Frequently Asked Questions

Is the fee of £150 applicable every year?
No, the £150 fee is the fee when we set up a new subscription for you in this website. It includes your first 12 month subscription, together with the fee for creating your entry. One month before your subscription expires, we send you a subscription renewal offer which allows you to extend your subscription for a further 12 months. The current subscription RENEWAL fee is £99, but please note that this renewal fee applies only to entries which already exist in the website and does not cover lapsed subscriptions, or pages which have been removed for any other reason.

How quickly can you add my page to this site?
We are currently adding one batch of new pages to this website every week. So long as Royal Mail deliver your items to us promptly you could expect to be included in the Cottage Guide within 14 days of our receiving all items necessary.

Can we advertise any type of self catering accommodation?
We advertise most (but not all) types of self catering accommodation. The CottageGuide advertises cottages, farmhouses, townhouses, apartments, log cabins and so forth. Please note that we do not advertise caravans or mobile homes, and may refuse any other application which we feel to be inappropriate.

Can I email my text description to you?
Yes, please do email your text to us (or send it on disk or CD). You can simply copy and paste the text into a regular email. We recommend anything up to about 300 words. However, please note that if your text description is simply sent to us as a printout or handwritten sheet it will require that one of our staff re-type it all for you. In this instance please do not send more than 100 words. Please send your full text in electronic form if possible as this will result in a better advert. NB.We do not copy text from your own website or any other website. However, you are free to copy it yourself and send it to us in an email.

Can I email my photos to you?
Yes, please send them as separate jpeg files (we do not accept photos which have been embedded in Word documents). If your photos have a very large file size, we'd recommend sending these on a floppy disk or a CD. NB.We do not copy photos from your own website or any other website. However, you are free to copy them yourself and send them to us as email attachments.

Can I add other photos later?
Yes, you can add additional photos to your page at any time. Four photos are included as standard in the price of your page when you join, and additional photos can be added at any time for a handling charge of £10 per photo.

Can I change my photos later?
Yes, you can swap any of the photos on your page at any time. If the replacement photos are emailed to us as jpeg files, or sent on CD or disk, there is no fee for swapping photos. However, if printed photos are sent to us there is a scanning fee involved.

Can I make a text adjustment to the content of my page?
Yes, you can request a change to the text on your web page at any time (so long as you are not aiming to change the entire content of your page to describe a completely different property - please see following item). You are entitled to free updates on 3 separate occasions during the 12 months of your subscription period. If you wish to make further updates after your 3 free updates have been used up, we can do these for you but please note there is a fee of £10 for each occasion you wish to make such further updates. This fee of course only applies to the changes we need to undertake for you - ie on your main web page; note that the changes you make yourself to your Noticeboard page and Calendars can be made by you (using the password we give you) and can be made as often as you wish, whenever you wish. The Noticeboard and Calendar systems are automatically included as part of your package and there is of course no charge for using them.

NB. Submission of text and photos
Please note that text and photos together with precise instructions for updating your advert must always be either emailed to us at The Cottage Guide or sent to us on disk/CD. We do not under any circumstances copy text or photos from your website or any other website.

Can I change my page so that it shows a different property?
Whilst we offer free updates on 3 separate occasions during the 12 months of your subscription, the purpose of these updates is for making adjustments to the description/features/prices of the property you are advertising. These free updates are not for the purpose of swapping a completely different property on to your page. However, if you do wish to change your page to show a different property (for example if you've sold one, and bought another), then there would be fee of £35 for changing the entire content of your page.

Can I pay you by Credit Card or Switch?
Sorry. It's just cheques at the present time.

Can you give me your bank details so I can you pay electronically?
Sorry no, we can only accept cheques at the present time. Our administration is therefore simplified and kept to an absolute minimum. The annual subscription fee that you pay to the Cottage Guide is being maintained at the lowest rate possible.

Can you do anything with poor photos?
We can make some adjustment to images if necessary - including general lightness, contrast, colour saturation and hue, and where practicable we'll remove scratches or blemishes, and crop the image as per your instructions. If you require more complex image manipulation - ie removal of dustbins, cars, people - this may require additional studio time.

Could you write up my text description for me?
No, we can only work with what we are given. We will be glad to correct spelling and grammar if necessary, but as regards 'creative' or 'imaginative' copy, we will have to leave this to you who know the property, its setting, and its surrounding area. Please remember to send your description text to us by email or provide on disk/CD.

