Every dog has his day!

[Robin4]

I have been bragging what a wonderful lot of people Airbnb have brought to us. Last guests seemed the same, lovely young couple very friendly and responsible. 

They have just left said how wonderful the stay had been, how they would leave a great review and would love to return again....great!

I just went into the cottage to prepare for the next guests and I am staggered at what I have found.

The Air con remote has been pulled apart and metal fttings that make the battery contacts are missing...nowhere to be found. They were in there because they have been using the air cn during their stay...it was still on when they left.

I went to turn the air con off and, no display....so of course it won't work! A new remote!!

Somehow they managed to move the main bed up onto the foundation skirt and with the weight of the bed and them, went through it!.......

They broke a specific plastic light shade....it is specific to this light fitting, hand made...no chance of getting another one to match....

Even tried to roughly stick it back together before simply giving up.

Mud on the carpet rugs, numerous stains on the bed linens, little fridge is now off it's mounting blocks and all out of alignment with the other cupboard doors. I can't believe what I am seeing and of course the question....where to from here?

I can raise a dispute with the resolution centre, but what good will that do! Even if they side with me they will give me three quarters of nine tenths of bug*er all.....so, I am handy and I can tile the foundation apron and get the bed right again! I can get my air conditioning mate to scource me another second hand air con remote. And I will look forward to the challenge of getting another plain plastic shade and duplicating what was there....I have hand made one, why not another! The old Sards wonder soap will take care of the stained linens, but I am so disappointed,

I am disappointed, A, that they would disrespect the property I have worked so hard to provide like that, and B, that they would just waltz out of here and not say a thing about it, as though, oh well, these things happen.

I shouldn't have to even think about a review, it should be cut and dried but, thanks to this co*k-up of a review system I am going to have to think long and hard about what I say about these guests. And the complete total irony of this whole scenario, they came here because she is a student and had a prac placement in a local hospital, they didn't have a lot of money and I gave them a special deal.

What have I always said to others here about doing special deals??....The only one I have shafted here is myself!

Cheers.....Rob

[Donald28]

airbnbs review system is one of the best in my opinion. Why? Because it does not allow for retalitory bad reviews. You can leave an honest but BAD review for your guests and the guests cannot see it until they submit their own review for you. I recently left a bad review for a couple who let their baby pee on my mattress. They left me a glowing review! 

You are completely safe leaving whatever review you like. If you do leave a false positive review, you could still potentially get a bad review from the guest. Why chance it? Just leave an honest review. 

[Monika64]

@Donald28 Just know that both host and guest can reply to reviews, only once. So you can get an un-true guest review and answer to it. However, same goes to your guests review: they can post an answer right underneath your bad review. That said we should still leave honest reviews but just know both host and guest can have a last say.

[Helen3]

Unfortunately @Donald28

This isn't true - guests who know you are making a claim for damages often leave nasty, untrue reviews, which AIrbnb refuse to remove as they say they are their 'opinion'.

[Lois-and-Darryl0]

@Robin4 - So so sorry about this Rob.  You are clearly one of our best Hosts, and this just sucks.  I have only one comment and that is that you have excellent photos and I do encourage you to try the Resolution Center.  We've used it twice, with photographs, receipts for repairs, etc., and both times Airbnb was very supportive and agreed with everything we said and charged the Guests what we claimed in damages.  Since some of the work you need to do is already done, you don't have a lot to lose.  Good Luck!  Lois

[Zacharias0]

Yes, no good deed goes unpunished. Have you tried calling them? I would seriously have a word with the people about their lack of responsiblity. I'd put in a request for the resolution center as soon as possible! Don't delay. Something is better than nothing and it'll show those rude guests they can't get away with this behavior.

In regards to the remote you can usually find them super cheap on Ebay. Everything is on there.

In regards to the lamp shade, if you can find the pieces super glue usually works amazingly. I had a yellow vase that fell over due to an errant cat and super glued the whole thing back together. It looks just like new.

[Robin4]

@Zacharias0

Thanks Zach, as usual, wise words from you. 

In the great scheme of things, it's a storm in a teacup. The main thing that worried me was the remote. As you probably know you have to use a bit of effort to lever the battery cover away from the base to access the battery compartment on these remotes. What happened here I am assuming he wanted the batteries to use in something else (they were only a new set of batteries before they arrived) and when he could not find a way of removing the battery cover he tried to prize the back off the control, broke it and gave up!

