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I’d like your opinion on leaving a review for a guest, please.
A male guest booked one night saying he was here to visit his girlfriend. They check out the next morning and my cleaning team arrives to find blood everywhere. On the white comforter, white sheets, mattress pad under the sheets, and on a throw blanket that was on a loveseat. The couple had wadded all of the bloody linens together and left them in a large pile on top of the bed and put the throw pillows for the bed on top of the bloody linens. They used no towels at all, so there was zero attempt to clean anything. There’s a washer and dryer in the unit, and there was no attempt to wash anything, nor did the guest let me know what had happened.
I understand women unexpectedly start their period, and I understand accidents happen. But the lack of any attempt to clean it up or warn me about it is a bit bothersome to me.
Any words of advice on a delicate way to leave a review. He was not a terrible guest, but he was not a good one either. I really have no desire to be mean about what happened.
Reviews should be honest and unemotional. A shorter version of what you posted here would be appropriate. One note, you said “blood everywhere” so I was expecting in the bathroom, walls, rugs, kitchen. It seems the blood was confined to the bed. The throw from the loveseat is the one out of place item. Not using towels is odd given the situation.
As for not telling you what happened, I’m not surprised. As for not attempting to wash it, that may have been for the best. Simply washing and drying without proper pre treatment would be more likely to set the stains in.
Would you host them again?
My review might be something like this:
“This couple booked one night and left behind multiple blood stained linens. Since they didn’t inform me of the accident in a timely manner, several items were permanently ruined. I would not host again but another host might not have the same issue.”
Note, thiis may not have been an accident. If they wanted to have sex while menstruating, they may have thought hiring someone else to clean the mess was a great idea.
What they didn’t do so well - left lots of heavily soiled bed linens and marked them down for cleanliness.
By the way I would never want a guest to attempt to sort out stains - they can make it worse ie trying to wash blood stained linens rather than soak in cold water first .
I do. $65. I’ve filed a claim. With this much photographic evidence I feel like airbnb will award me the nominal amount I’m asking for. Just wasn’t sure how to write the review. Honesty is definitely best, though.
Why be delicate? You should review honestly. Surely you want your fellow hosts to be warned about this?
Be thankful that they didn’t try to clean up. Blood washes out easily enough but if they’d tried to clean up using a high heat, that would have set in the blood and the items would be permanently damaged.
As others have pointed out, you really don’t want guests to attempt to wash bodily fluids or other stains out of your linens and towels. In the case of blood, unless it has been dried on there for a long time, it comes out easily with a cold water soak and hydrogen peroxide, as Deb mentioned. You can’t be just throwing away linens because they have blood or other stains on them- you need to research stain removal techniques.
Yes, leaving a pile of blood soaked bedding like that and not mentioning it is quite immature and disrespectful. It’s understandably embarrassing to have to fess up to, but mature adults should be able to overcome their embarrassment and do the right thing. I am a homeshare host and had a guest come to me one morning with a mortified expression on her face and even though it was quite obviously embarrasing for her to say, told me she had gotten diarrhea in the night and before she realized it and could run to the bathroom, had soiled the sheets a bit. She said there was no way she wanted me to have to touch them, so could I please show her how to work the washing machine (which is not normally on offer to guests).
I put her at ease by telling her not to be embarrassed, that I had had a similar thing happen to me once when I was travelling and eaten something bad, let her put the sheets in the machine, turned it on, and handed her a clean sheet set.
If I had an entire house or apt. rental, I would put something in the house manual along the lines of:
“Hosts understand that accidents happen, whether it’s females getting their period during the night on the sheets, knocking over something breakable, or spilling something on the carpet. Please do not attempt to repair the damage or deal with stains yourself, you could make it worse, and we have techniques for dealing with many things like that. All we ask is that you notify us of such things when they occur, no need to feel embarrassed. Trying to hide it, “fix” it, or simply walking away as if it’s unimportant is disrespectful of the host’s property and could result in guests being charged for irretrievably damaged items that could have been easily dealt with had we been given the opportunity to attend to it in a timely manner. Thank you.”
If I were a guest who managed to get blood all over the sheets, the mattress pad, the duvet, and a throw, I would contact the host and ask how they wanted me to deal with it- should I fill the bathtub or washing machine with cold water and leave them to soak?
No way I’d just pile them up and walk away unless the host told me to.
Well, I would certainly never want to stay at a listing where the host resented taking 3 minutes out of their precious time to respond to a guest’s attempt to act respectfully and responsibly.
Your posts here are unassailably logical, persuasive, convincing.
Still, if I were the guest I would feel compelled to acknowledge the situation, apologize for it and leave you a message.
Even after reading your excellent posts – because I think that most Hosts would find ‘information content’ if not disrespect in the failure to leave a message, however illogical.
I use this stuff – plant-enzyme-based cleaner… won’t damage fibers like peroxide or bleach. The [fresh] blood stains literally disappear as I am standing there watching after spraying pre-laundry:
@muddy This! Cold water, for sure! I have not had as easy a time as many on this forum with blood stains. Maybe it’s the time element or the different materials, but some seem to take forever to get out. I’m dealing with a loved one that is on blood thinners and I never know when I will have to deal with it or how long the blood might have been present, at times. Soaking in cold water often mitigates the problem.
Due to the large groups of athletes that stay in my property I have decided to post a sign in the laundry room asking them to soak bloody linens in cold water (there is a large utility sink). It really has gotten to that point, I hate to say. That, and the teenage girls that ball up the sheets and stuff them under the mattress when they’ve leaked. That’s fun.
I buy it in the gallon concentrate, and then dilute some of it into 1:7 and 1:3 sprays. I also add a squirt of concentrate to buckets of hot water when washing walls, floors, kitchen cabinets etc. I find it cleans as well as commercial cleaners like Mr. Clean without leaving a “hospital smell” or chemical residues. (molecules of plant enzymes fall apart as soon as the water evaporates.) I’ve used it for 15 years… long before Airbnb.
Only available from the manufacturer. Shipping free in continental USA.
I would definitely want to know what exactly had ‘soiled’ or ‘stained’ the linens.
As an English person living in the US, my familiarity with certain words and phrases gets very mixed up. (After a short time living here I forgot so many Englishisms so I used to call my mum in the UK “what do we call off-ramps in England?” I’d get very mixed up - still do sometimes).
Now though ‘soiled’ would indicate and that would be the first thing I’d think.
Blood washes out of linens easily enough (so, therefore, isn’t a ‘stain’ to me) but I don’t want to deal with so yes, please specify in reviews.
It’s like reading ‘broke house rules’ without being told which house rules.
and that would be the first thing I’d think.