@muddy I asked you to keep reviews of me confidential!
P.S. Thanks for not mentioning the really bad ones.
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last time we were in Sth Africa we were stunned to learn they donât even have power plugs in the bathroom. it made drying my hair very annoying!
We just have normal power points and switches in our bathrooms in Australia.
I have a normal outlet and switches in my bathroom, too. The one over the counter isnât so close to the sink that it could get water splashed on it.
I so agree. Guests are clueless. As for the hundred dollarsâŠraise your rates a few and make it back.
Iâm so sorry this happened to you. Itâs not fair at all. Itâs a cost of doing business and every business has its own kinds of costs.
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I do. Itâs called Airbnb â where scammers are as prevalent as mosquitoes in the tropics!
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+100000000 We should all print this out and hang it on the wall. Superhost means nothing. when i was guest, pre-host days, i had no idea what it meant and I didnât care.
I certainly got bookings when I was not a SuperHost. Now that I have a SH tag, I actively advertise that Iâm a SuperHost, and guests wonât get their booking canceled if they book with me. Itâs a major selling point since most of my profitable bookings came from people who got cancelled on by other hosts.
itâs never happened to me as a guest, and no guest has ever mentioned it happening to them. but we all work in different regions with different scenarios, so if SH adds value to your business, thatâs great.
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What a drag. You poor thing. I have an expensive kettle in mine. Hope I donât live to regret it!
Who ever heard of boiling milk in a kettle. Grr.
Losing your superhost status which you worked hard for is crazy.
Hope justice is done!
By the way, I was mentioning this story to someone, who like me said that they had not thought of boiling milk, but went on to say that when she grew up in Brazil that her parents had a âmilk boilerâ and boiled milk almost every day.
For the heck of it I Googled milk boiler and got these. The first is not a kettle but the second one is kind of a kettle, though importantly with its lid the interior would be easy to clean
The bottom line is that old quote about what you see depends on where you stand.
My oldest daughter had an expensive Cuisinart electric kettle, which her babysitter placed on the stovetop on a burner. Of course it instantly melted and filled the house with toxic fumes.
Then I did exactly the same thing years later with the replacement Cuisinart kettle. I use a simple stovetop kettle at home, and while distracted carrying on a conversation with my granddaughter, accidentally, on non-thinking, automatic pilot, put it on the stove burner.
In a service business world you live and die by reviews, you have to realize that even when youâre right you can be wrong when it comes to how it will effect your business.
You have to always pick and choose your battles within the back of your mind knowing the customer has the power of the review in their back pocket.
The bad news is you let it $30 problem affect you for thousands of dollars. The good news is youâll get your super host status back and you wonât make this mistake again.
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I challenged a poor review which was also in revenge for my calling out their behaviour - for a few things but mainly using a second bedroom without paying. Airbnb decided to remove it because the content âwas of no benefit to other potential guestsâ. So you could try that angle
If you successfully get the review removed, the whole thing will be removed - stars, comments and all. I have had two reviews removed (two different properties where I serve as co-host). One was a 2 star, the other a 3 star. In both cases, the first level CS person said no they could not remove it. I asked to talk to their supervisor. Both times they told me that someone at the next level would call me back in 48 hours. It took longer than that but someone did eventually contact me. Then I made my case again - once on the phone, the other time in writing. I tried to use the language that the Airbnb policies use. Calm, polite persistence worked, using Airbnb jargon. The reviews were removed in their entirety. It sounds like you have decided not to pursue this further, which is fine of course, but for other readers who want to get a review removed, I suggest persistence, asking to talk to a supervisor and using the language that Airbnb uses as much as possible.
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Iâve always said that dealing with CS requires the 3 "P"s- politeness, persistence, and patience.
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I would have never argued over 30 bucks. I love my hosting biz too much to risk.
I would visit my local thrift shop and buy one for $2 âŠâŠin fact I have 2 kettles ready in the garage for when one dies in the listing. They sit beside the replacement toasters, microwave, Nespresso and the washing machine has just been installed and I am on the hunt to fill itâs slot.
This comes from growing up in the hotel industry and the storeroom of instantly replaceable items.
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I just skimmed through this and read that you didnât discover the issue until the next guest.
At this point I think you should have just gotten a new kettle. Because unless the housekeeper checks the kettle after every guest, it could have been any guest in the past the boiled milk. Then some guests might not have used the kettle, and your current guest finally found the problem. Or even the current guest boiled the milk and tried to cover their butt.
So, asking the previous guest if they by chance boiled milk in the kettle would be okay. If they said no, you just have no idea who caused the problem.
Or maybe I missed something.
The housekeeper should check the kettle after every guest and make sure that thereâs no water in it. An arriving guest doesnât want to use water that might have been standing there for days (or the liquid might be something other than water 
) so seeing a dry kettle is yet another small indicator to the guest that the rental has been thoroughly prepared.
I am my âhousekeeperâ and always take a herbal teabag with me when Iâm preparing a rental so I can have a cup of tea - nice and refreshing and at the same time I can check that the kettle works properly. If I used cleaners, Iâd suggest that simple method to them. 
yeah, we got a Nespresso machine off Marketplace a few months ago, just to have a back up. As we have our own house on site we have a whole kitchen of items we could use as replacements, but I also cruise op shops all the time looking for quality items that can be back ups.
yes, but then you run the risk of someone not considering that the kettle is empty, and turning it on empty⊠we canât win! We keep the kettle unplugged and on a shelf, so the guest has to pick it up and hopefully notice that itâs emptyâŠ
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