Lay My Hat

Hi All,
We lost power at 8am this morning and it is not now expected to be back until at least 4pm. We have guests for the weekend who are going to a local wedding. I dont think they will have been able to have baths or showers this morning (There will have been one tank of hot water but the bathrooms dont have windows).

We assume they are now out at the wedding so have fingers crossed the power is back before they return. We manage remotley but it looks like the power is our for an area of several miles. All quite frustrating and completley out of our control.

Should we consider offering any compensation? What is reasonable?

I presume your T&Cs absolve you of any responsibility/liability for things beyond your control?

However, just to show you care, perhaps you could arrange for a "sorry for the inconvenience" card to be dropped round (maybe with some goodies like wine/chocs/local delicacies) and explain it's an area outage, not a cut-off caused by you forgetting to put 50p in the meter

What PW said. Not your fault and you cannot influence when the power will be restored. A couple of bottles of vino collapso should do the trick but if the wedding they are at is anything like the last one I went to, they won't be wanting wine for a loooong time

What would you do if this happened at home?
Use what hot water is left in the tank to have a wash sharing with everyone (not at once ). Unfortunately no hair dyers.
Either that or lump it and have a cold shower?

(There will have been one tank of hot water but the bathrooms dont have windows)

eh? Ah. I get it (literally as I write this). I was thinking that windows have some mysterious way of making a small amount of hot water go further. But I really do get it now. Honest.

It reminds me of our first guests in the big house in March 2013. I was preparing the house in the morning and a big winter storm was brewing and the power went, so I had to leave without hoovering the hall. As I drove up the snowy road, two electricity supply company landrovers were driving down so I assumed they would have it fixed before our guests arrived. Sadly it wasn't so. Lines were down all over the place and a generator was brought to power the village early the following morning. When we got through to the guests they were putting a brave face on it but were obviously quite chilly and it turned out that the generator was badly overloaded and the voltage was nowhere near normal mains voltage. It took about 4 days for normal power to be restored and our guests were only in for a 3-night weekend. They did stay to the end but they wanted compensation. We were willing to give them compensation, but we made the mistake of asking how much they wanted: They wanted 100%. They had booked through an agent, so we referred them back to the agent and we ended up not paying any compensation, though I don't feel good about it. The agent was unwilling to lose a penny of his commission.

Compensation for power cuts is a difficult area as it's not the owner's fault. It's not the guests fault either. I don't think that travel insurances cover it.

Windows??? Sorry I don't get it

kyreniagirl wrote:Windows??? Sorry I don't get it

It's today's lateral thinking puzzle.

kyreniagirl wrote:Windows??? Sorry I don't get it

Still in the dark???

Use candles, washing in that light hides your wrinkles.

Dotty wrote:

kyreniagirl wrote:Windows??? Sorry I don't get it

Still in the dark???

Yep!😳

Hi All, The power was restored mid afternoon (I assume while they were all at the wedding). We have been sending them text updates during the day but no responses from them. It must have been frustrating for them this morning.

Thank you for the suggestions of gifts and wine but we live 150 miles away so it's not something we can easily do.

I would like to clarify my hot water and windows comment as it seems to have prompted various comments. The bathrooms have no windows, only electric light. So they are pitch dark when there is no power (if you shut the door). Your suggestions of sharing the tank of hot water in the dark made me giggle!!!! Perhaps I should have suggested they use the lights on their phones.

Ok. I get it!😹😹😹😹

I don't live on site either but have ordered a hamper to be delivered to guests on their return home a couple of times in the past which was appreciated by the guests. If it was an outage in the area is there a chance they weren't the only guests affected in the area?

PW in Polemi wrote:I presume your T&Cs absolve you of any responsibility/liability for things beyond your control?

Anybody got some good wording for putting this into T&Cs?

Short and sweet

The owners accept no responsibility for matters outside their control such as weather, temporary outages of internet, water or electricity.