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I stumbled upon a review that is downright deplorable.
October (+3 pages back) a Swedish guest left a review that is particularly harsh.
Blockquote
Sonja - October 2018
According to the previous reviews, I really believe that Chrisina was a great host as long as she lived on the premises. Like leaving a map with instructions for the guests is a more of an aloha welcome then putting notes (in capital letters) everywhere, telling you what you MUST do, what you arenât allowed to do, and so on. It felt that she didnât appreciate our suggestions. Christina does respond quick when you send her an email. Before our arrival we had contact and she allowed us to check in early. That was nice. So we arrived when it was light and that was a good thing, because we had to search for the lightswitches that are not at the entrance of the building. There are solarlights outside. The first day after we came back in the dark, they lighted up well, but the other 2 nights they didnât, because both days were cloudy and rainy. As we checked out the premises after we arrived we noticed that the guestroom could only be locked from the inside. Not from the outside! And we had to leave all our stuff there, were everybody could just walk in and take them. We ended up putting all our valuables back in the car when we left. Every day. Christinaâs response about the fact that we couldnât lock the room, was that it was a save neighbourhood, but we could move to the upstairs room that had locks, if we would pay $80 more every night. I donât think so! Then she offered that we could storage our belongings for free upstairs if we wanted. That would mean schlepping the suitcases up and down everytime we went away or came back again. Not very conveniant. The second day we came back the curtains of the kitchen were pushed open, a box was delivered and the light in the guestroom was on. Itâs possible that we forgot to put out the light, but weâre pretty sure we did. We were glad that we took our valuables with us, but didnât like the thought that somebody might have been in our room. The inside/outside kitchen was very nice and big. The guestroom on the other hand was very small and stuffed with 3 beds. On the pictures it looked much bigger. There is airconditioning in the guestroom, but there are no windows in the window frames, just screens. It was a challenge repacking all our stuff before our flight to the next island in that small room. Her respond when I told her that was, Quote: âThe guest suite is small but you have a lot of space in kitchen area. You also have a carport and a deck which you never had before.â How does she know if we hadnât had a carport and a deck before? Should we repack under the carport? Whatâs the relevance of this commend? When we booked this room the advertisement stated that there was a washer and dryer that could be used for a fee. Being able to do our laundry was the number one priority for us to book this room. After our booking Christina changed the rules, without notification, and we werenât allowed to do our laundry there. Of course itâs her privilege as an owner to change the rules as she wants to, but it would have been nice if she notified the people who already made a reservation, about the changed rules. I would have canceled the reservation and searched another place. As I mentioned this to her I got this answer: Quote: âI canât be held responsible because you didnât have time to do laundry before you arrived at my property. Im assuming your last rental didnât have a washer and dryer otherwise you wouldnât have needed mine. Iâve always traveled and used laundromat it never took much time a d i design clothes i know exactly how long it takes.â Iâm sorry, but this answer is a lot of BS. When you travel by plane, you can only take a certain amount of clothes with you. We plan ahead when we have to do our laundry during our vacation. Weâre not going to do laundry when it isnât necessary. Thatâs why we booked this room with laundry facilities. And yes, it does takes to much of daytime if you have to drive at least 15 minutes to a town, find a laundromat, wait when your laundry is in the machines, fold it and drive back again. That time I rather spend on sightseeing. Instead of waisting our time at the laundromat we had to buy some new underwear. Thank you very much. By the way, the nearest restaurants are also at least a 15 minutes drive away. What can we tell you about the showers? It sounds very romantic, an outdoor shower. Well, it isnât after you come back in the dark after a long, hot day, when it starts raining and the solar lights wonât go on. And there is nobody on site to tell you if there is a trick to get them to work or an instruction for the lights. We ended up washing ourselfs at the sink, because there isnât a shower in the bathroom. We have to say that this was the only disappointing B&B weâve stayed in at Hawaii. It felt more like camping to us. If you like camping this could be the place for you, but unfortunately we donât.
Response from Christina:
âSonja I have reached out to airbnb for their help on this review. I am sorry you couldnât find anything nice to say about our beautiful home. Perhaps you are just a very unhappy person. My description is spot on and there is no where on this website where it says you can use my washer and dryer. I let guests use it for a fee if the stay 5 days or more. Also, picture 20 shows the exact layout of the guest suite with 3 beds. There is a reason I have 55 (5 star reviews). You are just a small percentage of the type of guests we try to avoid.
You paid half price less for:
PRIVATE CARPORT
LARGE PRIVATE DECK/LANAI
PRIVATE 1 ACRE HOME 1 BLOCK FROM THE OCEAN
PRIVATE GUEST SUITE WITH 2 SHOWERS AND A PRIVATE BATHROOM
LARGE INDOOR-OUTDOOR KITCHEN.
IF YOU WANTED TO PAY LESS THAN 100 A NIGHT I WOULD SAY TO RENT A BUNGALOW AND NOT SOMEONES HOME. HAWAII IS EXPENSIVE AND YOU DO NOT REALIZE HOW EXPENSIVE IT IS TO RUN ELECTRICITY. MY LISTING WILL REMAIN THE SAME BECAUSE IT IS 100% ACCURATE. I will have to say you out of all our guests this year you were the worst guests we had.
READ THE DESCRIPTION IT SAYS INDOOR OUTDOOR DINING AND KITCHEN AREA. I offered you to rent the Main home but you did not want to pay more than what you were paying. IT IS IMPORTANT AS A GUEST TO READ WHAT YOU ARE RENTING.
