This review is going to be fairly mixed but I'll try and be as balanced as possible.
First, the positives:
Location. Thollon is a gem of a place. If you are after a traditional Savoyard village with reasonable prices, great views and proximate to lots of lovely attractions (Montreux, Geneva, Annecy, Yvoire, Lausanne), then this is the village for you.
Size: Six of us (four adults and two children) stayed in the main chalet and there was ample room. The grandparents had the room on ground level and the parents and kids upstairs. There are ample grounds for the kids to play in the snow and it is private.
There was sufficient cleaning equipment for day to day cleaning needs, a dinner table which seats six and couches that fit four, or six at a squeeze.
The fireplace is lovely and after a few days heating we relied on the fireplace to heat the whole chalet. We did not use the heaters in the bedrooms.
The average:
The beds were adequate, a little on the hard side, ikea sheets and most of the pillows quite lumpy but I think the rate we paid reflected the bedding quality. The towels were also adequate but haven't been updated in a while.
The kitchen had the basic amenities but was not exactly what you would call an entertainer's kitchen, so you will need to improvise if you are planning on cooking in like I did (Christmas dinner with all the trimmings). Unlike another local chalet we have stayed in, there was no traditional cookware (raclette utensils but no grill, no fondue set, no roasting dishes) and limited servingware. The crockery and glassware had a lot of chips and needs to be replaced. Only two decent wine glasses/champagne flutes.
The bad:
This place appears, based on previous reviews, to have issues with the electricity system and apparently when the property manager turned on the hot water and heating on the morning of our arrival the system tripped and we arrived to a cold chalet with no hot water. We had to call the manager (who we had been told would meet us on arrival but had not turned up) who then got an electrician to sort it out so a few hours after our arrival the heating went on. Thank goodness for the fireplace. The fuse continued to trip throughout our stay and my husband had to re-set the fuse box himself which was down in the basement. (The manager left us the key rather than do it himself and told us not to tell the landlord about it).
The heated towel rails do not work.
One week into our stay the gas ran out in the middle of cooking dinner. We contacted the manager who said 'sorry, everything's closed now' as he didn't have a spare. Our dinner which was only half-cooked, was ruined. You would've thought that he would have checked before we stayed that it had been full, filled it up or at least had a spare handy for cases like ours.
And finally, three weeks after we left we were told that our bond (which is supposed to be for breakages or damage) would not be refunded as we had left the chalet 'dirty' and that dirty sheets had needed to be washed three times. The chalet manager had apparently charged the landlord extra for the 'extra cleaning'.
By way of background, back in March when we had negotiated a rate with the landlord we had negotiated not to pay the cleaning fee yet in October the landlord asked us if we would reconsider paying the fee. We refused as we selected this chalet based on the negotiated rate.
We saw this attempt to take the bond money as an attempt to reclaim the cleaning fee, and we are currently in the process of resolving this dispute through Trip Advisor. We dispute that we left the chalet any different to how we found it, with the minor exception that the carpets needed a final vacuum, which would be part of any normal final cleaning process. In terms of the dirty sheets, I did notice a small stain when I removed the sheets in the grandparents room but expected that a bit of Sard or similar washing detergent would remove it in one wash, if you know how to wash sheets and as we had to leave by 10am I did not have the time. We did wash our own sheets and vacuumed and cleaned during our stay so I was very disappointed that the property manager claimed that this justified charging us the total AUD $200 ($128 Euro). We are yet to see the evidence the landlord is relying on to justify this charge.
The landlord claims that this is the first time she has ever taken the bond, although I think the correspondence we received from the landlord after booking suggested that there had been issues in the past given the words to that effect.
This final chapter to our story has left such a sour taste to what was otherwise a special family holiday which we spent with our in-laws who live in Europe and we took the trip especially to spend time with them. The chalet is not 5 star, but the price reflects that. It was just very unpleasant dealing with the owner and property manager and this aspect of the rental really lets the chalet down.
Toutes les réservations sont effectuées directement auprès du propriétaire 