What is the lowest offer you ever received?

[Inna22]

Today somebody offered me $25 less the amount of my cleaning fee “all in”. Meaning taxes and fees which in Chicago comes to about another 40% on top of the booking rate were included in the offer as well stay itself and cleaning. Basically, this would not have even paid for utilities and cleaning supplies. Other than charity request for free stay, what is the lowest offer you have ever received?

[Huma0]

@Inna22 

I also come from a culture where many people are very poor and throwing away food is not okay. It is also a culture where dining is the main social activity and it's very rude to refuse food if offered it by a host. I think all of these things combined in my parents' approach.

On the positive side, I was brought up not to be wasteful, but it had the opposite effect on my brother. Although their intentions were good our parents really did force feed us though and often it was way too much, which I explained to them many years later.

As small children, we would get a decent breakfast at home and then go to school where we would be forced to drink a bottle of full fat milk mid morning and then get a cooked lunch, usually meat and two veg (often potatoes), followed by a cooked pudding (often with custard). Dad would then pick us up around 3.30pm and we would have another full plate of food, i.e. meat and fish and two veg/potatoes. Mum would then get home early evening and then we would have our family meal!! 

[Anonymous]

@Huma0  As a child in the 80s I constantly heard the line "kids are starving in Africa" when I couldn't finish a meal. My response was usually: "OK, why don't you send this to them."

When I was 19 I went to Africa for awhile, and my experience was mostly that everyone was trying to feed me. I'd be in houses full of kids who basically made a game out of seeing how  much I could be "forced" to eat to be polite. "Andrew, eat more!" is a sentence I got to know in 4 languages. Not to diminish the real humanitarian crisis of food insecurity, but I got a kick out of writing to my mom and saying "the kids are not starving here after all, and today I ate a sheep's eyeball."

[Huma0]

@Anonymous 

Yes, we were the Live Aid generation. I tried your response as well but it didn't work with my parents...

I also went to Africa (when I was 20) and spent two years there in total. Later in my 20s I also visited occasionally for work, which at the time focused on aid and development, including around food insecurity. 

Of course, there is plenty of poverty in Africa, but like you, I didn't encounter starving children either, not even when I visited the slums, although of course there were plenty of other issues there around healthcare and sanitation. The children I met always had big smiles on their faces, or sometimes shy smiles and giggles. Often the poorest people are the most generous and welcoming of strangers. It reminds us to be thankful for what we have and less wasteful.

[Sarah977]

@Anonymous  My best friend told me that when her parents would give her the "children are starving in Africa" , she'd say "Name one. See, you can't. How am I supposed to believe there's all these children starving when you don't know of even one who is."

[Inna22]

@Huma0 Yes, that does sound like a lot of food. Do you think part of it was your parents being proud of being able to provide all that food?

[Huma0]

@Inna22 

No, I don't think it was that really. My parents were educated, middle/upper class people. Although they had to face some financial struggles when they came to the UK as immigrants in the 1970s when racism was rife, I don't think there was ever a question of not being able to provide plenty of food for their children.

They came from a country where there was plenty of poverty and so they didn't like wastefulness, but it was more that they thought it was good for us. My mother loves 'healthy babies', but you can translate that as 'fat babies'. She believed the more food you could get down your children's mouths - especially fish and vegetables - the better. My niece is very skinny. I know my mother would love to fatten her up if she were only allowed to...

[Sarah977]

@Huma0 I let my daughters have one thing each they were allowed to dislike and not eat, whether that meant not serving themselves that, or picking it out of the food ad pushing it to the side of the plate. One hated mushrooms, one garlic, one onions (as adults, they all eat those things now). 

I didn't force them to eat, but if they didn't want to, they didn't get an alternative, or get to make themselves a sandwich an hour later,  they just had to wait for the next meal, hungry or not. No one dies because they were hungry for 4 hours, or even 10, but it tends to make them realize they'd better eat when food is served- better than Mom arguing with them 🙂

One thing I've witnessed parents do that just drives me mad is when out somewhere for dinner, whether at a restaurant or someone else's house is the child pointing to something when the food gets served that looks good to them, and the parent saying "Oh, no, you won't like that, honey", maybe because it's spicy or has something in it the child has refused to eat at home. Maybe they will  like it, why say something like that?

