WWYD: Corona Discount Request

[Kelly149]

Hello Fellow Hosts, curious if you'd be willing to share how you would have responded to this message that came in yesterday?

"Hi Kelly,

My name is ******* and I love this place so much! We are bringing a girls long weekend ages up u til 80. My question to you is that I lost my job because of coronavirus and I’m on disability. Is there any chance of any discount that we could apply to our reservation? Thank you for the consideration. ********"

This was an Inquiry from a brand new user located 5 states away from me, for 3 guests, 4 nights in the last weekend in July. The listed rate was probably $20-50 less/night than it would have been in a normal summer. Who knows if anyone will be traveling in July and/or what the supply/demand housing market will look like then. Our state is currently about 50% open.

What would you have said????

[Melodie-And-John0]

@Kelly149 , I have actually raised my base prices since the outbreak and I doubt Im going to lower them after it ends nor stop doing the things that would have been considered extras before C19.   Its more work, more risk and Im not getting less, they still get a fair price but Im not Amazon or Walmart.   As @Gordon0 pointed out, she may be nice but she's not very smart nor wise for her age so she should probably pay more not less...   Stay well, JR

[Kelly149]

@Melodie-And-John0 Yep, I doubled my cleaning fee and I don’t see any reason for that to change for awhile. 
a) stay home

b) “rude and thoughtless” was part of what I said in my decline message

[Anonymous]

@Kelly149  Oh I'm dying to see the whole decline message!

[Alexandra316]

@Kelly149Please share! I need the tea!

Seriously... who goes on a vacation then begs a discount based on financial hardship? Just don't go if you can't afford it. Not rocket surgery!

[Kelly149]

@Alexandra316 @Anonymous I tend toward wordy, but this just hit me wrong... All of March, April & May got cancelled and the rest of the year looks geared toward penny-pinching lookyloos. I've been stuck home with a bunch of furloughed kids and for all we know the entire world economy is headed to a years long chaos. Oh, and ABB thinks I need to provide hospital grade cleaning protocols and take reservations from people with no more sense than a field mouse. I think I'll pass. So, I actually hit the Decline (almost never do that, and it was an Inquiry so I really didn't have to but I felt like making the point), marked her message as Spam and then said "Every single host lost their job bc of coronavirus too. Asking me to help you pay for your trip is thoughtless and rude."

Funny thing is, I haven't heard back.

[Mark116]

@Kelly149   The sad thing is that some poor unsuspecting and desperate host probably agreed to host that faker and is regretting it, because people like that are always bad guests, she would have been a bad guest before corona virus and will be a bad guest long after this nightmare ends.  I would say there is a 95% chance that this guest broke the rules, complained and left a 4 star or worse review.

[Kelly149]

@Mark116 often times I go back and check after the stay date to see if someone else got stuck with them and what they thought. Alot of times, these "better suited to hotel" guests do indeed go to a hotel and I think that is fine.

I might make more money if I acted like a hotel, but I'm not and I just can't seem to make myself want to. 

But at a hotel: she wouldn't have a kitchen, a living room, a dining room or be in my backyard, their furniture would be industrial grade that they have in sets of 200+, they would also have her credit card on file, and no one would bat an eye if she posted a 4* yelp review.

This is another area where I think Vrbo does a better job of saying we're not a hotel, we're a home and it seems like ABB is racing to the bottom on just act like you're a hotel.

[Kelly149]

The reason why I wrote this post is that I think for a lot of us "the customer is always right" and "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" ring in the back of our heads. But as I see more and more how over a barrel we are with so many ABB policies I've just felt less inclined to sugar coat things for guests. I just looked thru my archived messages and I've been suprised how quick and effective some truth has been with guests.

"Bless your heart, that's not how this works"

"oh dear, you're right it's annoying that some simple reading on your part would have solved this problem"

"yep, ABB is cuter than hotel, but unlike hotel you can't just turn up in 15 minutes and complete the booking process with one swipe"

"it seems you've missed a few key points about our listing. please go back and read it thoroughly and then we'll discuss from there."

Maybe y'all are all still on "be nice island" and who knows, maybe I should be too...

[Maia29]

Funny! You are SO sassy!! 🙂

[Alexandra316]

@Kelly149"The customer is always right" was written by a guy at head office who had never had to deal with a customer in their silver spoon-licking lives. The customer is sometimes wrong. The customer is sometimes very, very wrong. Sometimes - not often, but sometimes - the customer deserves a good smack upside the head. 

I love your no-nonsense approach. I'd love to take a page from your book: I'd like to be that brave and just give 'er. Maybe I should. 