But Zach, I have some wonderful people around me and as soon as I told my air conditioning friend what had happened he jumped straight into his car, came the 40Ks up here into the hills with another identical remote which he had lying around from a 'trade-in'....no charge, just what you do for friends!

I guess another plain plastic lamp shade will cost me $25-$30 and I can probably find the paint and stuff I used for the last base and shade here somewhere, I don't just want a shade that is 'superglued' together! Another wine glass $3, the linens have cleaned up, I hope the sticky stuff will come off the iron soleplate.

I am not going to raise Cain over what has cost me as little as $40 Zach, sure I will be objective in my review but only to warn other hosts. I will say privately I am disappointed they felt like these things were not worth reporting to me, and that my efforts were worthy of this level of disrespect. But, I haven't been doing this that long, and most of my bookings are coming from the reviews so I don't want a 'black eye' standing out there in what is otherwise a reasonably good bunch.

It was just ironic that the day I took @Annette33 to task saying I had only ever had great guests....I strike my prickly pear!!

Cheers....Rob

[J-Renato0]

Hello @Robin4

So so sorry about this. I hope you can charge them successfully and manage to have everything in order again.

Cheers. 

Jose Renato

[Cormac0]

@Robin

The damage was bad enough, but wait for the Guest denials or even worse they may suggest the damage was there when they arrived, that will send you blood pressure skyward.

I know from our interaction on these pages you are a genuinely nice person helping you wife cope with debilitating illness and you deserve better than this.

Not only should you receive the cost of equipment replacement and repairs but you should also get compensation for the grief caused.

Regards

Cormac

[Robin4]

@J-Renato0

Hi José, like all the other regulars I really do appreciate your thoughts and your support. 

We move on, I have next guests in the cottage tonight, bed still works, goes up and down and it still vibrates where and when it is supposed to! The aircon works again, the floor lamp looks a bit the worse for wear but it is now a good conversation piece. Everyone is trying to work out how it came to get so smashed up. The bed linens cleaned up thanks to some concoction my local dry cleaner gave me. I have managed to iron off the sticky stuff on the soleplate of the iron and I have replaced the wine glass.

I am still sitting on the review! I have said to others on this forum, wait for two days before writing a review because time tends to put a better and more measured perspective on things

I am going to write something along the lines of........

"****** and ***** are a lovely couple and I felt I did everything to make their stay an enjoyable, value for money experience.

Accidents do happen but it was a pity that a few breakages went unreported as I would love to have held onto that feeling of warmth and respect I had for them. Sadly I have to say that is a bit tarnished, but I nevertheless wish them well for the future!"

No big deal, I don't want to make a 'Star Wars' script out of it, and that does not really give them any ammunition to cane me with in a response!

As I said in another post I want to make them feel guilty rather than annoyed!

@Cormac0, you always say just the right things, my blood pressure is under control mate, I have moved on and I do hope that in the end I will be better off for taking the path that I have. Sure, I can demand this and that but, I look at it this way, it took 100 guests for me to strike this one, I probably won't strike another one for another 100!

And @Annette ....see, I do try to keep a good rapore with my guests! 😉

PS: What did strike me as odd, throughout the entire course of this thread I received 1 'thumbs up'....how can I make my content more interesting?.....shut up I hear you all say!!!

Cheers.....Rob

[Monika64]

@Robin4 I want to give you a "thumbs up" so badly :-))) but the review you are planing to write is waaaaaay to nice 😞

I'm not saying to destroy them but I think moving a bed, breaking a number of things and LEAVING without an apology deserves something a tiny bit more stern, no?

First of all I wouldn't call them a lovely couple ... I'm sure they were nice but doing something like this to another person's HOME disqualified them from being lovely :-(((

Sorry for making it my business but I feel these people desserve a bit more critique :-(((

[Robert-And-Nancy0]

@Robin4

You are the best in making suggestions for how to handle reviews.  Waiting a time after the guest's departure and taking the emotions out of the the final review is important.  I think you are being to nice.  As a host, reading your review of a guest(s) asking to stay at my place, I might think that maybe this was not such a bad guest(s) especially if it is their first review (only) or after a good reviews.  What was done to your beautiful place I think deserves a little more on the negative side to help future hosts in making a decision to host them or not.  Short is good and not detailing ever breakage but a sentence or two to help discourage hosts from accepting their request or at the very least make them think long and hard.

