Now’s your chance to make your case to her before she posts her review publically. I’d tell her you clean frequently and thoroughly but because of the climate it can appear that you didn’t clean well enough.
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Good advice, thank you.
Leaving the Huntsmen Spiders aside, I say LEAVE the spiders and their webs alone for as long as you can. Spiders eat FLIES, and the webs catch them too, for the next meal. I would rather have spiders than flies, and they are a real problem for us in summer. Surrounded by arable fields, the farmers muck spread before planting in spring and the flies are dreadful, both in and out of the house. And don’t get me started on the food recycling bin; a heatwave = maggots, because of eggs laid by flies. Bloody nightmare!
When we had the French house, we had a particularly large pet spider called Henry, on a sitting room ceiling. He was left intact, with his webs for flies, for about five years, until a friend “did us a favour” and killed him. I was so cross.
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This might be part of the problem. I live in an extremely dusty area, El Paso TX. But my rental was recently renovated. I have new windows and a new entry door that seal out drafts and dirt better than the orgininal construction. Everything in the bathoom and entry is new. In the existing room the light fixtures are new, most the furniture is new, carpet and paint redone. I get 100% 5 stars on cleanliness. If it’s old it looks dirty to people. It could be clean enough for an infant to suck on but if it looks old people think “ugh, dirty.” It’s not fair but it’s how people are.
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Yes, i agree with you. I did get lots of stars for very clean up until this lady came. I do have new windows and floors and it’s painted nicely.
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For bookings of 2 weeks+ we always offer a complimentary mid-stay cleaning. It depends on what your rates are and what your relationship is with your cleaning, but I find that guests appreciate it. And it would probably get rid of the chances of being dinged on spider webs.
@AFineHouse - I don’t disagree with a mid-week cleaning, but spiders make webs rapidly Our home was broken into while we slept a few years ago, and at 8 AM. there was a HUGE spiderweb across the sliding door that the thieves has used to enter our home. The police almost didn’t believe us when we told them that was the door.
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I think this comes back to some people thinking 5/5 clean means “5 star hotel clean” so recently painted as well, no scuff marks or cracked tiles I figure some of my 4/5s for cleanliness come about because the place was last decorated 10 years ago but the quote I got to repaint was more than I can afford.
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In my guest handbook I point out there is a dairy farm out the back and a dirt road out the front so people should expect a bit of dust and flies especially if they leave the bloody screen doors open (as my mother would put it). I am amazed how some people don’t put two and two together then I get AirBnB feedback saying there are “bugs”. I guess if you stay in a hotel it would take a canny, or lucky, fly to get through the revolving doors, across the foyer, up in the lift, along the corridor and through your door. I suspect also that they pump the aircon full of insect killer in hotels so they don’t make it past the front door.
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Yes, I guess that attitude is what’s bothering me. That, and the fact that I am very careful to deep clean…but I’ll get over it and move on!
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Bugs—yes I have bugs too. You can see lively conversations about Palmetto bugs in other threads.
My condo is first floor so easy access to all bugs.
The area is semi-tropical thus warm, humid and often wet.
We have Palmetto bugs (aka wood roaches). They fly, they crawl, and can squeeze into the tiniest spaces.
I have a monthly barrier bug treatment.
I’ve had guests send me a picture of a dead palmetto bug and tell me the unit shouldn’t have roaches. Here we go…
I had one guest leave negative feedback about finding a spider OUTSIDE with a web in the bushes.
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I’ve had the same. I said to the guest ‘hey, that’s great! I haven’t seen a palmetto bug for ages!’
Firstly to get the idea across that it’s a palmetto bug (which sounds to be a pleasantly exotic name for the nasty little buggers) and secondly to give the impression that it’s really really rare. (It isn’t!)
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They would have such fun here then. Okay, not too bad at the moment, but you can’t walk up the garden steps without a cobweb in the face, and they hit you in autumn.
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also just got one of those spider web reviews… I like spider webs but generally they are not in the guest house.
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We instruct our gardner who comes in about 3 times a month to also clean spider webs in the outdoor/deck space. We also removed the rosemary bushes that were causing a more hospitable environment for webs to build up. While problems are likely to come up by and by, I do believe most can be mitigated with some adjustments.
Paint it yourself! Painting is one of the simplest building maintenance tasks. It’s not rocket science.
Really? A 12 month old topic?
Too much time on your hands?
@admins is there no Funktionality on this forum that automatically locks topics with no replies after 3 months?
Or like some other forums have a warning: “The last reply in this topic is 12 months old, do you really want to reply?”
@Chris - we’ll discuss this and see what can be done. There have been a lot of old posts updated recently. In some instances the update is to a topic that is still of interest to members, especially relatively new ones.
However, this is not always the case, of course. Some topics have run their course but I fail to understand why, in this particular case, the thread has been updated to make the suggestion that a wheelchair user should paint his rental. (No it’s not rocket science but it definitely helps if your legs work).
Thanks @Chris for your input.
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Yes, this forum has that functionality, at least on a computer. It looks like this:
This forum also urges people to check to see if a topic already exists rather than starting a new one. In the community guidelines it says: One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Please spend some time browsing the topics here before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests."
What it doesn’t say is “but if you find an existing topic that interests you please don’t comment on it if it is more than xx months old.”
I find it ironic that some people who are bothered by necro posting (reviving old threads) feel the need to comment on it. This then bumps the post up to the top again for those of us who sort by most recent post. It also implies “my needs are more important than your needs.” The person who wants to add their thought to an old post has every right to do so.
Another poster argued that it’s a violation of forum etiquette to necro old posts. But it’s also a violation to ask the same question over and over without searching the forum. So wherever you bring people together you are always going to have conflicting needs and wants.
There are a lot of comments of questionable value on this forum yet I’m sure everyone thinks their opinion has value. I’m not sure putting an expiration date on a post is the best way to regulate it.
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