Hooray for House Rules!!

Kelly149
Level 10
Austin, TX

Hooray for House Rules!!

So, back in April I received an Inquiry: " A couple buddies and I are just now starting summer break from college so we’re planning a little guys trip! You’re barn caught our eyes, looks so much fun! We plan to stay May 4th - May 6th. Please message back, I look forward to being a guest& customer! :)"

 

I sent him the standard "of course we'd be so happy to have you, please review the entire listing and our House Rules" after which I never heard back.

 

I check his profile today and he did indeed come to Austin that weekend. Here is the review his poor, unfortunate Host left for him "XXX and his friends left our house in horrible shape; they clearly had more people staying there than they claimed, moved furniture around, left the space filthy and broke our water filter. We are very disappointed and absolutely do not recommend that you allow them to stay in your home."

 

Hooray that I did not land that turkey, so sorry for the unfortunate off-site host who didn't enjoy his stay, just very glad it wasn't me!!!

12 Replies 12
Jess78
Level 10
Eugene, OR

Victory for you!  @Kelly-And-Dan0!

His original message was a little over saccharine, huh? Groups of young men are on my radar. You are smart in writing back about House Rules!!!!! Nice move. I am going to start to do that regularly.

@Jess0 if you look under the saved messages tab you will see that ABB has pulled a couple sections of your listing directly over to the message thread, House Rules, being one of them

We have had some great bachelor/young guys groups. The real key is about the attitude and setting expectations.

Those who look at my rules and think "too much trouble" are exactly the ones that I'm glad to not host. Otherwise, guests of any age who look at my rules and think "ok, works for me" end up being no problem to host.

Cathie19
Level 10
Darwin, Australia

@Jess0 > House rules  do rule!

 

@Kelly-And-Dan0 I totally agree. House rules are there to hopefully cover us the host, from the guest who doesn’t have respect, no boundaries, experience or common sense. 

 

NEVER ASSUME as the saying says, or they’ll make an ASS out of U and ME.

 

And as they say in the WHS  (work health and safety) fields: List it and spell it out > because “common sense” is a super power, that many are not endowed with! 

Lol..

 

🙂

Cathie

 List it and spell it out > because “common sense” is a super power, that many are not endowed with! 

 

Yes!!! I'm always so surprised at listings where their only rule is "take care of it like your own home"!

Really? You don't know these people, their home could be a disaster!

 

@Cathie0 

Robin4
Level 10
Mount Barker, Australia

 @Kelly

Kelly, I am going to take a stab here and hope that I actually have the right tag.......absolutely nobody else is at the moment!

Surely you don't mean to tell me you actually had a proposed guest who read your house rules!!

Maybe you should take a picture of his profile photo and frame it....it would be something of a first!

 

Cheers......Rob

 

SUCCESS! There you go it did work, I actually got the right profile. Don't  try to type in the profile name you wish to respond to because you will get some entirely unrelated profile. What I did was go back to a previous post and lift the tag from there and it worked!

Here is the page I went back to.....

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Airbnb-Plus/m-p/665776#M155749

Scroll down to Lizzie's post and you will probably see the tag there that you can use!

goodness, no, he certainly didn't read my rules, UNTIL I posted them directly into the message thread. Maybe even then he didn't read them, perhaps it was the sheer volume that ran him off.

And it's really inexcusable that ABB hides our House Rules behind a "Read More" tag. They should make it easier for guests to see pertinent info, not less.

And, no, tagging still isn't working. I wasn't notified but just found you all here this morning.

And some lovely Kelly somewhere in NY gets a ton of tags for me. I always wonder what she thinks when she gets those emails 🙂

 

@Robin0

Robin4
Level 10
Mount Barker, Australia

@Kelly     Well you just managed to tag some Robin in Ashburn Virginia!

Let me tell you Kelly...there is only one of me....and I sure as hell don't reside in Virginia!!

It seems you have to pick up a tag from a thread some considerable time ago.

The thread I am using is from the 12th April and grabbing tags from there seems to work!

 

Cheers......Rob 

Robin4
Level 10
Mount Barker, Australia

@Rebecca I am trying to prove a point here.....am I addressing Rebecca in Florence Oregon?

 

Cheers......Rob

Ha!! maybe it's a ploy to up CC participation, tags get sent to unsuspecting hosts all over the world!

Pete28
Level 10
Seattle, WA

While no doubt you dodged the bullet, the on going problem of no deposit, no host guarantee blah blah leads everyone open to abuse 😞

I actually use a similar strategy. I have a really loooong listing description and extensive set of house rules - which imo are mostly common sense and courtesy rules, but I have spelled them out in in detail because common sense is not so common. It may chase away some guests.......but that is exactly what I was aiming for 🙂  The majority of my guests have had no problems with turning lights off, not wasting amenities, and following instructions when using any of the appliances and my "no guests of the guest" rule.

Cammy0
Level 9
Vancouver, Canada

I agree, house rules are so important! I actually just posted a thread about my house rules that was created and improved over the last 2 years of hosting. If anyone is looking to spice up their house rules and get ideas, you can check out my template here

 

I also welcome any improvement suggestions! House rules are always a work-in-progress 🙂