Standards: Do we have to have a Tourist Board grading?
We do not insist that you obtain a Tourist Board grading in order to advertise your property in this website (indeed there are some superb properties which have not paid to have Tourist Board Stars). However, please note that your accommodation must obviously be of a suitable standard for letting (and by 'suitable standard' we mean the standard expected in the 21st Century - not the 1950s!). In other words we mean that whilst your property does not necessarily have to have been inspected by the Tourist Board and awarded a quality grading, it must nevertheless be of a standard which would achieve a Tourist Board quality grading if it was to be inspected by the Tourist Board. Furthermore, we stipulate that it is the owner's responsibility to ensure that their properties are properly cleaned prior to each holiday letting. It is not acceptable for owners to 'pass the buck' by saying that it is the responsibility of the holidaymaker to leave the property cleaned and tidy for the next holidaymaker. In such cases an advertisement will be immediately removed from the website and no refund of advertising fees will be given.
The majority of owners are perfectly aware of what sort of standards people have a right to expect and in fact will usually go way beyond normal requirements to provide accommodation that really is a home from home - many will go even further to provide something special or unique. But unfortunately there are some owners who think that 'anything goes', and on very rare occasions an owner will place an advertisement in this website where the accommodation does not even reach what would be considered a minimum standard suitable for letting to human beings, and we therefore point out the following: We reserve the right to immediately remove an advertisement from this website if due to the nature of complaints it is felt that the property is unsuitable for letting. We reiterate that there is no refund of advertising fees in the case of advertisements which have had to be removed due to sloppy standards and bad management. If a property becomes the subject of legal proceedings, we will immediately suspend the advertisement for that property, pending the outcome of those legal proceedings.

Who decides the order of listings under maps etc?
As regards the order of listings in search results, and lists under maps, county directories etc, pages are strictly listed in the order of maximum number which can be accommodated in any of the units shown on the owner's page. Therefore all the two person properties will appear at the top, then the 3 person, etc, until the last group which is those for 9 or more persons. This allows site users to quickly browse down to the accommodation which will suit their size party. However, within each size group the order of the properties is changed at random every day. So, for instance, if you owned a 6 person property, you would sometimes be at or near the top of the 6 person ones (and sometimes at or near the bottom) - but you would never be listed before any of the 5 person ones, or after the 7 person ones.

Can I advertise more than one property on my page?
We have no objection to those wishing to advertise groups of different sized accommodation on just one page so long as they are all owned by the same person.  But remember that the total of 300 words may be sufficient for giving an outline description of everything, conversely it may be seen as not providing enough detail to be of interest. Note also, importantly, that there is one database entry for each page and the field for "maximum number accommodated" can naturally only be set at one figure. If you are advertising a range of different sized properties - for example sleeping 4, 6 and 8, your page would come up well in searches for properties sleeping 8, but not when searching for properties sleeping 4, or properties sleeping 6. Owners of multiple properties may prefer to take multiple pages to ensure they are promoting each of their properties, and not just the largest one.

Can you change the URL (web address) of my page?
Note that your existing CottageGuide web address will have been submitted to the search engines, and that the subsequent alteration of your page's web address would mean loss of those search engine listings. The links to your page throughout the CottageGuide itself would also need to be changed and verified. Changing a web address is therefore not a completely straightforward matter and we do not recommend this course of action. If however you still do wish to change your web address we can do this for you but to cover engineer's time request a fee of £35 by cheque payable to "Ash Mackenzie Publishing Ltd".

Why didn't you update my page as requested?
We sometimes do get asked this question - where it transpires the owner is still seeing an old version of their page which is stored in their computer memory. To ensure you are getting the fresh version of the page from the internet, here's what to do:
1. Log onto the internet.
2. Go to your page.
3. Click the 'reload' or 'refresh' button at the top of your browser. This will ensure that your computer fetches the new version of your page from the server (instead of just giving you the old one that has been retained in your computer's memory).

Can I ask you to send me a printout of my web page?
We do send you a printout of your new page as soon as your new entry has been placed on the website, and we do also send you a printout of your page when we send renewal details (a month before the expiry date of your subscription). This is to make it easier for you to indicate any adjustments you wish to be made to your entry. We do not normally supply printouts at other times of the year, or after making updates during the course of the year. However, if you do require additional printouts we can do this for a fee of £10 (we then send to you 10 printouts of your page).

Can I request that my page be removed from the website?
If you wish to stop advertising your property in this website (whether due to the sale of your property, or for any other reason), we can remove your entry from the website at short notice within 3 days or so, so long as you confirm this request to us in writing. There is no fee involved in removing an entry from this website, however please note that removal of your entry effectively terminates your subscription. If you later wish to have your entry reinstated, this does involve the commencement of a new 12 month subscription at £150. For this reason we would recommend exercising due caution if you believe that you have sold your property but have not yet received the funds from your prospective purchaser.

Why can't I subscribe for a period less than a year?
We don't offer subscriptions for periods of less than a year. We can remove your page at any time you wish us to (thereby terminating the current subscription), but we can not offer refunds for what you may believe to be the unused portion of your subscription. The very modest fee we charge for an annual subscription does not apportion itself in equal amounts for each month of the year - in other words the bulk of our work is incurred at the very beginning of your subscription.

How long has The Cottage Guide been going?
It was started in 1998, but it feels like a hundred years (only joking!).

Further questions?
If you find you have further questions about joining this website which are not answered here or in the section about adding your property, please feel free to contact Adrian Bennet.