Hideaway Cottage - Sur la mer pour vos vacances spectaculaire!

Thank you Elizabeth and Nick...we appreciate you taking the time to leave a great review! We're glad to hear that you had a nice time at Hideaway Cottage. Yes, with the sand bars on the beach, you need to walk out quite a ways to find deeper water for swimming, especially at low tide. We hope that you will choose to stay at Hideaway Cottage again in the future.

Safe travels!

Jamie and Carolyn

Merci, Jean-Marie! Thank you so much for your positive feedback! We are glad that you had a good time at Hideaway Cottage and we hope that you will return to us in the future.

Jamie

Thank you for the positive comment about the view from the cottage it is indeed spectacular!

This review is extremely disappointing given that the guests made no attempt to contact us with any issues during their stay. Had they done so (we provide guests with two cell phone numbers and two email addresses at which we can be reached) we could have dealt with their concerns promptly. The fact that they did not contact us with their concerns during their stay only points to their desire to complain rather than achieve real solutions.

It can also be seen that this present review is entirely inconsistent with other reviews written by previous guests which are overwhelmingly positive.

Our cottages are carefully and thoroughly cleaned between guests and our cleaning team takes great pride in their efforts. The guest has provided no details about what specifically may not have been clean, so we cannot speculate or comment. It would have been helpful to have some details rather than sweeping statements.

(Speaking of cleaning, we do ask our guests to leave the cottage in the condition in which they found it, and we provide cleaning products and equipment to do this. In this case the guests did not attempt to sweep clean the floor at the conclusion of their stay as we found cheesies in almost every room.)

The outdoor yard games are not left exposed to the elements, for obvious reasons. They are stored in the shed behind the garage. Again, a simple phone call or email could have resolved this minor issue very quickly.

We inspected the beach stairs immediately upon the guest's departure, having read this review. We tested them multiple times up and down and there is nothing wrong with them. The stairs have strong handrails on each side, and aggressive non-slip treads. By way of educating the guest, due to the constant erosion on the bank due to wave and tidal action, and the fact that the beach stairs must be removed each winter, it is not possible make the stair location permanent. Each spring, the shoreline is somewhat different than the previous year, and we position the stairs to fit into the bank and beach in a stable and safe location.

As for the beach stairs not being suitable for seniors, I myself am 67 years old (and so officially a senior ) and I can use the beach stairs without difficulty. If a guest believes that the stairs are beyond their physical capabilities then they should not use them. Regretfully ,that is a limitation of the guest, not the stairs.

As for this particular guest's decision not to stay again in the future, on that point we agree 100%!

Thank you, Johanne, for your positive comments about our cottage and for sharing your opinions and suggestions. We're glad you had a good time.

This was the first year we implemented the new trash policy after many years of problems dealing with removal of guests' trash. Frankly, we did not see this as a major issue (it is now common in the home rental business, and commonplace on PEI due to the complexities of their recycling program and the limited garbage pickup in rural areas).

As you discovered, the waste transfer station is directly on the Trans-Canada highway on your way to the bridge off the Island. It takes 5 minutes to drop trash off and costs $5.

It seems that your major pain point is that the policy was not communicated in advance during the booking process... so starting next year we will send our cottage information bulletin to guests immediately upon making a reservation.

We are sorry that you feel that our very detailed email to you explaining the need for the trash policy was not adequate. For the benefit of anyone reading this, I am repeating part of our reply to you here:

"The municipality picks up trash weekly - alternating between compostable material and recyclables every other week. This means compostable (stinky) food trash is picked up every two weeks.
The municipality takes a VERY hard line on sorting of trash and recyclables... the proper clear bags must be used, and sorting must be 100% correct.

The garbage truck workers inspect the trash bags as they are taking them out of the bin.

If the rules are not followed, on the first offence they will not take the trash and they tag the container with an infraction notice. On the second and subsequent offences, they again refuse to take the trash and impose a $75 fine per offence, which we must pay as the property owners.

The onus for the complexity of the sorting compostable materials, recycleables, and waste falls on the guests, who may or may not be used to the rigours of such rules and regulations.
There are three consequences:

1. Someone now needs to sort guests' trash after they have departed.
2. It is now another two weeks before the compostable trash will be picked up by the municipality.
3. We incur a $75 fine.

We do not think it reasonable for anyone to have to sort someone else's trash. We leave it to your imagination to ponder the visual and smell of four-week old garbage (think lobster guts) rotting in the hot plastic garbage container in the July sun. Besides being disgusting, it is a health hazard and we cannot afford to expose guests (and pets, since we are pet-friendly) to this sort of thing.

We have investigated getting a roll-off dumpster for garbage disposal... but the same rules apply to garbage dumped in to roll-off bins...it MUST be sorted and in the proper bags or the whole bin is rejected."

The best solution we have is to have guests deal with their own garbage when they depart.