She’s been kidnapped by the furniture mafia… and has been tied to, erm, a large bench!
That would depend on her diet!
(Sorry Mag, you started the whole thing about bowel movements…)
Sorry to all those who have been waiting for the longest time, I never realised so many would be waiting for the outcome, please blame jet lag and the issues of setting up again here in Australia after 6 months in L.A.! My cleaner still hasn’t told me if it was there or not! I keep asking but he keeps emailing telling me everything but that! I know he had instructions to check and he would have done it, I will make a point of ringing him direct and put you all out of your misery asap!
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Finally! The update! And…we still don’t know. Sorry Magwitch.
We can be a silly bunch.
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You’re right! I think Magwitch is browsing lastminute.co.uk to book a flight to @Wendy_Darling’s place to check out the stool thingie herself!
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Aaggh!! I booked my one-way ticket to the Island of the Lost Boys and now I’m stuck in a tree house with a crazy man-child and still none the wiser.
On the plus side, the hammock is quite comfy and there are plenty of stools.
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I (and my wife) are reading this with our jaws on the floor. Incredulous!! I’m adding my name to the list of those waiting with bated breath for the outcome.
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Nice to see you here again @Geddy3! Always enjoyed your posts, you’re in Cornwall yes? Poor WendyDarling is probably regretting posting!! Nothing is going to satisfy us.
After 2 years of hosting, I have only had one item taken (or broken). It was an obvious colorful vase that sat on the MBR dresser. It was not expensive and came from Homegoods. I want to assume it got broken rather than stolen.
This brings up a pet peeve of mine that is related to damage. I require that all guests pay for insurance for $99. therefore they are covered if something is damaged. But oftentimes they do not tell me when something is damaged and the next guest has to deal with it.
Ring Ring! “Hey cleaner?”
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See, this is the thing - you’ve lost the ability to make a claim. Too much time has passed. That would have been the FIRST THING I would ask my cleaner to confirm.
I certainly understand where you’re coming from on this, @Helsi. Many times there isn’t a lot of margin in our lives for these sorts of things. Even so, I would take the same approach but instead of valuing my personal time, I’d be calculating out exactly how much it would reasonably cost to pay someone else to do it for me (plus a little for me for the trouble of arranging things).
I live in DC where hiring errand/chore running services are pretty robust and easily accessed. But even when I didn’t live in a metropolitan area, I always knew a handful of people who were happy to earn a bit of extra cash on the side doing things like this. Plus, their contracted labor is an operating expense to my business which means most likely (I’m not a tax advisor) the cost is deductible from my business income at tax time.
In terms of whether or not a customer is really within his/her rights as a guest to just take things. On a personal level, I’m appalled that someone would behave in the way Wendy_Darling described; it certainly is NOT appropriate.
However, as a business person I find that looking for appropriate and mutually beneficial ways to say “yes” to a customer’s demands, regardless of my own personal feelings about their conduct, is the most likely way I’ll have a positive transaction.
In a case like this I would be most concerned about getting a poor review from the customer. Quoting a price on the stool that is much higher than it’s retail value (and reflects all of the replacement costs including time and labor) is a way of demonstrating that the stool is probably more valuable to me than to her. She might even realize that her “request” wasn’t really a reasonable one. And if she doesn’t balk at the high price and still intends to buy it, I’ve given her a price that will make me a cheerful giver.
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@Nina we will need to agree to disagree
As someone who has run an agency for over ten years as well as now running an Airbnb I understand how to run a business.
This is not about business margins. This is about unacceptable behaviour.
I would not be worrying about a poor review in this case. What would she say. ‘I told the host I would be stealing an item of her furniture because I liked it and couldn’t be bothered to order it and she objected’
As a business person I don’t find it either appropriate or mutually beneficial to let a guest walk all over me…‘a cheerful giver’…really?
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You MUST be joking!!! No way!!! That’s aquiesing to a thief. Sorry, your statement is beyond ridiculous and is one reason why Air guests have become so entitled and demanding in recent years. cheerful giver indeed, how totally absurd. 
There’s a recent story in The NY Times how a de Kooning painting missing 30 some years was just found in a couple’s home. The couple had died and the estate was being cleared when an estate appraiser recognized the heisted painting.
Apparently this couple were visitors to an art gallery, where the wife allegedly engaged the security guard with banter while the hubby cut the masterpiece out of the frame and they walked out the door with it rolled up under their coats.
Imagine saying,
Well it would be good customer service of the gallery to work with the couple and allow them to keep the painting and work out a solution that would help both the gallery and the customer.
Should that gallery be a cheerful giver of a de Kooning masterpiece worth multimillions?
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I agree with @Helsi. EVEN if the host of brand new and needed the review I would not give them the stool under circumstances such as these. “Cheerful giver” my ass! And if the guest left a bad review in retaliation I would petition Air to get it removed. No, there are lines you do not cross and this guest crossed it.
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I know what you’re referring to, but you might be too hip for the room with that reference. Here’s the link for others:
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Amazing story, thanks for sharing it yesterday, that’s how I found it. Fascinating story worth using up one of my ten monthly free NY Times stories!
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By the way, I have a theory re the de Kooning and I am not sure if I am the first to put it forth. I believe the retired teacher wife had an affair with de Kooning and the nude is of her. De Kooning was famous womanizer. They both lived in NY. You do the math.
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SERIOUSLY!!! They knew him???
Was that in the story??
But didn’t they say they hung it in a spot where they could see it from their bed? Too bad they died so they cannot be held to account!
Love how this thread has developed! From stool removal to art thieves 
@Wendy_Darling, whenever you manage to get back on here - please just make up an outrageous story to keep us all happy!
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Did you read our new forum rules? We discuss how our forum is known for veering wildly off topic and this is one thing that makes the forum so fun, so please don’t ask a mod to remove an off topic post unless it violates other forum guidelines! 
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