Hi folks,
A young Indian couple recently came to Bombay for some kind of fashion/cloth exhibition and stayed at my listing. The girl (X) was exhibiting, and as part of the exhibition, she shipped a couple of parcels to my address without asking me. After arriving, I realised the young lady, though perfectly pleasant, was a bit of a ditz, so perhaps this was normal behavior for her. She also expressed surprise
that the bathroom wasn’t attached, though this is mentioned more than once in my listing (there’s a description of the bathroom location) as well as relevant pictures. She also decided she was going to stay till 1.30 pm without asking me. This wasn’t late enough to be an issue for me, so I let it slide.
Anyway, the first I heard of this was the following, sent by X the same day the parcels arrived (I believe). If I recall correctly, I saw it only a few hours before the packages arrived.
I have sent out two packages through a courier service from Ahmedabad as moving around with a lot of luggage in the morning won’t be viable for us and it shall reach your place either today or tomorrow morning. I request you to please accommodate it for a few hrs.
I replied with
You should have asked before sending packages to my address. As mentioned on my listing, we don’t hold guest luggage/property for security reasons. Also, we cannot guarantee we will be present to receive packages we haven’t ordered, and know nothing about.
However, if you have already sent the packages, we’ll hold on to them for you, since there is no alternative.
She then responded:
Well it was to arrive tomorrow with us but the courier service called sometime back to inform that it was already out for delivery and i couldn’t ask them to hold it for me till tomorrow cause their main office is quite far off from the place we’re put up and that I’d need it on 10th morning for my exhibition held at mahalaxm racecourse Apologies if it caused you any inconvenience.
And I finally wrote after the parcels arrived:
I received both parcels just now. I’ll give them to you when you arrive.
I wasn’t happy about this at the time, and I thought I should include it in the review, if only to discourage this lady from doing something like this again. This is a first for me, and hopefully will remain a rare occurrence.
I’ve now added some specific languages in my house rules about this. Here is the version before this happened.
For reasons of security and liability, among others, we cannot accommodate requests to store luggage for guests before check-in or after check-out. No exceptions.
And here is the new version.
For reasons of security and liability, among others, we cannot accommodate requests to store luggage for guests before check-in or after check-out. No exceptions. Similarly, do not send parcels to my address without checking with me first.
Comments welcomed about the wording of the language in the house rules, the review, or anything related. I’m undecided whether to deduct a point from the house rules rating, since the specific prohibition against parcels wasn’t in place at the time. Do you think that such a prohibition would be understood from my wording about storing luggage?
The review follows:
Review date: 23rd February 2018
Y and X visited for a few days for work. They seem like nice friendly young people, were good guests, and left everything in good shape when they left.
However, I feel I should mention that X shipped some parcels to my home address before arrival without asking me. I explained to them that this is not ok, and I hope they understand that doing this is not a good idea - it causes increased risk and liability to the host, and also creates risk for them. In any case, my listing states that I cannot store baggage on behalf of guests.
Cleanliness 5/5, Communication 5/5, Observance of House Rules 5/5