Had a large number of responses for this past guest I had stay!
75%!of people said I should not give Kristi a refund.
For those who are getting caught up, this is what happened.
This guest Kristi booked after Disney and all the parks in Orlando shut down. Her booking was after things continued to spiral out where more and more non essential businesses were shutting down.
I had dropped my price per night at Turquoise by 50% to try and attract anyone who would still want to come to the area just to relax and get away.
Kristi booked. She was excited to come down for a four night stay.
Per my standard messaging process, I messaged Kristi the morning after her first night stay to check in to make sure they were having a five star experience.
The response I got was pretty shocking. “We have no interest staying here with the pool Closed!!” She continued on to say, “There is clearly nobody resurfacing the pool!”
The community this home is in has a pool for everyone to use. The HOA didn’t send out any notification to the homeowners that the pool would be closed for the foreseeable future.
Kristi was extremely upset as they only wanted to come down to have a pool to enjoy.
I understood her concern and got a little creative. I had just had someone checking out of Ol’ Faithful that same morning. Ol’ Faithful is another Airbnb property I have less than 5 minutes from Turquoise.
Ol’ Faithful has a private pool and is a $20-40 per night more expensive place than Turquoise.
At no additional charge, I immediately called Kristi and let her know I would upgrade her to Ol’ Faithful at no additional charge and they would then have their own pool.
They were less than thrilled. I let them know that I do not have any control of the community pool and that I am just trying to solve their problem so they can enjoy their stay.
They finally agreed to go over and stay there for the remainder of their stay. Here was the challenge for me. To not complicate things, I just decided to block the dates on the calendar for Ol’ Faithful while not changing their original reservation.
This caused me to eat two cleaning charges for this one couple and block two different bookings for their reservation at the same time.
I didn’t hear from Kristi for two days and then she all of a sudden sends me a message that they will be cutting there trip down by two days to go home. Not only that, but she requested a refund for the two days they would be cutting early.
So what did I do? I responded politely back to her letting her know that I would go ahead and refund her the two nights. This would end up costing me more money just in cleaning fees than their entire booking itself, but I felt it was the right thing to do.
I immediately sent over the alteration thinking she would accept it and the dates would then be open on my calendar for others to book. There are things that I need to schedule like my cleaner going to clean and opening the dates back up for others to potentially book.
Kristi didn’t accept the alteration. She still hasn’t even responded to the change I sent over to refund her for two nights they wouldn’t be staying so my calendar would open back up.
This morning I checked again just to make sure she didn’t accept it. She hadn’t. The original offer I made was a two night refund to her at the cost she paid. This would be roughly a $94 refund to Kristi.
I was being overly generous to Kristi, but since she didn’t accept the alteration, my calendar was both booked and the night was past that I was giving her a refund for.
So, I decided to cancel the alteration request this morning and I updated the refund to a one night refund since she has not responded. The reality is that nobody is going to book for tonight, so this night is already a wash, but I will still leave the one night refund request out there for Kristi for her to accept.
If she doesn’t accept by tonight, I am going to remove the one night refund request as well.
On top of all this, I received a few bad pictures from my cleaner on how Kristi and her husband left the place. It was definitely a bummer to see as her husband told me on the phone that they were only using one room in each place. That was not the case. They also decided to set the thermostat to 68 degrees while opening multiple windows in the home. And this is Florida, where the temp has been over 90 degrees for the past few days.
Key Takeaways:
- I always try to offer a great guest experience for all my Airbnb guests, even if they seem to be a pain.
- Try to go above and beyond to get good reviews in all situations. I am very interested to see if Kristi leaves me a review. I will for sure be leaving a review for her 🙂
- Be fair in all things you are handling with guests and how you communicate with them.
Don’t forget @TheYoungRetireeBy33’s 3 Core Principles:
1 – Your money should make money for you⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
2 – Start early to realize the power of compound interest⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
3 – Eliminate your largest expense by house hacking
