Responding to a review

After over 600 reviews since the last time, I finally had another opportunity to respond to a review in order to correct something:

Although I’d be fine with guests bringing and supplying their own coffee, I don’t want them to think they have to. Like most reviews with something that is inaccurate, this one does have the helpful information about Corner Bakery being enroute to the interstate. There’s also a Dutch Bros Coffee, Dunkin Donuts, Carls Jr., Jack in the Box, Wendy’s, Burger King and McDonald’s all one one of three possible routes between my rental and the interstate that is less than a mile away.

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I once had a review from a guest who had stayed for over a week which stated that ‘a coffee maker would be a great addition to the apartment’.

There is one appliance in that apartment that lives permanently on the countertop and is shown in every photo of the kitchen in the listing.

Yep. The coffee machine.

There is also, in a cupboard, a cafetiere.

In his eight or nine-day stay, he had noticed neither of them.

:crazy_face:

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It’s one thing for guests not to read, another for them not to see what is right in front of their eyes. :roll_eyes: And mention it in the review, no less.

Sometimes I think people just don’t see what they aren’t used to seeing. If you don’t have the same kind of coffeemaker they have at home, they don’t see yours, it doesn’t register. And some people are just lazy lookers. A friend stayed with me and asked if I had seen her bathing suit. She had torn everything apart in her room looking for it and considered it some huge mystery. I saw it hung over the balcony rail, right outside her room, where she had put it to dry, in plain sight.

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This is one of the reasons that ‘eyewitness testimony’ is notoriously unreliable.

Yet people are in jail, some for life, based on erroneous recollections.

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I can kind of see how someone might overlook the little rack/shelf on the wall. I don’t understand why someone wouldn’t message and say “hey, do you have any k-cups for the keurig?” There’s coffee cups, sweetner, stir sticks, creamer in the fridge…why the eff don’t you ask me? Oh well, it happens to all of us. It just happens so rarely to me that it seems worthy of a post, LOL. I don’t want folks to think everything is unicorns and rainbows over here.

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And trying to convince people that what they saw “with their own eyes” is unreliable is so hard.

Too many are executed.

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The way people “remember” things is so often tainted by their own feelings at the time.

My middle daughter quit high school in the middle of 11th grade. No matter how I tried to convince her to finish (You’ve stuck it out for 10 and a half years- another year and a half doesn’t seem that difficult), she was adamant about not going to school anymore. What I told her at the time was that if she quit school, she couldn’t just spend her days sitting around looking at magazines and going to second-hand stores (two of her favorite activities, although she was also very creative, always making things, sewing, etc.), that I would expect her to get at least some part-time work, help out with more of the housework, etc. What she ended up doing was moving to an island not far from us, where we had a lot of close friends, and doing some odd jobs for people, as well as apprenticing with a carpenter.

But what she “remembered” is that I “kicked her out of the house”, when I most certainly did no such thing. Nor was I ever angry with her about dropping out, I just hoped, at the time, that she wouldn’t.

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Sadly, yes.

There was a movie whose name I cannot remember set in a law school classroom where the law professor had a staged crime in the middle of the class. I don’t recall exactly what it was but quickly the professor let everyone know it was staged and then asked what happened.

Well, there were many versions and disagreements on what they all had seen.

So there’s just cognitive errors that happen. Add in that it was dark or you yourself were frightened by the event or physical factors that would impair your ability to observe. Now add in biases, unconscious or otherwise, and innocent people go to jail, or as you point out, are executed.

I’m constantly amazed on how in social life situations people will say they ‘know’ what another person was up to. Now, they might suspect, it might be likely that they are correct in reading a situation and what another person is up to, but it’s important to hold in your mind that you don’t ‘know’ it even if you are very likely correct.

What’s more, even if you are correct in sizing up a situation, the other person you’re sizing up might themselves not be self aware, might have some cognitive, developmental, cultural or other conditions you’re not attuned to. So your assessment of their motivations or intentions can easily be way off.

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I had a guest not see an AC unit and spend a month in our homeshare room with just the ceiling fan going. They never spoke up, but were amazed on the last day when I mentioned that I was glad they had the AC unit since it had been an unusually hot month. They didn’t mention it in the review. They were from a country with lots of hot weather so that probably helped.

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I was at some sort of conference where a fake crime was staged. We were all asked to do written statments, including describing the weapon.

Descriptions of the gun were varied. It was actually a banana.

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Feel for you Muddy. There’s no universally correct way to negotiate relationships. No right or wrong. Just different.

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Feels slightly aggressive, and even though it 100% may be the truth, the fact that the otherwise super-happy guest mentions that there were no cups makes it seem like an annoyed lie that there presumably were cups all over the place right infront of their eyes. Lucy won’t read your comment, just your future prospective guests who may get the impression you’re a liar, even though you may have been 100% in the right.

I have over 650 5 star reviews and a 4.98 overall. Any guest who “may get the impression I’m a liar” because of one response is free to keep looking for another place to stay.

I’d say that is an accurate representation of me. I’m one of the best hosts in town but I don’t suffer fools gladly.

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Fair point :smiley:
But it should be pointed out that for someone with only a few reviews such response may well be detrimental and reflect negatively back on them, no matter whether they actually were in the right or not.

I agree 100%.

I’ve advised almost everyone who posts here about what their response should be with one word: Nothing. Responses make hosts look defensive, micromanaging, petty, etc. I can certainly risk that.

On reflection, it occurs to me that Lucy literally wanted Keurig brand cups to go with the Keurig brand coffee maker. Maybe Sprouts brand just doesn’t make the grade. Maybe they saw them.

But in case any guest thinks that I don’t supply coffee, I wanted to make clear that I do. There is also instant coffee on the same shelf.

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