Dear all,
I have have been getting mainly good or excellent reviews from guests staying at my self-catering three bedroom apartment at Hibernian Towers in Strand, South Africa.
I received two five star reviews from two female university professors who both stayed for extended periods of time both commending the equipment available in the kitchen. The building is a landmark on the Strand beach and built to very high standards including indoor heated swimming pool on 10th floor. The furnishing and applicances in the apartment are also of very high quality. The unit itself is clearly designated as self-catering although high quality linnen, towels, toilet paper, soap, detergent, cleaning utensils, .. are available for guests.
The pricing I have installed is dynamic pricing by AirBnB so it should be competitive I imagine but it sometimes is as low as R600 (42 USD) per night for three double bedrooms in excellent location.
Nevertheless I received a 2 out of 5 including the message below from a recent guest:
"AVOID THIS PLACE. Described as luxury but is poorly finished. Carpets are filthy or stained, kitchen has limited supplies. There is no wifi and not even a grain of sugar for an arriving guest. Cheap hotels have more luxury than this place. They want you to look past this with great views and pricing. That works for many. But a frequent airbnb person will expect more form their host. The fridge door would not stay closed, the microwave was broken and the blinds did not go up and down. The host became belligerent with me when I dared to complain."
He paid around 56 USD per night for his family of four.
He expected Wifi although it was indicated on the ad that this was not included.
He expected sugar and coffee "packets" although this is a self-catering unit.
He managed to tangle the strings of the blinds, remove the fridge drawer and put it back the wrong way so the fridge would not close and somehow do something to the microwave to make it behave in a strange way and blame all this on me.
He moved beds and sidetables without returning them to original positions.
No previous guests, also the guest that stayed there the previous nights, complained about any of this.
This person then proceded to blackmail me asking for a specific amount of money to be returned. I had never experienced this before. He constantly bombarded me with messages about his bad experience.
He is a host himself with an asking price of 4 times that of mine.
Needless to say his public review does not shine a positive light on my unit and has a dramatic impact on my ratings.
How do you best deal with this?
Thanks a lot for any advice.
Kind regards
Wolfhard
host Hibernian Towers 507, Strand, Western Cape, South Africa
