How much of a refund/rebate would you offer for a boiler issue?

1

The evening my guests checked in, we noticed that the heat & hot water wasn’t working. It had been working the day before; it’s not like this was an issue that had gone unresolved for a while. It was a little cold in the house but not bad. We got a repairman in the next morning to fix it. I bought them a bottle of wine to apologize for the inconvenience.

We thought that was that until later that night, when the guests said they discovered that one of the radiators was leaking, and that’s why the water pressure was low. The repairman will return today to fix the problem.

I was thinking of offering them a refund or discount or rebate, and they actually asked for one before I could offer.

How much do you think is appropriate or necessary? Should I ask them first what they would consider reasonable?

They booked the listing at £119/night, and they are staying for three nights.

THANKS!!

2

I’d refund £119 from their first night.

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3

Was it a problem to shower?

4

I offered them access to my apartment down the hall if they wanted to shower, but they said they didn’t want to until later in the day. By that point, the hot water had been fixed.

5

It happened to me once and I gave them a bottle of champagne as a compensation, guests seemed happy with this, or at least they have not mentioned the incident in their review.

6

What does this mean? The water coming out of the shower head and sink is just trickling? Do they still have hot water?

7

We just fixed the problem — one of the radiators had a small leak that was happening just because a nut wasn’t tight enough. We recently had a cold snap in London, which apparently exposed a lot of little problems like this all over town (so the plumber tells me.)

Essentially what happened was that water leaked out of the radiator, causing the pressure to drop in the boiler, meaning there was no hot water — and subsequently no heat, since that’s powered by the hot water. Does that make sense? I’m not sure I’m explaining it right.

8

UPDATE: I asked what they would feel was appropriate. They said one night refund, which I was going to offer them anyway. Actually, I was hoping they would ask for a percentage discount, like 20%, and I would surprise them by giving them more than they asked for, but oh well :slight_smile:

However… Now they want to stay longer and are asking if we can relocate the guests who have the place booked after them!! I’ve never heard of a request like that. It worries me a bit.

9

You can’t relocate the guests booked in afterwards. Cancellations are a very bad idea for hosts.

These guests going to need to move on …

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10

Thanks for the update. Hopefully nothing else goes wrong for these guests. Since they got a full night’s refund, tell them you want your bottle of wine back now…lol.

11

How weird! I hope they don’t smack you in a review because of that.

Loved Londonflat’s place but on the first night there was no hot water and the host would not let us stay longer.

Just kidding. That won’t happen!

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12

That’s just RUDE!!! NO NO and NO! - had to get 20 characters… :slight_smile:

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13

You sound like a superhost with that bottle of wine. A full refund might be in order minus the cost of the bottle of wine, or if you don’t want to give refunds maybe you can offer them one nights stay free now or at another time (booked thru Airbnb with a special offer of course)

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14

@cs2015 In fact… I am :slight_smile:

Update: All went fine. I gave them a free night. They left a five-star review. We both went away happy. Thanks everyone for your insights here. Very much appreciated!

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15

Thanks for the update! So many don’t come back to update. Glad you were able to walk away with a 5 star review :slight_smile:

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