Leave on public review, private, or let it go?

All of my guests so far have been really easy to leave a 5-star review for. My guests the other night weren’t horrible, but there were a few things that really irritated me.

  1. They left one of my white washcloths completely stained on both sides with makeup. I didn’t even attempt to wash it because I didn’t want to take a chance of it staining all my white towels in the load.
  2. There was some garbage left on the floor in most rooms of the house- like the plastic piece from a new deodorant stick on the floor, some crumpled paper on the floor and counters, some food on the floor in the kitchen, dirty paper towels on the counters, wet towels strewn all over the house, dishes not rinsed before putting in the dishwasher that they ran (so there was a whole piece of grated cheese baked onto one of the plates), etc.
  3. They left the back door unlocked when they checked out.

They were only there for about 15 hours total and left the house messier than any guest I’ve had so far. It’s nothing really major, but added a bit of time to my cleaning routine. (And to be fair, I was probably a little irritated with them before they left because the guest called me to complain that she “smelled cat” outside of my house and I had to assure her repeatedly that there had been no cats in the house.) I’m wondering if these are things you would leave in their public review for other hosts to see, or if you would just leave them a private comment about it, or would you just ignore it and give them a good review?

Also, what is the point of using the star system for rating guests? No one sees their star score, right? Is it more just to give the guests feedback?

I would publicly say that they left a lot of mess in a short amount of time. Just imagine the damage they could do if they did a longer stay in someone’s home.

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If you change a cleaning fee, some guests want you earn it, and some people live like this and think nothing of it.

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I don’t charge a cleaning fee. :frowning:

@jkamm Oh Hell yes mention it! I pick up my own trash at hotels, let alone someones private home. And left it unsecured? Thumbs down

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I agree with @Sarah_39. There is no need to leave such a mess. It was disrespectful. You don’t need to go overboard, just enough to make them learn that it’s not ok.
I wish we could review guests on other platforms. I am still traumatised by the disgusting mess in toilet left by some recent Booking.com guests.

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Can you guys help me with wording on the review? I don’t want to make it sound like they were total slobs because it wasn’t a really huge mess, just little stuff here and there that added up.

The “shit sandwich” is one approach, ie. say something positive, put in the bad bit and end on another positive eg

Floss and Trash were friendly guests, just here for one night.
The apartment took longer than usual to clean but no damage was done. They were very good at communicating arrival time, much appreciated.

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