My youngest daughter always ate a good breakfast and lunch, but she never really wanted to eat dinner, she'd eat standing up, just pick at the food and say she wasn't hungry. I used to try to push her to eat, and say she'd be really hungry by the morning if she didn't. But as an adult (38 now) she has still never wanted to eat past around 5-6PM- her body just doesn't want to process food any later than that- she really isn't hungry at the time I used to serve dinner. 

[Sarah977]

@Kelly149  "I'm so happy for you that you were finally able to conceive with the help of fertility drugs. I can barely imagine how much work it must be to care for 1 year old quintuplets." 

[Inna22]

@Huma0 @Anonymous 

Can I have the cleaning fee waived- I will clean myself?

Hmm. Are you ok with previous guests cleaning after themselves for you? Particularly during Covid?

[Huma0]

@Inna22 

That's a new one for me as I don't charge a separate cleaning fee but, no, I would never trust guests to clean up sufficiently for the next guest, even under normal circumstances.

Even my professional cleaners who are SOOOO thorough don't turnover the guest bedrooms like I do.

Often a 'clean and tidy' guest's idea of it is to make the bed before they go (sweet, but pointless as obviously the next guest is not going to sleep on that used bedlinen), put towels in the laundry basket but soaking wet so they soon begin to stink, bring down their rubbish but not separate the recycling etc, put rubbish in the outside bins but the wrong ones or forget to bag it, forget all the small bits of trash they left under the bed, put their dishes in the dishwasher, but caked in dried on food so I have to take it all out and soak it, the list goes on...

They are trying to be helpful, good guests and I appreciate it, but the idea that this replaces 'real' cleaning is pie in the sky...

[Inna22]

@Huma0 I almost prefer they do not do anything at all. First off, I want them to have a feeling of vacation (both so they genuinely have a good time and give me a better review). Also, I have noticed that my cleaning crew slacks off and misses something when a space was "cleaned" by a guest. They would walk into a kitchen and think they guests just never used it or think one of the beds was not slept in and not change it.

[Huma0]

@Inna22 

Likewise. Because I host long-term guests in a shared listing, I do expect them to clean up after themselves to a certain extent while they are here, e.g. wash their dishes or put them in the dishwasher (they don't need to put it on or empty it) and make a reasonable attempt to clean up crumbs and spillages. They also have the option of cleaning their own rooms, changing/washing their bedlinen during their stay if it's longer than a month, or pay me a small fee to do it for them. I'm flexible enough that if they want to change the linens themselves but have me wash them, I'll do that too.

However, on check out, the only thing I ask them to do is leave the key. No faffing around stripping beds, putting this or that here or there, whether in the laundry basket or washing machine. No asking them to turn on washing machine or dishwasher or take trash to the outside bins. I understand that for hosts with only very short stays and a high turnover how this stuff might help speed up the real cleaning, but it's so full of pitfalls in my experience. It's rare that a guest figures out how to use the washing machine or dishwasher or separate the trash properly. That trash just ends up having to be rescued from the bins (not a nice task) and disposed of properly and the linens and dishes washed again...

[Laura3135]

Because there is a big price jump from a 4 person Airbnb to a 5 person here, as they have to rent a whole flat/house, and we are 4 people max once a month at least without fail we always get an inquiry from someone with the same story.

along the lines of “hello myself and my 3 friends would love to book your Airbnb, my sister really wanted to come but she has to work, it probably won’t happen but if she did get time off at the last minute is it ok she can stay as well? she doesn’t mind bringing a sleeping bag and sleeping on the couch, but like I said she most probably won’t come”.

stories guests will make up to save $80 a night.

[Helen3]

I had a guest this week saying she really wanted to stay at my place for a month but other hosts were offering 20-40% discounts and I wasn’t.

I suggested she goes for one of these hosts to fit within her budget.

She responded by saying my place looked much nicer and had great reviews so why wouldn’t I give her a larger discount 😁😢😢

My response was short and sweet.

Today I got a 25 day booking at my full rate for the same period. 

[Laura2592]

@Helen3Its so interesting the way some people's logic works! Nicer places should be LESS money?