Must vent.
I began renting on a STR basis my attached (to my home) apartment at the end of February. One of my first bookings was a five day stay with a check-in a week out for a couple from the Netherlands. Within minutes, they realize that March is not September and ask if the dates could be changed to six month later. Ja natuurlijk! No big deal.
Fast forward to late September. They arrive, they both were nice during the ‘tour’ of the place which does include explaining the keypad lock and code, details of the place, etc.
The first night and next day are uneventful, but the second night I get a text, ‘we are having troubles opening the door. We entered the code but it doesn’t seem to work.’
Five minutes later, ‘We are in. No idea what we did but it worked.’ No big deal, again.
I bump into the male mid week and ask, ‘how it’s going, do you need anything, are you enjoying your stay, etc.’ All good. He does ask if he could borrow a vacuum sweeper. I mention that there is a stick style vacuum and an upright Hoover variety in the closet, which had been pointed out to them on the ‘tour’ on the first night. No big deal.
No contact until on day four mid-afternoon, it rained hard for an hour so I message them mentioning the location of a pair of umbrellas. ‘Thanks for letting us know! Hope we won’t need them when we get out again.’
After they check out, I get a message in which they loved the place, UNTIL the second day when they spotted roaches, large and small, dead and alive. The message mentions that for my benefit (?), on their exit, they put a glass over a number of the roaches to prove to me that there were bugs. Thank you so much.
I’m in the sub-tropics which is a petri dish for anything that grows. Bugs, insects, flora and fauna all do well here. Add rain and bugs come inside to visit. It is a way of life.
I was super apologetic, but thinking what can I do NOW since you are gone and you failed to mention this issue two-three days prior…
Well, I can clean up the mess you left. Patch the divot in the drywall caused by the end-table that crashed into it and REMAINED crashed into. And I could empty the recycle bins which were full of trash AND plastic bottles and lastly, dump the leftover food in the fridge. Oh… and re-plug in the four lamps. No big deal.
Oh, when I entered the apartment, there was one bug, not even a roach, under one of the eight inverted glasses. Clearly, our roaches are quite special to be able to lift a glass and escape. Ha!
They were awarded a so so review based on the condition of the place when they left. Perhaps it was jet lag that caused them to not pay attention to my ‘tour’ or the physical handbook that was on the counter which explains everything. They stuck it to me in their review, a 3.0 which took me from a perfect 5.0 to 4.88. SOB.
I’m not asking for suggestions as how to deal with bugs, or even this couple that expected this place to be Holland with nice weather. I just wanted to unload.
Oh, I’m a Super Host as of today.
One of my 4* reviews was from a Dutch family - no complaints, no issues, and always “everything is great” during their stay, then a surprise in review (still no issue/reason).