Guest leaving due to wifi

[Thomas2683]

We are new hosts and curious on how to proceed with this issue? Guest checked in to day and notes 1 guest however, there are 2, no big deal since its a spouse but, both are trying to use internet wifi to work and the wifi speed is slow. We have had 2 guests prior with no complaints but understand issues will happen. Guest checked in at 4pm and contacted me via text at 8:27pm asking for the password for wifi. I replied within 15 minutes that the passwords are on the router base. There is a wifi issue it appears and we contacted customer service,sadly they were no help and told us to call technician at 8am. When I stated this to the guest,she replied back that ,they have made other arrangements and are leaving in the morning. Whats the typical host to do in this situation? I've been a guest in the past and have had the same issue and allowed the host time to rectify the issue before I would decide to leave 5 hours into my visit.

What is typical procedure for hosts in this?

[Lorna170]

@Thomas2683   Your listing is a "cottage" for 10 persons... and you have a rental for 1 adult (really 2) for whom the Wifi was unacceptably slow.   Wow.  

First, while WiFi is available, you may wish to note the speed so that people who want to work have reasonable expectations.  If it was due to the service provider, then a discount would have been acceptable.  However, if your service would not accommodate 2 laptops, two phones and two TVs streaming simultaneously, then you need to be very specific as to what the guest will experience.

I do think that this guest should have allowed you to try to resolve the problem before making other plans, but in today's world no one wants to be without internet, even if just overnight.  

On another note -- drop your numbers and get rid of the sofa bed reference.  With 8 other people in the house, who is going to be the poor man/couple on the sofa bed?   Also, your dining table only seats 6 ....

[Karol22]

Wifi/internet communication is incredibly important for some guests. It's like electricity. When issues with your utilities go out, you have to welcome the possibility that guests will not want to wait and stay for the utility to hopefully come back the next day. You'll need to create a backup solution... have a second router/modem handy to install immediately. If it's the service itself going out frequently, consider getting a cellular hotspot when it goes down (e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Netgear-Nighthawk-MR1100-GSM-Unlocked/dp/B07G5KWZ3H/) 

[Thomas2683]

Thank you Karol22,  The renter left late the next day and the internet tech went out to find out there is zero issues with the internet. Just an excuse to leave after saying my home is a great location,very clean,very cute decorating,etc.

[Nicky205]

Thomas, exactly this has happened to me.  How did your situation pan out?

My guests have left after 2 nights, they notified me at 11am on Sunday, it was up and running by 4.15pm. But they said it wasn’t and left at 5.30pm. 
I’ve been in this morning (Monday) and had both TV’s streaming Netflix and WiFi no problem. I’ve offered them a generous £30 reimbursement/ day for 3 days (Fri, Sat & Sun) even though they didn’t notify me until 11am Sunday.

They’re not due to leave until Friday!

it’s a very strange situation.

[Huma0]

@Nicky205 

A few months ago, I had a guest that told me the day after she arrived that she was having problems with the WiFi in her room. Everyone else in the house reported it was fine. So, I went to her room, tested it on two different devices and all seemed well. I was getting full bars and able to stream Netflix etc with no buffering or issues. I rebooted it anyway. She said perhaps it was her computer and she would speak to the IT folk at her company. She never complained about it again and I could often hear her on her video conference calls (she was quite loud). However, she wrote in her review that the WiFi didn't work properly.

Sometimes, it's the person's device, not your WiFi that is the problem. Other times, it maybe depends on what they are doing. This particular guest was using Teams and that is where she seemed to be having problems. When I asked the WiFi engineer about it, he said that Teams required high upload speeds and that most domestic Wifi packages are not set up for that. They focus on high download speeds as they are designed for people to stream TV/movies, watch YouTube videos etc. 

Or, perhaps the guest was into gaming, which has much higher WiFi requirements?

[Debra300]

@Huma0,

We had an apartment guest contact us frantically about a short power outage (10 minutes) and the wifi not working.  We also had another set of guests were staying in the main house where the router and modem were located.  I called the house guests to see if they were having the same problem, and asked them to bounce the modem and router.  The house guest called me back to share that on the way to purchase some gas/petrol they had seen an auto accident that totally knocked over a utility pole (let's not get into the discussion about why most of the US still has above ground wiring), and that businesses along the main drag/high street, including the gas station were closed due to the internet outage.  I phoned the ISP, and they couldn't provide an estimate time for the return of service.  I shared this with the guests, and they all had to wait for 5.5 hours before their streaming lives could resume.  

The lesson learned was that we need a second point of internet service, and place the gear in the apartment.  Our ISP doesn't offer home mobile internet service, but we will get a plan from Tmobile, because that is our mobile provider, and will get a discount.  This should help to avoid bandwidth congestion (although WFH guests have never complained), provide redundancy during an outage, and allow each space to have access to internet hardware.  

I have been working from home for 10 years, and I experience network connectivity issues regardless of where I am located.  Some common reasons why it may appear there is an internet problem are, and what I've been told to do: heavy utilization of the company's VPN and it causes latency or connection drops (choose another connection point, if available), the performance of the device is impacted until a required update is made (companies and operating system providers are notorious for doing this - click update now), the internet service is experiencing fluctuations that cause latency and drops in the connection (there isn't much a user can do about this - try unplugging and restarting the devices), or the device has an incompatibility with the wifi system (e.g., we upgraded to wifi 6 a couple of years ago, but there wasn't an update available for my ancient work laptop's network adapter, and I had to use an ethernet cable until I was given a new laptop).