I admire your forgiveness and that you don't want to annoy but make them feel guilty.  Just giving you my two cents as a host reading a review from such a professional and fantastic SUPER host.  You always end up doing the right thing.  Happy to hear that a new person is in the beautiful cottage and this will help put the trust back in guests.

Thank you for the before pictures.  Wow you did a lot of work and made it absolutely beautiful.  I know hard work in renovating.  We flipped a condo a few years back and then recently our daughter bought a fixer upper and we both put our blood, sweat, and tears into that too.

If we ever get the chance to go to Australia we will be booking at your wonderful place.

Our best,  Nancy & Bob

[Robin4]

@Robert-And-Nancy0

And I sure would love to host you guys!

Thanks for your comments, and you are of course right....I have every right to rant and rave but, I have never seen more than a handfull of hosts poor review that I respected. Everyone I have seen tries to justify their issues rather than get across the warning!

By saying something along the lines of what I have stated in that last post I am warning hosts, these guests broke stuff and took off without making mention of it....surely that should be enough to get the message across. And everyone who reads that will think like you and @Monika64 that I am a nice host and I have been dudded......correct of course 😉

The more I take a guest to task the more I look like a tough nut and maybe best avoided. But Nancy you do have a strong point and I may also reword that to say....... "I was not only concerned at the amount of breakages but the fact that no effort was made to report them, and this unfortunately will tarnish the feelings of warmth and respect I initially had for them"!

I think that is as far as I want to go because I have a need to be respected not just by hosts but by guests too, and one of the biggest put-offs from a guests point of view is an antagonistic host.

Oh the renovation bit. I don't know how many of the reno pictures you have seen here on this forum but I have posted a lot but I do get a kick out of looking back at that bloody hard work. You saw the inside of the cottage when we bought here....this was the outside once I got the tiles back on the roof!

And this is where we ended up.......

Lot of hard work Nancy but I have done every bit of it myself and I have loved doing every bit of it!

Cheers.....Rob

[Annette33]

@Robin4 , Thumbs up is like "liking" a post, and it's hard to see that people would like what you have reported. you got lots of sincere sympathies here, that is what counts, no? 

Glad to see you are now contemplating writing a review, but as many others have said, calling them a lovely couple misses the point, and I doubt it would even shame them for one second. It easily goes right over their heads,  or they might even chuckle and think of you as a naive old dude one can do anything to , if they even read it! and the ambiguity could be confusing to other hosts, who are the ones that actually will pay attention to the review. They don't see the pictures, they might even think it was an accident and you are dramatizing it. Shaming such guests or keeping up a good rapport with people who have trashed your place wouldn't be my concern, but holding them responsible would be. 

In any case, glad you are getting your place back in order without too much upheaval or costs connected.Good show!

[Bruce43]

@Robin4 where should I put my thumb up mate?

[Mariann4]

Oh no @Robin4... Im so sad and sorry to see this post from you! This is not what you have earned as being who you are...

Others have put it in better words than me, so I'll just say I have to agree with all of the other's comments.

As for the reimbursment I believe it is now too late anyways as you have to make a claim before you have a new guest. At least that is my understanding from reading other posts in here. But I have some thoughts about you not doing it and I will give them to you since you always offer your own opinions 😉

-They did NOT tell you about their damages. That alone should make you ask for reimbursement! It is very poor behaviour not to tell your host, friend, mother, uncle etc. if you break something. Everyone can have mishaps. But when damaging other people's stuff you tell them about it. ONLY if they had told you you should have considered not to ask for a reimbursment.

-You are a handyman. I am not a handywoman. If someone were to damage my place like yours I would have to hire professionals to fix some of it. When you, or other hosts, don't ask for reimbursments for damages like this, your guest will think they are in the clear and continue their behaviour in new places such as mine. My expenses will be much higher than yours.

-Their dishonesty and behaviour should be out in the open. The only way I can dodge a bullet with people like this is if hosts like you tell me about it. Don't be nice about it. Don't be inpolite about it. Be honest about it! They are not a nice couple when they behave like this. They are fake. So do not use such wording. Be straight forward: This couple appeared to be a nice couple. I however had to reconsider when I without warning found my furniture and belongings broken after their stay.

Still angry on your behalf! But please, Rob. You provide excellent advice in here. Live up to it 🙂

Mariann 🙂