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Hi all, long story short. My guest stayed for 1 night only. And my curtain rail was pulled away from the wall (see picture). I’m sure everything was good before he checked in. He admitted this happened during his stay, he was trying to open the curtain this morning and it happened, he texted me only before they left (I allowed late check out, so I got the message at 11:30am).
Now he thinks he is not repsonsible because according to him, he didn’t force it, it happened naturally. According to me, it looks like it is due to too much external force, otherwise the plaster wouldn’t be damaged so easily. What is your thoughts on this? I will file through resolution centre, but I don’t know what will be the outcome if the guest insisted he is not responsible. he even mentioned the curtain rail was not installed properly, but it was done by professional people about 8-9 years ago. I wonder how he knows it was improper before we cut the plaster and open it.
My next guest will be here soon, and she thinks she can sleep there even without a curtain. I feel sorry to her. I can only find a handyman and fix it tomorrow because today is Sunday, hard to find someone without paying triple or even more.
If it was just installed, I’d get the handyman to investigate if it was faulty installation and offload it on his workmanship, but since it was 8-9 years ago…time to patch it up!
It’s always been a fear of mine that if I stay in an AirBnB and something happens to the house through no fault of my own, that I’d get stuck holding the bill for it. And from a guest perspective it’s just as easy to be concerned that home owners would try to scam them into paying the bill for overdue home repairs (which to be abundantly clear is not what I’m saying is the case here. At all. I’m just saying it could happen to hosts trying to game the system). My guess is that this might be why Air usually sides with guests on these things.
Thanks Robert and PHX! Even if there is a possibility the installation caused this, i will not bill the guest. I will get a handyman tomorrow and ask his opinion.
Early last year a guest tried to raise our (heavy) blind and it fell out of its fitting, cracking the adjacent window. The guests were SO apologetic and scared. But the blinds had been in place for several years and the handyman confirmed that the end fittings had worn out over the years.
Thanks for all replies above. You all think it is wear and tear and I did a bit of research and i agree wear and tear it is
Got quotes from handyman and repairing the wall itself is $300 job. Monday and Tuesday are my days off, so I decided to DIY. Spent 35 dollars on material, 2 hours work time, and wall is done, waiting for tomorrow to sand and refix the curtain rail. I added a piece of wood at the back and hopefully it holds the rail better.
I love it when folks DIY. Only reason we can afford where we live now, and those places that got us to here. We have rebuilt house after house, and only because we could do the work ourselves.
Good job. Every house work, handyman work is so expensive. Have to DIY a lot of times. We did so much work ourselves also after the sky high quotes from numbers of handymen we contacted. I figured they charge about $80 to $100 per hour.
I dealt with a similar problem last week with the same kind of stress. It was into drywall so I felt I couldn’t blame the guest. I just fixed it myself. Admittedly I am a “blue” girl and can do these tasks on my own - too cheap to hire someone and don’t like to wait!!
Handymen like that do themselves out of work. A reasonable quote would have been $50-80. Then when you needed a larger job doing, the guy would be your first choice. My brother is a handyman who doesn’t need to look for work because he doesn’t overprice small jobs.
Tell us please, how did the story with the cornice end?
Did the Airbnb problem solving service help you?
Did the guest compensate for the damage?
Or, as always, no help from Airbn ???
Hi Tata, since we thought the damage is caused by wear and tear, we didn’t ask compensation from guest and Airbnb wasn’t involved. We fixed the problem by DIY, because handyman is too expensive in my country. It cost us around $35 AUD to buy materials and about 2-3 hour work.
I had a very sad experience last year (I populated the guest in an apartment where there was a completely new renovation and all the new furniture.The guest lived in it with his girlfriend for 3 days.The guest left very early and I could not check (in his presence) the order in the apartment.When I arrived (two hours later), I saw that the bed was broken !!! I called the guest and reported the problem and that I need to repair the damage.He refused - he said it was not he who did it. Broke guests who lived in an apartment before him))
To my question: -How did you sleep for 3 days on a broken bed? The answer was: - We did not notice)))
I had to ask for help from AirBnib. I sent them all the photographs of the injuries, correspondence with the guest and a receipt for the repair of the bed.
Correspondence with Airbn lasted 2 weeks!
It ended with the fact that Airbnb was told that they could not establish the guilt of this particular guest (((
The cost of emergency bed repairs cost $ 200 and it’s almost the money that I received for 3 days of the guest’s stay ((
And my nerves and terrible correspondence with Airbn !!
