Fridge not working properly

[Jakki5]

Just curious what is a fair refund for the issue of the fridge not working properly.

[Emiel1]

@Jakki5 

For which period of time (few hours, a week ?)?

Was it more like  "not working at all"  or like "less cooling capacity then normal" ?

if it is a minor issue with the fridge during a short time period, then no refund.

it is more about "what level of inconvenience did the guest encounter"

[Jakki5]

Thank you for your reply. 

It's a minor 'not cooling' last checked it was 9.5° so not the standard 4°C but still somewhat cool. It was fine yesterday morning and they arrived last evening and it wasn't. Earliest we can get a repair person in there is tomorrow. 

Supplying them with blocks of ice in the meantime.

They are looking for some kind of reimbursement for the inconvenience.

[Sarah977]

@Jakki5  Try unplugging, waiting a few minutes, and then replugging the fridge in. This will sometimes reset it.

[Jakki5]

Thank you so much for replying Sarah.  We did try that and unfortunately it didn't work! 😔

This is their most reverb response to me.  I'm not sure why they're having to eat out. 

"Considering we are required to now eat out for every meal and we came expecting all parts of the unit to be working, this is a major inconvenience. Previous experience with superhost rated stays indicates that one night's accommodation would likely be a fair reimbursement on a multi night stay. We understand that you are doing your best to rectify this but we wouldn't have chosen this listing had we known something like the fridge wouldn't be working. That would be our fair expectation."

[Lawrene0]

Ooo, looks like they know what they are doing, @Jakki5 with that "previous experience with..." line. 

Amenities are supposed to work properly, and it looks like other hosts (who are providing those oddly-worded 'superhost rated stays') have refunded a night for them. I'd likely agree with them in the messaging that that's fair, and give them the night. 

You could offer less, but it will eat up a lot of your time and energy. Theirs too. 

[Jakki5]

Thank you so much Lawrene.

We did get a repair person in Saturday morning and he had it fixed by 1030am.

So they were without a properly functioning fridge for a total of 32hrs of their 5 day stay.

[Sarah977]

@Jakki5  Too bad they are like that. If they are being provided with ice blocks, they obviously don't have to eat out all the time and their tone with you is unnecessarily aggressive. 

Some guests can roll with inconveniences and some refuse to. As @Lawrene0  suggests, you should probably refund a night. 

But unless you already indicated otherwise, I would say something like "We were already planning to refund you one night." Just to disabuse them of the notion that trying to guilt and intimidate hosts is the way to behave if things aren't perfect.

[Jakki5]

Yes, that is the difficult part, when they just seem to be looking for money and do not see us scrambling, trying to find someone to come in and have a look at it.

Hopefully the rest of their stay will be uneventful.

Thanks to everyone on this platform who helped make this process a little easier with great suggestions and support.

[Laura2592]

@Jakki5 I'd say 10% off each night. There's tons of meals that are easy to make without a fridge and if there are restaurants where they can go I think that's more than fair. Particularly if the fridge is  operating in some way.

My ideal guests don't use the kitchen except for very basic meals like sandwiches. I don't cook at all when I travel.  There's no expectation that any guest should be able to make elaborate meals.  But if you advertise a fridge and it's not working you should offer a courtesy discount.

[Jakki5]

Absolutely!  I did want to wait and see what the extent of their inconvenience was and it was a total of 32hrs without the fridge functioning properly.

Thank you for your suggestion, I did offer them a 10% reimbursement of their total booking and they have agreed.

It always is a bit more difficult when they do not appear to be very understanding that things are sometimes outside of our control but we did get it all sorted in the end.

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Jakki5   I suspect they did something to the fridge deliberately. How long they should stay?

I would tell them to cancel and find another perfect place to stay. End of story.

Btw, my no-frost fancy fridge stopped cooling when its ventilator got dusty. It is behind, on the bottom of the fridge. Once cleaned it worked great again. The summer heat didn't help either, I had to move it from the wall at least 30 cm to get some air. Then I threw it away and bought a simple fridge, with a cooling grid along the whole backside, without ventilators and no-frost-nonsense and no problem since 🙂

[Sarah977]

@Branka-and-Silvia0  That thought crossed my mind, too. If the fridge was fine when the hosts checked it before the guests checked in, it seems highly suspicious that it suddenly stopped working when the guests arrived. Especially considering the tone of their message- like they had their outrage all planned out.

BTW, not sure what kind of fridges you have over there, but frost-free fridges have been around for ages now, they aren't considered something fancy, as far as I know. Mine is frost-free, but has a cooling grid on the back as well. 

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Sarah977  we have no-frost and low-frost and maybe a few classic types which have to be defrosted manually

My old no-frost fridge-freezer was fancy 15 y ago when I bought it and it was big (by EU standards at least) and expensive. The whole back was covered in plastic except on the back bottom where the cooler and the ventilator were placed. Most fridges I've seen in stores now, like 95% of them are no-frost, with the same fully covered backside and same cooler on the back bottom. Of course, the dust is collecting quickly around the ventilator and cooler so the fridge has to be pulled out and the vent has to be vacuumed every few months in order to cool properly. 

Now I bought low-frost type with a cooling grid along the whole back. No dust problem anymore and it isn't noisy as my old one and many new models ( forums are full of angry customers with new very noisy fridges)

I have also a few older classic fridges and I like them the most. They are simple and cheap, have a cooling grid along the whole back, but the most important is that they are SILENT and they don't need repairs every few years. The only downside is that they have to be defrosted every few months. But OK, nobody is perfect 🙂

[Helen3]

25% off the day they were without access to the fridge