The honeymooners, helicopter mom and the fire log

[Laura2592]

Another chapter in the annals of bad guests. This is one for which I need help with a review.

Some of you may remember the tale of the helicopter mom who wanted access to my space to "set up" for a honeymoon couple and control their comings and goings. The couple just stayed/left. They were pleasant enough but they did some damage and I am not sure how to notate that for other hosts.

Seems helicoptered kids don't know how to follow directions. We only allow firelogs like Duraflame burned indoors in our fireplace for safety reasons. Since we instituted this we have had a sharp decrease in calls to the cottage to literally start or put out fires. We replaced the flue last year in order to have a very standard and easy to understand open and close mechanism. We also provide detailed instructions with pictures on how to use it. Most guests get this and use our fireplace with ease. This honeymoon couple did not. Apparently they lit a firelog with the flue closed. When the house filled with smoke they took the log and threw it on the porch which is slate flagstone. The burning log left black debris all over the stones right in front of the door. It looks terrible. We did not have time to power wash before the next guest so we put a rug over it and will attempt to spend the day there next weekend t really scrub and clean it with chemicals.  If its permanently damaged I will cry (literally-- I love that porch) and buy an outdoor rug to cover it until we can replace the stones. 

To the guest's credit, the young woman wrote me and mentioned the incident and sent a picture. The picture was only part of the damage and didn't look that bad. I told her we would check it out, thanks for letting me know. She did offer to pay for extra cleaning which was decent of her. Helicopter mom also shot a note that the kids "didn't understand how to use a fireplace" and she thought we should have come over to show them. They did not ask us-- we would have. 

These people have zero reviews. I don't want to say anything nasty to a honeymoon couple, but they are clearly clueless and mom is a P I T A. How would you write this? Even if we can clean it up,  I would not recommend these people to hosts who have any kind of fireplace/fire pit.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Laura2592 Say the guests were fine (apart from inability to follow fireplace instructions) but the mother less so!

[Laura2592]

@Mike-And-Jane0 I don't know if I should mention mom at all because she is not on the reservation. Would you? She definitely spent more time discussing this stay than the actual guests. 

[Sarah977]

@Laura2592 I would say somewhere in the review that while the guests were forthcoming in letting you know about the issue, and offering to pay for the extra cleaning that was required, which you appreciated, it never would have happened in the first place had they bothered to read the clear instructions you left for the fireplace use. 

And that the damage created was more extensive than how it appeared in the photos she sent you.

It sounds like she was trying to be responsible, not her fault mom didn't teach her not to use other people's things if uncertain how to do so properly.

I'm not sure you should mention annoying mom, as she hopefully won't be involved in any future bookings they make. You might say it was rather odd to have one of their family members who wasn't part of the booking messaging you numerous times about various things on their behalf.

They might actually be a bit embarrassed about helicopter mom, too, and not even be aware of all the communication she foisted on you. On the other hand, they might be the type who still expect mom to go to bat for them.

[Laura2592]

@Sarah977I am thinking of just saying "We were so pleased to host so and so on their honeymoon. Polite and communicative, they did alert us to some damage from a fireplace accident and we really appreciated that.  We wish them the best and would recommend to hosts without an indoor fireplace."

[Anonymous]

@Laura2592  I don't have a fireplace, but I wouldn't even trust these people with a candle.

They failed to follow your instructions, and instead of reaching out to you for help, they took actions that endangered your home. I think that detail is more relevant to future hosts (of which I hope there are none) than the damage.

[Anonymous]

@Laura2592  The review I'd want to write:

"For the sake of humanity, I hope these newlyweds are better at using birth control than they were at using my fireplace. I wish all the best for their marriage but I have doubts that they're ready to be left unsupervised."

Of course what I'd actually write would be more along the lines of @Sarah977 's great suggestions. Definitely highlight the positives, but make it clear that you would not trust these people with your home again.

These two are like characters out of a Coen Brothers movie - they make one stupid mistake, they try to fix it with a bigger mistake, and before you know it the bodies start piling up.  Forgetting to open the flue, that's an easy enough mistake to make. But of all the possible ways they could have solved the problem, the best fix they could come up with was to carry a large burning object through a cabin and throw it out into a wooded area? 

If these guests ever holiday in California, entire cities might burn. 

[Laura2592]

@Anonymous  I wholeheartedly agree. This had to go down like a slapstick sequence. I can't imagine the logical gymnastics that were at play. Open a window. Throw water on the log. Don't carry it through the house and deposit it still burning on the porch.  Who DOES that?

Clearly these two have bigger issues. I am sure mom is planning to move in to their marital abode and micromanage so they may not notice that they are functionally useless until after she passes. The learning curve seems pretty steep at this point.

[Anonymous]

@Laura2592  In hindsight, maybe all her incessant managing was meant as a warning that the young couple's combined IQ was in the double digits. After all, they came pretty close to burning your house down out of sheer unimaginable stupidity.

And even if the problem was just helicopter parenting, presumably mom was not the parent of both of the kids. Although, if she was...that would explain everything.

[Debra300]

@Anonymous,

"Raising Arizona" is one of my all-time favorite movies.  I could picture Nick Cage playing the new groom in this comedy of errors that @Laura2592 described.

[Anonymous]

@Debra300  OMG that was exactly who I was picturing when I tried to visualize this couple 

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Laura2592 

I think @Anonymous 's version is perfect 🤣 🤣 🤣 but would probably end up with something close to what @Sarah977 suggests.

Imo, your review should absolutely include the part about them carrying a burning log through the house and throwing it outside. Goes to show what kind of people they are and how they handle issues - exactly the kind of thing I'd want to know about a potential guest. 

[Sarah977]

This scenario reminds me of my son-in-law's hilarious story of how he tried to burn all his girlie mags in the woodstove one evening when he was 14 and his parents were out. He had gotten paranoid that mom would find them one day. 

He stuffed a big pile in, the house filled with smoke, same deal, he tried to then fish them out and throw them outside, dropping bits of burning magazine and ash all over the house.

[Peter1]

If your guest's handling of the situation is to your satisfaction, then I wouldn't mention it in the review.  Accidents do happen and if they offered to pay for the damage and notified you as well, at least it shows they were responsible.  I'd knock of a star for their ability to follow instructions or rules, but heartbreaking as it is to have your lovely deck fouled, it is within the realm of the risks of hosting.

[Anonymous]

@Peter1  Surely you're aware that non-Instant Book hosts can't see the star ratings, so this passive-aggressive approach has no benefit at all to the hosts who are the most cautious about screening their guests.

A term we used to bat around on the New Hosts Forum was The Superman Rule:  If your sheet is torn because the guest was sleeping on it normally, that's what you might call "within the realm of the risks of hosting."  But if your sheet is torn because the guest fashioned it into a cape and pretended to be Superman, that's worthy of a claim and mention in the review.

These guests fall into the latter camp, as far as I'm concerned. Whether their actions actually resulted in damage is beside the point - as I said upthread, these people chose not to follow simple instructions given to them, and the resulting course of profoundly stupid actions was so irresponsible that it endangered the home.  

Trusting strangers with your home is a pretty big deal when you don't have oodles of extra houses laying around, and you want to at least be confident that any group contains an adult with basic common sense. Your listing contains a kitchen - if someone were to start a fire in it (which happens more frequently than you might think) would  you trust that the guests described here would have the sense to use your fire extinguisher and not, I dunno, carry a pot of flaming grease through your house and throw it out onto Telegraph Hill?