Guests keep taking keys home

[Yorkshire Lass]

At one of our properties the guests seem to be forgetting to put the keys back in the key safe on departure and taking them home on a regular basis (3 times this year already). They usually remember en route and then text/call and I have to get them to post them back to our cleaner. It's getting rather irritating and inconvenient so I'm thinking of making an automatic deduction from the offenders' security deposit and just wondered if any one else has had problems with this issue. I should say that this doesn't seem to happen at our other properties and the key difference is that the guests have to not only lock the front door on departure but also lock a padlock on a chain across a parking area directly opposite the house (only a few yards away) and I guess it's the extra process that's scrambling their brains. As the last guest who did this a week ago claims to have posted the keys back to our cleaner but they have yet to arrive I'm feeling particularly irked at the moment!

[Bunny]

Although I've got a key deposit box, I only use it for emergencies for this very reason. Soon after I got it I had guests go off with the keys. Not only that but I found that guests were putting the key in the box whilst they went out rather than taking it with them, but not locking the box! I would definitely not return any of their deposit until I had the keys returned. From a guest point of view I would be horrified to think that previous guests could potentially gain entry. I'm not sure how we stand legally on what would be a 'fine' if the keys were eventually returned. I guess you could argue that all the while they still held the keys they still had possession of the cottage so you could justify a nightly rate as a fine. Other than that I guess you could only justify a charge for your admin time for chasing them but that would be too small to be worth worrying about. I guess you could say that if they failed to put the keys back in the box and then failed to return them within x amount of days you would charge for a complete lock change.

[Bunny]

We seem to have a duplicate thread here. So I'll repost on the other one so this one can be deleted?