Hello Mr. and Mrs. Q,

Thank you for sending us this honest and detailed description of your experience here at Talus Rock. We appreciate the feedback as we use these critiques as an opportunity for improvement. We failed in a few of the expectations you mentioned and are extremely distraught that you had such a poor experience with us.
We remain incredibly sorry for the fall you sustained upon check in. This undoubtedly was a poor start to your experience, yet we continued to strive for excellence during an entire stay with us. The house is full of unique architecture and, while the stairs are certainly equal in height and standardized, in proactive avoidance to potential accidents, it is part of our verbal check-in process to always make mention to “watch your step” (as we did with you). Furthermore, we are implementing a lighting system with our stairs to ensure an accident such as this does not happen. Our staff felt such compassion for you and sincerely tried to do all we could to take care of you after this unfortunate occurrence including helping with the remainder of your luggage, asking if we could get you ice, loading up your car when you departed genuinely compassionate to your mishap. Our house manager tried to contact you via both email and phone over the following few days to check up on you. We wholeheartedly do our best to go above and beyond for our guests.

We are well aware that each individual is unique and comes with different expectations. We are not a hotel chain and offer a more personal touch - and while most find this an endearing and attractive quality, we recognize it’s not for everyone. That being said, and noting that you took the time to actually visit our retreat before you booked your stay, we thought you were aware of the unique and eclectic style Talus Rock puts forth. At that time, we recall showing you the room you eventually decided to book, gave you a complete house tour, and explained all of the different amenities we have to offer. We genuinely apologize if there was any misunderstanding.

We would like to address each of your points as they pertain to circumstances under our control:

As a bed and breakfast lodging-like villa, we don’t provide turndown or maid service for short stays and make it a point to never to enter your room unannounced. Such service is offered upon request, as a courtesy of course. With respect to your privacy, we will not enter without notice, permission or by request.”

Wear and tear on towels and bedding can be a challenge as you might imagine, and as a small B&B (although seemingly grandiose in presence), we seek to be a steward to our beautiful surroundings and use resources that we know are salient and a mismatched towel set is the result of our conviction. That does not, in any way, dismiss your desire and expectation for our plush (colored) towels, delivered daily to your room. We understand, and sincerely apologize for any misunderstanding you had coming in to our B&B. While we are consistently folding in new inventory, we are sorry that expectations were not upheld.

We offer a wholesome breakfast between the hours of 8am-10:00am. We make a few dishes to start the morning, as many of the guests are up early to enjoy the beautiful surroundings. After the main offering we wait until the remaining guests come down and cook something based on their request. We are unable to predict when each guest will be down for breakfast but we make it a point to serve our guests. Perhaps the morning you are referring to is the morning of your departure? We sadly hadn’t seen you all morning until you were walking down the stairs promptly asking us to help with luggage (which we were more than happy to do). There was no mention of breakfast, but I assure you we would have been delighted to make you something delicious had you chosen to stick around a few minutes longer!

No one is perfect, including us. We relish an opportunity to improve on our imperfections and rely on reviews like yours to fine tune our services and somehow rectify misconstrued expectations. We hope to use this management review to encourage future guests to speak to us immediately if there is ever a need, concern, preference, or thwarted expectation so that we can promptly make it right. We really do aim to please. Again, thank you for your sharing honest opinions and welcome you to give us another to opportunity to exceed your expectations.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. McDonald (and kids),

We completely missed the mark in what is an innkeeper's worst nightmare: double booking compounded by a late night check in on a sold out weekend, exponentially augmented when it is a family of 6 (including 4 young children). We have spent a significant amount of time this week pouring over your review, educating the staff, and amending our procedures according to your candid and helpful feedback. We work extremely hard at making things right when we make human errors and no doubt, we inadvertently screwed up. I am writing to address each of your points and give you an idea about how this sheer anomaly occurred:

Firstly, we did indeed confirm your reservation that very day expecting you at a certain time, and it just so happened that after we spoke, another family, similar to the makeup of yours, mistakenly arrived a day early (actually booked the following night the very same room but also did not realize they were early). We assumed (Yes, we DO know what happens when we assume!) and failed to actually confirm the name as the timing, the conversation, the date, the kids referenced and room name all matched up in the "check in conversation". Had we simply confirmed the "name", the infraction would have been caught. No matter the odds, this is how the mistake happened, and I can assure you, it will never happen again. We didn't even know there was a mistake until we received an alert text that you were arriving hours later than planned and it was at that time, we knew there was something very wrong. All rooms had been checked in for the night and yet we were anticipating a Silverwood-weary family with 4 children to check in with no availability remaining. We knew we had to "figure it out" and it was close to 11pm! We sincerely care about our guests and always, without exception, do our best to solve the problem as if it were one of us on the other end of the situation. Perhaps what you didn't know was the lengths that we went to to recover from the receipt of your call about your late arrival.

How we could have double booked was only a fraction of the energy spent during those panicked moments, rather, our team immediately went into solution mode to collectively and quickly brainstorm some kind of sleeping arrangement. It was "all hands on deck' to pull together sleeping accommodations for your lovely family of 6 knowing that downtown lodging in Sandpoint was practically sold-out due to the International Draft Horse Show and many other Sandpoint summer events.

The solution began with enlisting the help of onsite cabin staff members (some of whom were in bed) to pull together and help figure out some place for you all to sleep. As God would have it, one room hosted a couple who just happened to be an acquaintance of the family, and therefor provided an option to even consider approaching for a late-night room bump request. We felt your situation warranted it. While it was tremendously embarrassing for us to even ask this favor of them, being sympathetic to the situation and friends of the Retreat owner, they completely understood, offered to help with the entire situation and moved offsite to a neighbor's place (Of course, the displaced guests (and neighbor) have been generously compensated). We quietly and swiftly cleaned the room in record time in addition to creating extra bed space in the tower to provide as many sleeping spaces as possible for your comfort.

Let me please address your other expressed points:

It has been acknowledged and agreed upon that we did indeed rush to turn your room and missed a few ordinary room standards in our haste. While we do use fabric softener, and consistently add new towels to our inventory, we have again combed through our inventory, and, at the time of this writing, this directive has been accomplished. We always keep extra toilet paper and soap stocked under the sink of each bathroom, and while I'm fairly certain there was some available, I do apologize for not pointing this out. This step has now been added to the cleaning checklist and our check in procedure.

Regarding your refund received--Goodness! In no way did we "take you for a schmuck". I sincerely apologize for any such feeling this may have caused. ​Management of Talus Rock, ​is only authorized to reward up to a certain amount for inconveniences such as this, and, as expressed on the phone, ​she​ felt so badly about this that (without requesting​ permission​ from ​a supervisor) used ​her best judgement ​putting her position on the line honoring a 60% refund. I'm not sure where the 25% came from as described in your review, but please recalculate and note this true percentage granted as our sincere effort to ease the situation.

Each positive and negative remark is taken very much to heart as we put so much of ourselves into the work and DO want to be the best we can be. Again, we apologize profusely for the severe inconvenience you experienced and hope you will try us again sometime as our door is always open to you!