[Huma0]

@Debra300 

Thanks for the information. Yes, I think I will need to sort out a back up. That is what I thought I was getting with my recent upgrade, but it turns out they only send you the kit when the WiFi fails and it could take a few days to get here, and then you have to post it back to them! Not much of a 'back up'.

My WiFi issues yesterday were only for a few hours and then everything went back to normal. I am pretty sure it was an external issue (as the first CS rep told me). The equipment is new and was installed by an engineer just a few weeks ago. My MacBook is less than two years old. Anyway, the problem was on all devices being used at the time. However, even though the second said it sounded like an external fault, he couldn't book an engineer for that before sending one here first (on Friday) to check if it was something internal. Very frustrating! Luckily, the fault seems to have been fixed, but what if it hadn't been?

Also, luckily, my guests were very cool about it. Two of them were out anyway so it didn't effect them at all and they were pretty chilled when I messaged to say there was a problem. The one who was working from home said he has loads of mobile data, so not to worry. However, I have hosted guests in the past who I know would have absolutely freaked out if the WiFi went down even if very briefly.

[Huma0]

I don't know if there is similar in the US, but my WiFi provider here (BT) has a partnership with mobile network EE, which means that if the WiFi goes down for some reason and can't be fixed swiftly, they set you up to get it via EE in the meantime. 

[Nicky205]

@Huma0  Thanks so much for replying. We’re in the UK. We rebooted as soon as notified, but it did turn out that there was a fault on the line. They took a few hours to fix it, but by 4.15pm on Sunday it was fixed. 

I do have a feeling they were gamers. We’re a bit of a strange place to come to if all you want to do is game. We’re bang on the coast next to the New Forest and it was a beautiful morning yesterday. Still, within 24 hrs everything is up and running. 

No idea what they’re going to come back with. Dreading a stinking review as we’ve worked so hard all Summer 😬😬

I’m a little dubious how well Airbnb will support me. 

[Huma0]

@Nicky205 

I suppose you'll never know why the guests were still having issues with the WiFi after the fault was fixed. It does seems strange that guests would travel to your area and then stay in on a lovely day, but each to their own! Some people simply cannot live without WiFi even for a few hours, despite the fact that most these days have plenty of data on their phones. I don't know what else you could have done other than try to get it fixed asap and offer a partial refund.

I am afraid that Airbnb are probably not going to be much help if the guests leave a bad review unless it violates the content policy. They don't get involved in the accuracy of a review, which is why I don't bother asking them to remove a review anymore. The only thing you can do is leave a measured response. 

Hopefully, the guests won't be too hard on you. One would hope that a reasonable person would know that WiFi can go down at anytime and that the problem with the line was not your fault. 

[Huma0]

@Nicky205 

Talk about tempting fate. Soon after I responded to your comment, my WiFi, which had been working fine all day, suddenly dropped to possibly the worst connection I've ever experienced since switching to BT a few years go. 

I've spent the entire afternoon trying to get it dealt with and not really getting very far. Looked like it was potentially going to be down for a week or more. Then, all of a sudden, it is working again. I have no idea what happened or if it is fixed or not and if it will happen again as I spoke to two different CS reps who each contradicted literally every single thing the other one had said! 

Thank goodness it is okay for now as this was going to look very, very bad considering the washing machine is on the blink and the engineer who came to fix it this morning turned up without all of the necessary parts.

My college told me to switch off for the day, have a cup of tea and read a book and tomorrow will be a better day. I had to explain to him that it's not that simple when you have a house full of Airbnb guests all working/studying from home 😞

[Nicky205]

@Huma0  Fate indeed! Hopefully your guests are more reasonable.

I’ve yet to find out but it was a 7 day booking they arrived Friday and left Sunday early evening, so unless I can prove the internet was working Airbnb essentially fine me!

I have to pay her back 20% of each night she stayed and 100% of the 5 nights they didn’t stay! & potentially have a hideous review and my Superhost jeopardised.

As she stayed she has the right to review.
I could cry! I work so hard to keep everything to such a good standard!

So hosts beware, if someone notify’s you at 11am on a Sunday and you physically can’t get the WiFi fixed until 5pm you could be in for a rough ride! 

[Huma0]

@Nicky205 

Yes, that is really tough. What can one do?

The only thing I can think of is to have a back up. I thought that's what I had (recently upgraded my WiFi package and largely because of that - it sounded promising), but seems that what was advertised in BIG and BOLD on the website is really not what was what was being sold if you read some fine print that wasn't easy to find.

So, I thought I was getting a back up device that automatically switched to unlimited mobile data if the WiFi connection went down. Nope. What it means is that if the connection goes down, I have to spend ages on the phone and they MIGHT send me a mini hub, which could take days to arrive and then I have to send it back. How is that a back up?

Anyway, I feel duped but it's too late to get out of the contract, so either I just accept it or pay more to get upgraded to the package I thought they were selling me.

[Nicky205]

@Huma0  good plan to look for a back-up. I will do some research. 
Fortunately I’ve never come across this type of guest before (& hopefully never again!). Sorry to hear you’ve been duped. Good Luck!