I HAVE 3 OPTIONS TO CHOOSE FROM AND YOU CHOSE THE UNIT THAT HAD THE OUTDOOR SHOWER WHICH IS ENCLOSED IN ALL CEDAR WOOD AND INDOOR-OUTDOOR KITCHEN. Thanks for your stay. I think Hawaii is not for you. Enjoy the rest of your vacation.
Mahalosâ
and because this review literally haunts my dreams I looked into the review left by the host given to the guest.
âSonja was a terrible guest. I do not advise her to stay with you if you are based in the United States. Instead of enjoying her time on the island, she complained about every little thing. Once I checked her in to see how things went, she could not stop complaining. It was not worth it to override such an unhappy person everywhere. She had a beautiful house to stay alone, one block from the ocean and instead she decided to be negative and make everyone unhappy during her stay in our house. Does not rent SONJA if you have a unique holiday home. She will try to give you a bad reputation if she is very unhappy.â
Translated from Dutch ¡ This description was automatically translated using Google Translate and may not be completely accurate.
[quote=âindenturedhermit, post:1, topic:34281â] Whatâs the relevance of this commend? [/quote]
I just got to analize it more. hehe
[quote=âindenturedhermit, post:1, topic:34281â] Of course itâs her privilege as an owner to change the rules as she wants to, but it would have been nice if she notified the people who already made a reservation, about the changed rules. [/quote]
Do you think its improtant to track down guests if you change a policy?
The length of the negative review speaks volumes. How long do you think it took her to write it? 2 hours?
Something about it feels like she didnât actually make the reservation because she was incredibly unaware of what she rented.
She was going to make some one âpayâ for her lack of knowledge.
Or maybe she did the booking, failed to read about the listing, her friend gave her a hard time so now she is giving the host a bad review instead of accepting responsibility.
Addendumâlike @KKC pointed out, this host seems erratic too. Talk about a bad match.
To me it depends on whether the change will affect the guestâs stay. For example: I changed my maximum occupancy from 4 to 2. I did not cancel or change existing reservations so no need to notify the guests.
Also Iâm not sure if a host can change host rules & expect the guest to abide by the new ones. I save a copy of each guestâs Airbnb itinerary âit includes house rules in affect at time of booking, not any revisions.
Track down? No, itâs important to honor the terms of your agreement at the time the guest books. If I change a policy Iâm going to give the guest the benefit of the doubt. And even if I donât change a policy I will probably give them the benefit of the doubt. For example, letâs say the host really did change the laundry policy after the Swedish woman booked. She still should have just said âokay you can do laundry for xx dollars.â
Iâm seeing this exchange out of context but I wouldnât stay with this host. Sheâs a hot mess and there are 5000 other hosts in HI who arenât. Iâll choose one of them.
This is an excellent example of why hosts should not respond to negative reviews. The guestâs review really made her out to be a whack job, but I was just CRINGING reading the hostâs reply.
KKC, true. you said it perfectly! Even I buck up and help guest with laundry for $5 when they ask.
We have an old old Kenmore washer in the back staircase mudroom. It is powered by a generator and is old old, so no one knows hows to turn it on, hah unless I show them.
I can, however, imagine having an issue trusting a human wrecking ball with my washer.
Not sure I would let her use it alone. Imagine a hard/difficult/impossible to please Nickle and dimmer who has to do laundry at a time convenient to themselves. I doubt they will listen to your instructions. People are defiant, ignore you, get confused, or just donât care.
Idk the Swedish lady hit close to home. heh ive been thinking a lot about my own laundry protocol lately. My last 3 bookings have not paid $5 per load even tho I walked them threw it showed them the $ jar and left them to itâŚ
Iâve read far worse reviews. This one wasnât even entertaining Most of the complaints seemed valid, assuming theyâre true.
If this review âliterally haunts your dreamsâ Iâm guessing youâre actually the host in question? I would let it go, itâs not worth stressing over. But you should really get some decent locks for the suite.
I think they both were meant for each other. Both reviews could have used Kenâs âjust the factsâ approach. And I agree with @jaquo, the use of paragraphs and editing would certainly be appreciated.
Of all the guest issues, Iâd be concerned about
the lack of a lock on the accommodations.
air conditioning with no way to close windows (no wonder the host laments about electricity costs)
Possibly, the outdoor lighting if it were as bad as described.
And what harm would come from letting the guest use the laundry and pay for it as supposedly advertised.
Both have done themselves a disservice by handling it the way they did; it would alert me not to host the guest, nor stay at the hostâs listing.
Exactly. As a prospective guest, this review by itself against dozens of great reviews would only reflect on that one traveler. The hostâs response to it reflects directly on the host and would make me find somewhere else to stay because she sounds a little unhinged.
To me it sounds like the guest had several legitimate complaints, but was so angry when she wrote her review that she comes off sounding crazy, The hostâs response is even worse. 55 reviews isnât really that many, and if itâs that cheap probably no one mentioned any of the issues. Would never stay there, nor do I want that guest.
By the way, yes, I do think itâs important to message (Iâd hardly call it âtracking downâ) a guest if something that may affect their stay changes, be it an amenity offered or a rule.
ive been thinking a lot about my own laundry protocol lately. My last 3 bookings have not paid $5 per load even tho I walked them threw it showed them the $ jar and left them to itâŚ
Most of the complaints seemed valid, assuming theyâre true.