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Happy Xmas, Festivus and Hanukkah everyone!
When Santa visited at 3.30am he tripped the smoke alarm in the guest kitchen. I suspect this is due to interference from Rupert’s IR nose. Which woke me upstairs and the guests downstairs. It was beeping intermittingly which usually means the battery needs replacing. He texted me and I texted him I was awake and to try and press the reset button. It didn’t go off again or if it did I had fallen asleep. But he did message me at 6.30am when I awoke. I saw him taking his dog out for a walk and fortunately it is a lovely sunny Xmas morning as is traditional here in Australia.
It also happened last week when there were no guests and during the day when a friend was visiting, on Dec 22 and he replaced the 9V battery for me with a spare I had lying around. I think the alarm is still wired into the mains circuit+battery and you can’t just turn it off. I remember having the electricians replace the whole alarm last time they were here a couple of years ago. Gettting an electrician out here from 50km away on Xmas Day to check it over would cost several hundreds of dollar, maybe $400, assuming I could even find someone. I have a spare 9V battery but it is from the same packet as the one I just installed. Do unused 9V batteries “go off” after a couple of years? I can ask the guest to replace it and buy some really new ones when my support worker arrives to clean Monday morning. My guest is French, so fortunately they are famously very chilled people who never get upset about anything. Should I offer them a partial refund? Most shops closed today so even if I could get out there is nowhere to buy a bottle of wine to say sorry. Any experience with guest smoke alarms at 3am and how to deal with it? I can handle a poor or bad review. Joyeux Noël à tous les Hôtes!
I gave up drinking a couple of years ago. The local vigneron sold his winery shortly after citing an unforecast cashflow shortfall. Coincidence? I sent the guest $50 which should buy a couple of good bottles of wine, or 3 decent ones.
As others said,a bottle of wine, a box of chocolates, maybe a voucher for dessert at a local café seems in order for a short duration annoyance or inconvenience.
I so wish hosts would stop referring to monetary compensation for things as a “partial refund”. A refund is what people get when they don’t use something- like you buy an item of clothing, get it home to realize there are buttons missing or a broken zipper. You return it and get a refund.
What hosts might compensate guests for, for a minor glitch, is a discount, not a refund.
P.S. Spare batteries don’t stay good forever. Especially if you live in an area that gets hot and humid. Someone clued me in years ago to keep extra batteries in the fridge in a tightly sealed container. Works well, they last much longer that way.
Thanks - the second set of “new” batteries were worse and the alarm kept going. I found a third set, different brand, in a sealed packet of an unused smoke alarm (different brand and not wired into mains so I can’t just replace it). We are trying the “leave the batteries out and see if that stops it”. The old one would just go off if you did that as it was wired in as well apparently so if the battery went it could tell you. The purpose of the battery is apparently to detect the radioactive stream that fine particles of smoke interupts and causes the alarm to go off.
I know, it’s just that guests are so often demanding “refunds” for some minor inconvenience, that I feel we should refer to reimbursing some money as a discount. Terminology has meaning. If they stay, using up utilities, amenities, having a place to stay, you don’t get a refund, that’s something you might get if you don’t stay. Just like if a product you buy has some defect, a dent, a scratch, etc, that doesn’t affect its performance, you might be offered a discount.
“Comping” seems to be popular in the States for poor service, or at least to keep customers from writing a bad review. I once stayed in a hotel in Mnahattan and got every meal free because I (rightly) complained to the front desk and they offered me them by way of compensation. Starting with turning up afetr a 16 hour flight from Sydney and they had cancelled my booking because I couldnt be contacted at 26,000 feet to confirm it. Those were the days when you couldn’t be reached in every corner of the planet by text or email.
And Happy Gravy Day!