Devon Holiday Tales

Working with customers from the booking of a holiday through to arrival, departure and beyond is very rewarding for the team at Coast & Country Cottages. It also produces some amusing moments and many frustrating ones as people look for their perfect Devon cottage.

With an all-year round out-of-hours emergency service provided to our holiday tenants, the telephone can ring at all times of day and night, particularly during the busiest summer months. From holidaymakers returning to their property after an evening out and discovering they have forgotten their keys or locked themselves out, to those trying to get into the wrong property, key stories abound. Most recently our Operations Manager, Jon Doyle, was woken up during the night by a Japanese visitor who simply could not get the key she had been given to operate the lock at the property she thought she was staying at. In spite of the difficulties in understanding each other (we have a fair knowledge of several languages between members of the team but not Japanese!) he was able to work out she was in the wrong building!! Jon was eventually able to point her in the right direction and ‘hey presto’ she was in! With the number of ‘lockouts’ we receive each year, you have to wonder what people do with their keys at home….?!

An April 1st call-out was initially thought to be an April Fool’s joke, when a gentleman called to say his mother-in-law was stuck in the loo! Whilst he had initially found this amusing, as time passed and they had been unable to release her, they became more concerned as she was quite elderly. Luckily we were able to secure her release quite quickly and everyone was happy!

Pets or animals in general generate some tales every year. One customer was understandably very upset when she called us to inform us that her dog had died before the holiday and that she therefore wanted to cancel as she couldn’t face the holiday without him. Unfortunately she could not understand that the holiday insurance she had taken out for her party did not include the dog as a named member of the party and his sad demise would not constitute grounds for an insurance claim. Another customer called our Dartmouth office in a panic having discovered a ‘snake’ on the carpet. A quick visit to the property determined that it was actually a harmless slow worm, which had come in from the garden when the doors were left open!

An enormous number of items are left by behind in our properties every year when holidaymakers pack up to leave after their holiday in Devon. Mobile telephone chargers are regularly discovered by cleaners, still plugged in at properties, whilst bedroom drawers often contain complete sets of underwear, overlooked in the rush to pack up. Food is often discovered by our cleaners, abandoned in fridges and cupboards and one recent tenant contacted us after leaving his wallet on top of a high kitchen cupboard. Often we have to go to great lengths to find a missing item for a customer such as recently when a departing child had mislaid a favourite game for his Nintendo DS! This small item was not to be found in the location indicated, but a vigilant member of the team cleaning and checking the property found it down the back of a chair and returned it to its owner.

Some of our experiences with customers are frustrating and require careful handling, such as the gentleman who simply could not understand how to operate the shower in his property and had to be shown by the team and a local plumber, in spite of claiming he had a degree in engineering! One family booked a ground floor apartment, then called the office upon arrival at the property to ask where the second floor to the property was! Very recently one couple arrived for their holiday in Salcombe a day early! After some initial reluctance to do so, their mistake was admitted, but luckily as it was earlier in the season we were able to find them accommodation for the night and everyone was happy.

Whilst every business will experience a small number of customer complaints (particularly in the current ‘litigation age’) the vast majority of our customers are delighted with their property, have a fabulous holiday and want to return to us and the area again and again. Most people look forward to their holiday all year and so when expectations are not met and things go wrong, they are understandably disappointed. Our out-of-hours service means that ‘emergencies’ are picked up with quickly and as much is done as possible to quickly enable the holidaymaker to carry on and enjoy their well earned break. It can be frustrating on occasion, however, when a customer has called this emergency number out of office hours to request a brochure! Indeed just this weekend a member of the team received a call at 7.30am on Sunday morning, on the Emergency number, from a customer just wishing to pay the balance due for her forthcoming holiday! On a previous occasion another lady was quite indignant when told that her call to check availability was not actually an emergency, claiming, ‘It is an emergency, I need a holiday…!’

For a free Brochure or Owners Guide call 01548 843773 or visit www.coastandcountry.co.uk. The new 2008 brochure featuring over 350 properties throughout the South Hams will be available from October 2007 – pre-order your free copy today.