Why does it have to be so difficult to book.....

Maybe as a CL Owner I can help with some of your problems relating to making contact by telephone especially. We get a large number of calls in Summertime from Owners on holiday who leave their home number on our answering machine while they are away. A number also cannot remember their mobile number and we can try various commutations without success. There is then the other group who know their number so well they can quote it in seconds, but we cannot interpret what figures are given even replaying it 10 times over !. Local accents can sometimes be hard to understand as well. The other one is somebody standing next to the person on the phone saying tell him this and tell him that, so we don't understand what is being said at all.  One simple request is please speak slowly and say your telephone number twice to ensure it may be right once.  Hope this helps as we love your calls and it is the same price as in the book.

David     www.perthshirecl.co.uk

We are going to Diamond House in May Nellie.

I would also be grateful for your opinion of the site.

We have booked 7 or 8 CLs for this year so far and each have a different booking system, one even wanted full payment up front.

Will do. I'll write a review and post it on both forums.

David - I agree with everything you say.  Happens to us all the time! 

Luckily most of our bookings now come online, where there is no room for error. Confirmations are sent as soon as we approve the online request and emails sent 4 days prior to arrival with arrival details. 

If potential visitors want to have a chat to us, that's equally fine, but like most CL's we are running other businesses, so may not always be in.

At £10/month for a booking system, it's the best investment we ever made.

That's fine CG if you are computer savy but some of the site owners are not that well up with what can be obtained and rely purely on e-mails &/or phone calls. These too are fine if the CL owner use them fully but we've had a few occasions where booking inquiries have been made on both and still we've not had a response. Those sites are then add to our list of ones to avoid.

Yes, agree.

If a site gives an e mail address then we expect that they check it each day.  A reply within a couple of days is surely not too much to expect.

If they do not want to do that then they should not give an e mail address.

We are well into our 70s but have embraced things like e mail and on line booking, on line banking etc etc.

We prefer not to phone as we have no calling plan, but weekend calls are free, so we do use that.

OH does the calls and I would say that she has very clear speech, very little regional accent, and certainly does not talk quickly.  No CL owner would have a problem understanding her.

Am afraid I am not the most computer literate but try and respond as fast as possible. Unfortunately my wife does not use the computer at all therefore whilst on line booking system would be good, my wife could not use it.  Also find that the majority of our repeat users like having a chat on the phone whilst making their booking if only to enquire about dogs and ducks and as we are Adults Only tend to prefer phone to computer if in the older bracket.  This year we are getting a lot of advance bookings so many folks are determined to get away whatever the weather is going to be.

David

In the past we haven't used many CL's but that is now changing.

The ones we have used before we send an email if we know that's their preferred method, some of them are quiet happy with a TEXT to their mobile phone.

With new CL's if they don't have an online booking system I usually call them, its good to have a chat and get a feeling for the owner and the CL.

We did send an email to an independent site last week, so far we've not had a reply 

We did send an email to an independent site last week, so far we've not had a reply.

TG just a thought but have you had a look on your Spam folder? I've found that some responses from sites I've sent an enquiry to have ended up in there.

I must admit that if a site doesn't have an on-line booking system I generally give them a miss.

I have found that more sites do now require a booking fee and quite a few demand full payment in advance. So I may yet overcome my aversion to booking by phone.