La Maison du Chateau

Has anyone stayed at La Maison du Chateau, which is described as 15 minutes drive from Montbard in the Burgundy region?

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Yes. I have used the house for my Pilates retreats and I will never go there again. 3 years ago it was fantastic. This time I am really upset about it. The house itself is beautiful and the staff at the house are wonderful. The organisation behind it is not to be trusted. Lady Susanna Lyell who owns the house from the UK, has a very bad attitude to the rental and still owes me £100.

They took a returnable £200 heating cost if we didn%26#39;t go over an amount of normal heating in the house and they told me that I would probably get that back if we didn%26#39;t use the heated pool, which we did not. The heating in the house was NOT working for 24 hours and they still insisted that we went over the additional £200 of heating costs.

There is no way of checking how much heating you use, but I know I didn%26#39;t use the additional £200. Out of goodwill and for having no heating for 24 hours, you would think it should be returned to me!

My cheque did not clear in her bank account in time for the holiday so I rushed over with an additional inventory deposit (which cannot be held on credit card) of £1000!!! You have to give them £1000 cleared before your trip out of your own money. Unheard of! I drove over with cash (out of the goodness of my heart) as I was told they would pull the whole trip on me 2 days before leaving! How untrustworthy is that! I did this as long as they would make an immediate transfer back for the uncleared cheque they had already taken. They refused to do this and it took me 2 weeks to get the money back. They refused to send EVEN THE DUPLICATE £1000 back to me unless I gave them a list of everyone%26#39;s names and addresses. Due to data protection, I am unable to provide peoples names and addresses. It is illegal and so I asked my clients to fill in a form themselves. Lady Lyell would not accept it and forced me to send addresses to her after the trip, or she would not return either amounts of money that she had taken. How dishonest is that. Even when I did send addresses to her (under the pretence, it is for her insurance), they still tried to diddle me out of the correct amount. When I pulled them up on it, they did finally admit they still made a mistake and sent a cheque in an envelope (which I am still waiting to clear!!) with NO APOLOGY.

Be very careful when dealing with these people. You have to do everything THEIR way and there is NO give or take. I will never go there again. I have been running pilates retreats in the most beautiful places since 2002 and have never experienced such bad treatment.

I must also add, with a group of 10 people the food portions were tiny. The menu is great, but the amounts are not calculated correctly. I think this may be a way of the house trying to save more money.

The stupid thing is, I even took a journalist last time I used the house, before all these new rules, and the journalist wrote in the Body and Soul Escapes book - wonderful things about the house. Never again. You live and learn.

Sorry to disappoint you if you do decide to go.