Call the host or pay for parking?

[Inna22]

A guest that arrived last night could not find my garage. It is behind the house so you could see it with your eyes, I provide arial map and turn by turn directions. This is a fairly frequent problem. I guess many people are not used to the Chicago lay out with alleys in back. That was not the problem.

The problem was that it was midnight and the guest decided to wake me up to get help with the directions. Of course my poor husband who had to be up at 5 was woken up as well. I am thinking the guest should have just parked anywhere, even if he had to pay a few dollars to do so. There is paid parking a quarter of a block away and often free street parking. I do not think this justified a midnight call.

Thoughts?

[Normen0]

Yes. It was about 5:30 pm. One of the kids saw her whitish hair and ran into the living room and told his mother that grandma was here. Lol. Thank goodness we are good friends with our neighbours!.  The funny part is that I had just asked them to tell their teenagers  to give Skip the Dishes better directions cause I caught a Skip driver walking up my driveway at midnight a few nights before and stoped them before they woke my guests.  Lol. 

[Normen0]

@Inna22 Yes, they were. Good thing we are friends. They just sent them over. Funny thing was I had just asked them to have their kids give better directions for their Skip the Dishes drivers who seem to always come to our place instead. 🤦‍♀️ 

[Gillian166]

@Richard531 

yes, it's very hard to not write "as per the listing description" especially when the guest asks me where the TV is (it's mentioned 2 times in the listing). However if i feel they are going to mention it in the review (or ding me for Accuracy) I do need to gently remind them that I haven't "tricked" them at all.

[Huma0]

@Gillian166 

This is a concern for me too. If a guest keeps misunderstanding things because they have not read/paid attention to the listing or stuff told to them in the welcome tour, or just because they don't use common sense, there is always the fear that they are gong to ding you for it in the review. Some people do have a habit of blaming others for their mistakes.

The couple who claimed I had never sent them directions until after their arrival were the type of people who could not be helped. The directions are on the booking anyway, but I ALWAYS send guests directions a few days before (it doesn't take a genius to check this and see the date of the message, but these guests were not the sharpest tools in the box). When the guests did not respond, I chased to make sure they had received and read the directions, which they then confirmed.

These directions include a reminder of my phone number, asking them to contact me if they have any problems. Not only did the guests not contact me to let me know they were going to be hours late, they also made no attempt to contact me when they got lost (they were actually not lost but standing right in front of my house) and I could not contact them because they had switched their phones off. 

When they arrived, they were holding a print out of the directions I had sent them in their hands. Yet, in the review, they claimed they had not been sent those directions until afterwards. What can you do? 

A reasonable person might initially be annoyed/frustrated, but will realise when they have made a mistake and accept it. Others can never admit they are wrong and will always need someone else to blame.

[Inna22]

@Huma0 this is the biggest issue I have with my staff at work. No one ever takes responsibility for their mistakes. I am the one apologizing to them when they clearly make a mistake. 

[Huma0]

@Inna22 

I don't know what it is really. I would blame upbringing, but my brother and I were brought up in the same environment and yet, he really has a problem admitting he was wrong or saying sorry. He always has since he was a small child. There is a lot of blame thrown around, but he seems to target it at certain people, especially my mother. I, on the other hand, have no problem saying sorry when I have made a mistake (at least I don't think so), and tend to be more self depreciating in general. We all make mistakes and, sometimes, I feel it is just better to laugh about it and make fun of yourself.

The problem with guests, or other people that you don't know that well, which could include staff at work, is that it can make for some very awkward situations. People who do not like to ever admit they are wrong do not take kindly to being told it was THEIR mistake.

I had some very odd behaviour from the guest last night but, eventually, she seems to understand that maybe she had made a mistake. However, this morning, I discovered yet another broken house rule. And it goes on... Do I bring up the rule breaking? I feel a less than glowing review coming...

[Gillian166]

---

@Huma0 wrote:

@Gillian166 

A reasonable person might initially be annoyed/frustrated, but will realise when they have made a mistake and accept it. Others can never admit they are wrong and will always need someone else to blame.

---

There's just fewer and fewer people like this nowadays. In a world where "pride" has become a virtue it shouldn't be a surprise. Online especially, you see people attack first, never back down, ignore context or nuance, and never admit they were wrong and the most egregious: lie to cover up their error. 

And when you try to gently point out to people they are wrong (online or in person) they don't know how to handle it, because the true virtue: humility, is all but gone. 

