Weird Guest Behaviour

[Maria-Lurdes0]

This is an odd platform, but here goes!

I just went to prepare my apartment for incoming guests.   Three bedrooms, two bathrooms. Everything is normal, the place was left in pretty good shape and I start stripping the beds to wash the linens.  One of the beds doesn't have any linens on it, although all of the quilts, coverlet, pillows, etc are very neatly folded on top of the mattress pad.  Where are the sheets?   I look everywhere - under the bed, in all the closets, look through the trash and find nothing.    I message the guest knowing that he may already be in the air, but he texts me back "oh sorry, we spilled some chocolate on them and though they were ruined".   HUH?????   If it was chocolate milk it would have likely seeped through to the mattress pad.   But the pillowcases, top sheet and bottom sheet all ruined by chocolate?   Such a weird and unlikely excuse.

[Deborah0]

Hi Maria, nice to see you here!!!

I wouldn't call it weird, necessarily, but I would call this kind of behavior disrespectful -- particularly if the guest never bothered to send you a message to tell you what had happened (YOU had to take the initiative to contact the guest, after finding sheets missing) and particularly if the guest didn't offer to pay you for the sheets.  It does happen that people can have "accidents", but it's just normal decent behavior to let someone know if you have messed up their property via an "accident."  Not telling them at all, and just throwing their property out, is NOT okay!

Precisely to avoid things like chocolate milk all over sheets, I state explicitly in my house rules that guests cannot consume food in bed.  

I've noticed that hosts are split on whether they bill the guests for damages like these.  Half the hosts seem to take the approach this is normal wear and tear, and don't bill the guest.  I'm of the opposite camp, I take the approach that guests are not entitled to expect that their reservation comes with a free set of sheets and a free set of towels, so if they damage any of those, I will bill them for it.  Unfortunately I dont' always notice the damage in time.  Sometimes it's only when I am folding the laundry 5 days later that I notice a stain on the linens, which makes them now unusable for guests.  

I can understand guests feeling embarassed by massive stains, but leaving one or more $20's in the room to cover costs would be appreciated, or just the guest fessing up to it and expressing willingness to be billed thru the security deposit.  

[Maria-Lurdes0]

Thanks for the reply Deborah.  I am not totally immune to all manner of grossness a human body can produce.   Not only can I take a lot more now then when I started hosting, there's very little that stumps me in terms of stain removal from linens.  Of course, this is only if you can catch things in time.  As we all know, once a stain is set in the dryer it's pretty difficult to remove it.

I'm in the first camp  - I consider a lot of small damages (to refer to another of your posts "death by a thousand cuts") to be wear and tear, as it's a legitimate business expense and it happens infrequently enough that I can absorb the cost into my overhead.  If it was to be more frequent, I'd have no problem dinging guests for replacement costs.

[Alicia0]

Did you charged them for the sheets set? It seems to me that they liked it and decide to take it for their own home...

[Mayka0]

I agree with you. I also think the same, they liked and took their our home. 

[Mayka0]

Now I thinks about it again, I would like to share with you a Weird Guest  Behaviour.

My flat is in Mallorca, so a group of English women ( young women in fact) came to spend some days in Palma de Mallorca.

Everything seemed  to finish properly and  when I was  tidying everything up, I was taking the linen from of the beds to wash them up, I realized that there was one little docoration pillow left.

I had done myself that pillow(time ago) , with a grey  soft fabric, and then I embroidered myself as well with an special decoration pattern . I made a brunch of them , one for each bed.

So  the fact is that one of the guests decided she liked that little pillow and  she decided to take it along with them.

Even I asked them to send it back to me, they denied to have it , and they said it was there when they were leaving.

Amazing......

[Queenie0]

I don't know that it really matters whether they ruined the sheets or took them home. The fact remains that the bed had sheets when they arrived and did not have sheets after they left. I think they owe the host the cost of a set of sheets.

[Ernie0]

Hi Maria, 

I'm with Deborah, if there is damage to my property over and above normal wear and tear, I will make a claim for it. Not fair to leave me holding the bad for negligent or disrespectful behavior. The guest (usually a stranger I will never see again) can pay for his or her own damages. Of course this is subject to how a guest handles the situation. 

Cheers, 
Ernie T.