[Kelly149]

@Alexandra316 who knows, maybe there's buckets of money waiting for those who are willing to always take it on the chin, but if you join the resistance, come back and tell us how it goes. I'd enjoy the company

[Helen744]

Helen@744 a nice little sit down and a cup of tea .or ' this way madness lies ". sometimes it would be nice if someone left some flowers or a thank you note. But that was then and this is now .We are all amazing  H.thye are all so lucky to have us but its like when u go on holiday and everything is so difficult about getting there and leaving home etcetera, and then when u get home you finally say Oh wasnt that great . Maybe the guests should not ever be allowed to fill in reviews H

[Sarah977]

@Kelly149  Luckily, I've never gotten a rude request from a guest so haven't had to deal with this. A couple of inquiries which were guests asking me to call them "to answer some questions", which of course is them trying to make a deal outside of Airbnb, so I just message back that all communication has to stay on the platform and that I'll be happy to answer any questions they might have that aren't answered by thoroughly reading the listing info. I never hear back from those, not surprisingly. 

  A few that are terse, like "I'll be arriving at noon" as their first message, when I haven't even pre-approved or accepted yet. Those I have been successful in getting more information from by asking a few questions in a friendly way and letting them know that hosts like a bit more info from a guest before accepting a booking. 

 "The customer is always right" is of course not true. To me, it's more a statement meaning that it's not a good idea to argue with a customer, rather than that you always have to smile and be sweet and respectful, when in fact that is not how the customer is behaving towards you. 

 While I've never had to deal with rude or disrespectful guest requests, I've done quite a bit of property management for others and I can tell you that I'm not on the "be nice island" if a guest or tenant's behavior or words are rude or disrespectful. I stay professional, but I'm not inclined to be particularly understanding or accommodating. My experience with those sorts of people is that if you take the attitude that you have to stay super nice, they just use that to try to take more advantage. Not taking s**t tends to make those types shape up if they don't want to get booted out.

[Kelly149]

@Sarah977 the good thing about being raised as a Southerner is that you learn early on that nice and taking the p**p from people aren't the same thing. We can smile you right into the ground if you're being a nincompoop.

So, I completely agree with you, and that's what I'm trying to convey, that sometimes telling someone that they're being a pain is a good way to either get them to shape up or go away and both of those are a win in my book.

the "we'll be there on Saturday" girl, got the "Bless your heart, that's not how this works" and she turned it around and communicated well.

the "what do you mean I can't invite over whoever I want, you are so annoying" girl, got the 

"oh dear, you're right it's annoying that some simple reading on your part would have solved this problem" and then paid the cancellation fee I asked for and went away.

the people with the brand new profile who hadn't read the whole listing nor answered any of the questions in my house rules and messaged at 3pm, "this place is so cute, we'll be there at 6" got the 

"yep, ABB is cuter than hotel, but unlike hotel you can't just turn up in 15 minutes and complete the booking process with one swipe" decided that yes, they were better suited to a hotel.

Technically none of these people were flat out rude, but they had a "I'm bossing around the clerk at the roadside motel" rather than the "I'm asking to visit someone's HOME" mentality. And I guess that's what I'm over. I OWN this place, I BUILT it, I LIVE here, and I don't know you from ADAM, if you can't say please and thank you and ASK rather than tell me things, then I have children who need manners lessons from me and I don't have time to work on you too. Life is too short to stress out over these silly people.

When it's good then the extra $$ is great, but when people are a problem then there isn't enough $$ to make it worth it.

[Sarah977]

@Kelly149  I have a client who told me a great customer service story. He used to manage a Mercedes dealership and had a customer who brought his car in to be serviced. When the guy came back to pick up his car, he claimed and was totally adamant that there was a leather jacket in the back seat when he left the car that was now missing. 

 All the mechanics that were working there had been working for the dealership for a long time, and he knew they were all honest and no one would steal anything from a customer's car, that the guy was just scamming.  So he told the customer that all the mechanics but one had been working there for years and were totally trustworthy. That the one guy had only been there for 6 months and that he was prepared to fire him (he had no intention of firing anyone), even though there hadn't been any other complaints. But he told the customer that first he wanted him to please look at home, at work, any other place that the jacket could have been left and to call him back if it wasn't found because the mecahnic had a family to support and he'd hate to fire him simply on a suspicion.

 Less than a day later the customer called to say he'd found the jacket- he'd apparently had enough of a conscience that someone being fired, rather than the manager offering to pay him for the jacket, wasn't what he'd expected or wanted.