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What you call diplomatic I call passive-aggressive and condescending. It’s like the unflattering American southerner’s use of “Bless your heart.”
As I said, I understand it’s too late for you and you think you are more than justified. Okay. As you said about your review of her:
“I hope the review I left might at least prevent her from doing it to someone else.”
I hope my review of your review here might prevent another host from doing this to their “really weird guest.” Reviews should be factual and unemotional. Need to rant and vent? Do it here or call a friend or loved one. Don’t make it part of your professional record.
I was trying to be as polite as possible - I’m sorry it read it as being passive-aggressive and condescending. On top of all that, I seem to have also made you angry somehow (also not my intent!) so just going to walk away from this one now …!
We (hosts) can’t read minds. If guests do not communicate any issues that they feel is a bad guest experience then we cannot rectify them. Things like temperature are subjective and cannot be shown in photos. If someone feels too cold they need to open their mouth and tell us.
When we personally check-in our guests I make them aware on multiple occasions that they are encouraged to contact us via chat, in person or knock on our door if they have questions or need assistance with whatever they need (last guest couldn’t figure out how to open a wine bottle, so I did that for her).
I’m always happy to help - but without communication there is little we can do.
Despite emphasising to reach out to us we had a few guests who didn’t dare to tell us they felt a little cold during the first night - after I asked them the next day if everything is alright. I then, tell them again (!!!) to simply send us a message so we can rectify any issues they may have. They usually tell us that they felt it was too late to bother us. I did tell them to let us know, no matter what time of day (or night). So we do try to make our guests welcome and confident that they are well looked after.
But, then to leave a review and claiming there was no hot water (I guess several of us had this one before), when indeed there WAS hot water (65° C) is flat out disrespectful and does raise the question of someone’s mental state since common sense is definitely not one of the things they possess.
That should not be stated in a review and if a false claim about no hot water is made I would clarify that in a response. There is still a chance that the guest didn’t figure out how to operate the thermostat - which again would be a scenario where we, as hosts, would expect our guests to go “the extra mile” and inform us or ask us.
The voice of reason here - thank you Hosterer edit: there seems to be an incompatibility with this site and phone use, every time I go to reply to someone directly, it doesn’t register … (maybe just me being dense as usual! )
I’m simply and unequivocally reiterating what I think is good advice. Your seeming intent on assigning emotions to people you don’t know is interesting and in my opinion, misplaced, but certainly not angering. And now I’m walking away from this one as well.
Yeah - as a response to what she did/tried to do and the one star she subsequently left me when things didn’t go her way (Although the consensus is that I probably should have refrained).
I agree it’s a real drag when someone posts an unfair, untrue review.
Ive experienced that too. But life goes on and you’ll get your usual great reviews and the bad one will fade away.
edit: there seems to be an incompatibility with this site and phone use, every time I go to reply to someone directly, it doesn’t register … (maybe just me being dense as usual! )