This is why I tend to let things slide with guests who sneak in an extra person, or smoke, or steal all the coffee pods, I just don't know how they will react to being pulled up for their poor behaviour, and as my livelihood is on the line I often choose to let them be. (I still ding them in the review though)

[Huma0]

@Gillian166 

Yes, that is a good point. Humility I think is highly underrated these days. 

It can be very tricky to confront guests breaking house rules or especially, I find, damages. I have learnt the hard way that guests who are willing to own up to it will generally tell you themselves that they broke something. The others, who don't mention it, can often get very hostile if you bring it up, even if you are not asking them to pay for anything, just to be more careful.

I have also noticed that, on the rare occasions where I really do need to remind a guest to be more clean and tidy (they really need to cross a certain line before I will do that), they are more likely to rate me down on cleanliness. The clean guests never do that...

[Ann72]

@Inna22  They don't read the directions.  Airbnb sends them a GPS link three days before their trip and that's all they use.  My message with driving directions that goes out 10 days ahead of time now says, "Airbnb will send you this info next week, but it won’t be precise. Please refer to my instructions only."  That has cut down on the number of times people go up the wrong driveway.  It hasn't eradicated it completely, because of course there are guests who don't read any of my messages, but it has made a difference.

This speaks to a greater problem I've noticed:  guests think Airbnb is the authority on our places.  But that's the subject of a different post.

[Kitty-and-Creek0]

@Ann72  @Jenny @Emily

"Airbnb sends them a GPS link three days before their trip and that's all they use."

Aha! You've solved an ongoing mystery for us! 

No wonder we have to work so hard to get guests' attention and override the GPS given out. I thought the GPS habit was because our guests are all young and tech dependent. Big AHA!

Our guests get lost if they follow GPS and we have to make a concerted effort to override that insistent voice. We provide our own set of directions to get here and insist many times in our thread with the guests that they are to ignore the GPS. 

GPS has no clue where we are, and does its best to get people lost out here trying to get to our property. It sends people down a road which has been closed for years due to a landslide. It sends people down roads which have never been completed, logging roads locked shut for so long they'll never open. Getting here from the town - the GPS does the same thing, insisting that drivers take a dead end road, down a deep canyon with no cell service, on a one lane road with a very tall mountain "wall" on one side and a steep drop on the other. The blind curves on that road don't help safety or confidence.

One of our cars is new enough to have navigation. We noted that it quotes addresses that do not exist here on our road, including mislabeling ours as a number that is nonexistent. If a guest follows the directions given, they end up at a neighbor's chicken house 2/3 of a mile past our driveway. GPS doesn't know that our 1/2 mile driveway takes them to our house which is 500+ feet in elevation above that chicken house. The road to the neighbor's chicken house is not properly maintained, so that is another issue for city cars with low clearance. 

We'll obviously have to get more insistent in our communications with guests. 

Kitty

[Kitty-and-Creek0]

@Ann72 @Gillian166 @Huma0 

Our guests arrived exhausted yesterday, having driven an extra hour of following the GPS down that dead end deep canyon road, and back. We assured them that it was habit of city people relying on GPS to get them places. After being frustrated, lost, GPS casualties; they went to our directions and following them got them here so very easily. I don't know what else I can do. I send several messages in the thread emphasizing our directions and how GPS will do its best to get them lost. What happens is that guests following GPS lose time and lose considerable face, while being highly frustrated. Rural areas here are very different from downtown.

I share your frustrations about lost guests, all are GPS casualties. After we do our best to guide them,  all we can do is soothe them when they arrive. 

[Huma0]

@Kitty-and-Creek0 

Yes, I think in a lot of cases, the guest prefers to believe GPS, Google or whatever, rather than the host who obviously knows their place better than anyone else. I don't know what it is, except that a lot of people have a huge (and often misplaced) trust in technology over people.

[Kitty-and-Creek0]

@Huma0 

I so agree with you! Unfortunately, the inconvenience of blind trust in this tech causes so much misery. When a guest shows up with that sheepish look and that obvious embarassment, we feel so sad, as well as frustrated that it happened one more time. 

[David8879]

@Inna22 

make a video (mount camera stationary) of you driving from the street (from both directions), post it on youtube or anywhere and send the link to potential guests.

Not only I have that, but the video of getting to the property and entering private gates from few well known and clearly identified on google maps points. As well as video on using high efficiency European washing machine that most of Canadians and Americans (good part of my clients) are not used to.

Put all those links in "quick reply" canned emails and in scheduled "directions" email (I fire that up 3 days prior to check in)

Most guests are lost and helpless in new surroundings 

[David8879]

@Mark116 - very simple

Write

"Self check in FREE. Meet and Greet - $500"

Done.

You'll never see or hear from your guetss again.

EVER