Watch for guests that use your address

Introduction
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On this ‘I can just click a button and be accepted I don’t have to read any stupid rules or manuals, attitude’, this is something I am running into so frequently, I have just discovered a way to find out which guests are those that are like that before hitting the accept button. Because for me, it’s all pain. I didn’t build our home (lol), but I lovingly collected every piece that is in every room over the years, or they are pieces from my husband before we met in NO that I enjoyed combing about old stores to find great old things to match. There’s nothing, including the sheets and right down to the vintage hand worked pillowcases that I want treated as ‘who gives a crap’ stuff. We also spent money I don’t care to mention refinishing hardwood floors and doing unending myriad things people do when they own a historic home.

I decided for the 4 year doctor in residence and his girlfriend that I would ascertain if they were of the type to treat our room as a hotel as I expected, or if they were more conscientious. I have a lot of problems with young professionals that have received expensive educations. Somehow the education doesn’t stretch towards treating anyone else or other people’s things with any respect. You imagine these well spoken but relatively disinterested people (beyond a very quick hello here’s your room type thing) will be educated in manners, know how to behave in other people’s homes, and have basic respect for other people’s property. Unfortunately I am finding that these professional looking people that could be examining your corns or hammer toes or discussing your diabetes with you within the next year (and some already) are often beyond disgraceful in their treatment of furniture, bedding, and completely negligent of any house rules. They march right in and assume they are in a hotel, and that’s it.

So what I did with the young dr and his girlfriend today was tell him that we could accept his booking (without mentioning I hadn’t quite yet). Next I said check in was 4pm and we would appreciate if he could let us know what time they were expecting to arrive, and also to give us an update on the ETA when they were about 20 mins away so that we could be there to show them to their room. I asked that they read the house manual and rules so that they are familiar with the home before arrival, and let me know if there are any questions, or if I can help at all with any suggestions.

This guys response? Awesome! See you tomorrow!

I knew he onLy read as far as ‘we can accept’, and the rest was blah blah blah. I’m just going to come in your home and treat it like a hotel so just hand over the keys and let’s get this done.

I sent a message right after saying I needed to decline due to a. Change of plans. All the best with finding a great place.

I truly believe that guests that won’t read a message properly and respond by saying ‘we expect to arrive around such and such a time and will update you’, and I will make sure to read the manual and rules, etc, has given up even trying to pretend to care as soon as he has the word ‘accepted’. This will be my magic trick from here on out. Too often I don’t find out these things until after I’ve accepted and then go, oh no, not again. They acted decent until they got the gig.

I have to tell a story about another booking a couple of nights ago!! Amazing.

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Anon, with all due respect, I think you may have been a bit hasty. Because you asked him to tell you his ETA, he might have thought the check in time was easygoing? If you had worded it differently perhaps, “Can you give me an ETA of your arrival… Anytime after 4 is fine but if you could text me 20 mins ahead, I will be sure to stay up to greet you.”

Maybe he was answering, yup See you tomorrow and the 20-min text request was understood. I also think it was unfair of you to be making arrangements about check in and such and then ditch him.

I dunno…you might have to cut some people some slack… they are on phones and maybe have limited texting… or maybe he was with a patient… To me, that would not have been worth ditching the booking. But that is me, I’m desperate for bookings most of the time! :smile:

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Yes Kona, and I know you know it’s actually Sandy and only anon now that you and Yana have flagged me into oblivion, but you have a very different set up.

As to my wording the message unclearly, I think you misread. I said we COULD accept his booking, (not that we had), and said check in was 4pm and we would appreciate him letting us know when they would expect to arrive (and an ETA when they were on their way). I also mentioned reading our documents. All it would have taken was basic acknowledgment of the manuals, a general arrival time and we would have been good to go. However completely ignoring anything in my message other than I can accept the booking gave me a clear indicator that he was another one of my young doctor couples that have entitlement issues. But hey, don’t take my word for it. I discussed this exact scenario with my therapist yesterday (I go because so many of my guest experiences are emotionally triggering for me), and before I even got further than his response, my therapist went ‘oh! So you mean they were these entitled types that just think they can do what they want?’. Yes, dear therapist. Those. And I have many,

But thanks for your viewpoint, and the idea that I need to cut people more slack. Cutting people slack is why I have issues. I am trying to figure out how to reign things in right now. And as to young people’s texting abilities? Let me just tell you, they can text just fine when they want something :laughing:

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Sandy, WHAT? I have never never once flagged you! NEVER! I’m really quite hurt that you would say that. There’s only one person here I have flagged and we both know who it is.

i have never once flagged you!!!

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Konacoconutz,

I also know who you flagged; it was me. Somehow you thought I was personally insulting Yana by saying that she didn’t seem to like people in her space. I saw this as merely a statement of fact due to this quote from her post, "I felt uncomfortable saying something to them, but in fact I wanted to say something like “you didnt rent from me the whole house, but only 2 bedrooms, something like that.”

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Ellen, where do you get this???!!!

