good to them !!

Towels, naturally but not enough to worry about and pretty rare and the

occasional hairdryer. When we saw one sticking out of a womans bag a

few years ago, we simply asked her if she had accidentally taken the

hairdryer from her room, she panicked and said it was hers, our name

was on the handle !! It is both embarassing for us and the client..

On occasion we have even had some folks take the double sided (French

& English) plasticated A4 information sheets frrom the room, no

doubt as souvenirs. That is just a nuisance more than anything but

still a bleedin' inconvenience !

[Dick Smith]

I've never nicked anything, but Julie managed to get a set of hotel room keys (plus enormous key fob) back to the UK once.

We did a school journey once (colonie de vacances) and we got billed for a large coffee machine - turned out the coach driver had pinched it, plus enough towels and cleaning materials for a new 3-bedroomed flat. Unbelievable, especially as I think he got fired over it.

That was the trip where I had to ask "What were you doing when the night storage radiator mysteriously fell off the wall?", and I found a small boy having a bath in the bidet. Honest.

[Quillan]

What really amazes me is not what they take but what they leave behind. It's not the sexy underwear (too small for me [8-|] ), 'love toys', ("and this is your wife "reply "Oh no she's at home with the kids", they did come out the room for breakfast), jewellery, money, house keys, mobile phone chargers etc but the 'accidents' in the bed and on the floor that they try not to tell you about. After the first time you learn to check the rooms, beds etc before they go. There are some real animals out there believe me.

We have a curly low voltage light fitting in one of the bathrooms. It used to have 5 spots SCREWED on to it, it only has 4 now. Seeing that the screws needed an Allen key this guy obviously new what he was after and came prepared. Made me wonder if he spend hours looking at photo's on websites till he saw a CDH with the right light fittings and then booked.

I wonder nationality wise who are the tidiest and who are the worse? Spanish we find drop things everywhere in there rooms, the French and Germans tend to leave them EXACTLY as they found them, bed made perfectly, towels folded in the right place. Perhaps we could start a league table?

 

[Cerise]

Miki - if I send your hangers back can I have mine please?  Perhaps we should all start a sort of hanger in the wardrobe thing, like message in the bottle - mark our hangers and see where they end up.  Toilet rolls and boxes of tissues go frequently, fortunately not too much else.  Have had a couple of guide books taken , one by a guy who I actually challenged and he simply said it was his.  Now I write name in them

[Coco]

Just what DO they do with the toilet rolls?  We've had a hairdryer go missing but we've collected far more than we've lost:

toy tractors, colouring crayons, suede baseball cap (very smart), knickers (both clean and used!) a filthy beach towel, T-shirts galour, a couple of really smart shirts, a fleece.....  What amazes me is that you still get the denial thing when you approach people about having left things behind.  I once emailed an Italian guy and asked for his postal address so that I could send back his very smart blue shirt.  He totally denied having left anything behind and said that it must have been left by someone else.  Well it was actually IN the unmade bed when I went to strip it, so if it was someone else's he had obviously got very attached to it!  This year we had a brand new M&S Blue Harbour shirt left by one of three bikers.  All three have denied having left anything behind, so now my OH has a nice new shirt to add to his own collection.  The baseball cap comes in handy when he's gardening too [;-)]

[KathyC]

[quote user="Dick Smith"].

We did a school journey once (colonie de vacances) and we got billed for a large coffee machine - turned out the coach driver had pinched it, plus enough towels and cleaning materials for a new 3-bedroomed flat. Unbelievable, especially as I think he got fired over it.

That was the trip where I had to ask "What were you doing when the night storage radiator mysteriously fell off the wall?", and I found a small boy having a bath in the bidet. Honest.
[/quote]

Aren't educational trips wonderful? I used to teach travel and tourism and had to take students on residential trips twice a year. Invariably, when we reached our accommodation I would have a stream of people asking me where the sockets were. (Hairdryers loom large with 17 year old girls). I was flattered that they thougtht that I knew the wiring plan of youth hostels throughout the UK and Europe but wished they had thought me as omniscient when it came to the subject matter. Here they were sure that I knew nothing!

[YCCMB]

[:D][:D].  I've read this, had a shower and walked the dog, and I'm still giggling to myself....how do you fit a small boy in a bidet in the first place? Dick, was it a year 2 trip, or a group of vertically challenged kids, or a huge bidet??? The vision stays with me, and I shall no doubt continue to titter to myself throughout today......................

[Ejc]

Not sure about fitting a small boy into a bidet - but when our eldest was born - I used to bath him in the bidet - it had a plug, was clean and just the right size and meant I didn't have to try and lift a babybath of water ...... we even have the photos somewhere to prove it - have promised said son that we can have these at his wedding next year!

[Hoddy]

"I was flattered that they thougtht that I knew the wiring plan of youth hostels throughout the UK and Europe"

I am also one of the brave who used to take kids on foreign trips. We'd get off the coach in some little town that I'd never even heard of and they'd ask, "Where are the toilets, Miss ?"

Once a colleague's son who came with us suggested that we write "The Munch and Dump Guide to Europe". We never got round to it though. The kids often seemed to have a homing device for the nearest McDos.

Hoddy

[KathyC]

[quote user="Hoddy"]"I Once a colleague's son who came with us suggested that we write "The Munch and Dump Guide to Europe". We never got round to it though. [/quote]

That's it, I've cracked my new career as a travel writer. "Munch, Dump and Socket - a Students' Guide to Europe". Advance orders taken here.