The Collingview

After your stay

Tell us how it went, including the parts that did not.

We ask everyone who stays. It takes two minutes, it is the main way we find out what needs fixing, and with your permission some of it ends up on the reviews page.

If anything fell short, say so here. We would rather fix it than have you not mention it.

What happens to it

Read by a person, published by a person.

Nothing posts automatically. Every submission is read before anything appears anywhere, which is slower than an open review widget and is the point: it means what is on the reviews page has been checked by somebody, and it means the form cannot be used to put text on our site that we have not seen.

If you said something went wrong, expect a reply rather than a publication. That is the more useful outcome for both of us, and it is the reason the box asking for the bad parts is there at all.

We do not edit what we publish. If a review goes up it goes up in the words it was written in, including the qualifications and the bits we would rather it did not say. The alternative is a reviews page nobody should believe.

Why the form asks what it asks

The useful question is the uncomfortable one.

Most feedback forms are built to harvest a compliment. This one asks what did not work, near the top, because that is the only answer that changes anything. A house this size fails in small logistical ways long before it fails in interesting ones — a light nobody can find the switch for, a kettle in the wrong kitchen, a bin that is full by day three — and none of those ever appear in a five-star review.

It also matters that the answer comes to a person who can act on it. The house is run directly by its owner rather than through an agency, so a note about the kettle reaches the person who buys kettles instead of a shared inbox that files it.

Nothing here is a review-gating funnel. You are not asked how you feel first and then shown a public form only if you answered well — the same form takes the good and the bad, and the only thing your answer changes is whether we reply or publish.

Questions about leaving feedback

Will what I write appear on the site?

Only if you tick the permission box, and only after a person has read it. Nothing posts automatically. If it is published it appears on the reviews page with your first name, last initial and the month you stayed — never your email address, and never your surname in full.

Will you edit it?

No. If a review is published it is published in the words it was written in, including the qualifications and the parts we would rather it did not say. Cutting the awkward sentence out of a review is how a reviews page becomes something nobody should believe, and it is not worth the trade.

What if I want to tell you something went wrong?

Leave the permission box unticked and it stays between us. Expect a reply rather than a publication — that is the more useful outcome for both of us, and it is why the question about what did not work is on the form at all rather than buried.

Can I ask you to take something down later?

Yes, at any time and without giving a reason. Write to us and it comes off at the next deploy. Consent to publish is not a licence you cannot withdraw.

Do you ever write or commission reviews yourselves?

No, and no review on this site is invented, incentivised or paid for. When there was nothing to publish, the reviews page said so rather than filling the gap. The owner’s own notes about the house appear elsewhere on the site clearly labelled as the owner’s, precisely so they cannot be mistaken for somebody else’s experience.

Why is there no star rating widget?

Because a rating collected and hosted by the business it rates is not independent, and marking it up for search results is against Google’s own policy on self-serving reviews. Reviews here are published as text where they do the job that actually matters — convincing somebody who is already reading.

Keep reading

How we handle what you send is covered in the privacy notice. In short: your email is used to reply to you and nothing else.