I have never flagged you, either!!!

I’m seriously thinking of closing my account and leaving this place. I am too busy for this nonsense.
Maybe TOM can set Ellen and Sandy straight.

I DO NOT FLAG PEOPLE. There is one exception and his name starts with a B. Other than him, I’ve never flagged ANYONE on this forum.

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Yes Ellen, and there is another response to s poster who was a very experienced host (didnt suffer fools lightly, but that didn’t minimize his ability to contribute), and when he wondered why all his posts and even threads were disappearing, Kona says in what seemed to be a gloating manner, ‘well, if you weren’t so snarky you wouldn’t be getting flagged’. And this was not because he had written anything offensive or been rude to anyone in particular, Kona and Yana it seems just thought he didn’t write his posts nicely enough (more than likely they had taken offense to something). He never posts anymore, so I’m not sure if he was removed or fed up with the politics.

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Konacoconutz,

I apologize. I thought it was you who flagged my post, because you were the one who took issue with it. I’m sorry for the error.

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Thank you for apologizing. i have NEVER flagged you OR Sandy.

But I still want to close my account, This is total BS. I don’t need it.

I subbed for middle school 8th grade yesterday and there was far less drama than this place.

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Kona, don’t close your account because of it.
You have been a major contributor here andi learned a lot from you. I only flagged Sandy twice, and never flagged anyone else on this forum. Apparently she was flagged multiple times by other people. Just ignore the outbursts and keep contributing.

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Thank you Yana. I appreciate your comment.

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The shower bit is a bit too picky, the rest seems to be ok but I’d rethink the snorkel gear rule: it sounds really harsh and like you’d be looking for an excuse to charge guests. Explain that lost parts can not be replaced therefore losing parts of the gear means paying for the whole lot.

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Emese, thanks for the comment… I think I do make this clear about the snorkel gear not being replaceable piecemeal. They are $50 sets and guests lost them constantly. Since I have made this rule, I’ve had much better experiences. Would never charge guests unless they really lost part of it! Have to check every time, because often they won’t tell me when they have lost a piece.

We’re on rainwater cisterns out here and guests cannot waste water. If they take late showers (after midnight) the sound of the water pump wakes us up…I am tired of people and their 20-minute showers at 3AM in the morning. Did not want to have to add this one but guests drove me to it.

Have found that if I explain this bit about the water in person I have much much less trouble and am much happier as a host.

I rent a completely private, separate studio, not a room in my house, so don’t feel these guidelines are too harsh. But thanks for your honest feedback!

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Konacoconutz, I hope you don’t mind me butting into this conversation to say you have an awesome and totally appropriate list of house rules, and have managed to sound personable at the same time. I think mentioning the shower noise is perfectly fine. Emailing the house rules in a PDF is a great idea too!

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Thank you!!! I have fine tuned them with the help of the other nice forum members here, especially Cabinhost. She takes no nonsense from anyone! :slight_smile: Glad to have you here Meadow! :smile:

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Thanks, I’m happy to have joined before I ran into a major problem with a guest! It’s great to know what others have run into and what they did to prevent the same thing from happening in the future.

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One suggestion: “Please leave the studio as you found it” would make me think I needed to launder the towels and sheets, but maybe that’s just me. :slight_smile:

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Interesting! Never thought of that… and never had anyone ask if they had to do laundry.
I do have a check out procedure, asking them to leave the sheets in a basket for me. Some do, some don’t.
Mostly I want the dishes washed and the stove cleaned… Most guests do leave things pretty clean.

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anon5732054, I’m so glad you mentioned toilet paper! I thought it was just us! Man… we’ve had people use an entire roll within an hour of arrival. One guest a few weeks ago used two whole rolls every single day! It was driving us crazy!

But we found a great solution. We were supplying expensive and high-quality Charmin. Apparently foreigners just can’t get enough of it! I literally think they’re taking it and putting it into their luggage to carry home with them!

Anyway, my wife and I were out doing some Airbnb shopping recently and we saw a really cheap package of toilet paper. I mean half the price of Charmin. Suddenly the light bulbs went off in both of our eyes at the same time! We both grabbed it! Then we grabbed another one.

It’s amazing how well this works. We put four rolls in the bathroom dispenser and 5 days later, there were three and a half rolls remaining! So, get this… previously one guest was using two rolls per day. Now, between four guests, only half a roll was used over 5 days! We couldn’t believe how well it worked. At this rate, four packs should last a whole year!

It’s a real shame though. When we first started doing Airbnb, I thought this will be a great way to right some of the wrongs I’ve always been annoyed by, perpetrated by hotels. I HATE the way hotels put such cheap toilet paper in the bathrooms - that falls apart even before you touch it. I thought we can do this right - and give people the kind of toilet paper they deserve. I had no idea that they would actually be stealing it if we did! The longer we do this, the more we realize that hotels have some darn good reasons for doing some of the things they do.

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Sad but true isn’t it! I don’t bother buying the nice 3 ply paper anymore especially when guests start using it to take their make up off