First repeat complainer

From the moment they step through the door your bookings become guests, and their experiences determine whether they ever come back.
Kilm
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon Jul 24, 2017 4:23 pm

First repeat complainer

Post by Kilm »

So my holiday let has been running since around the 8th of October, and every guest I've had in has loved it and left fantastic written reviews in my guestbook.

I've been pretty much full occupancy since then, but had a four day break where I've managed to get up and just titivate and do some odd jobs.

Last week, I had a family of three in and wow, it was a living nightmare.

First of all, even though it's sign posted several times throughout the house, and in large font in the welcome book, he kept calling the booking agency (a local, brilliant firm) to complain about things in the property. They in turn kept contacting me rather than my property maintenance mob. I resolve that teething issue with them early on however.

The guys complaints were ridiculous, and much of it down to user error.

1. Heating not working
Storage heaters. Due to not knowing his time of arrival, the storage heaters had charged up, but were left to trickle. All he had to do was to open them up. That took three phone calls and a site visit to resolve as he was adamant they were broken

2. No hot water
He'd turned off the 'do not turn off' switch pretty much immediately upon arrival

3. Tumble dryer not working
Didn't read the instructions

4. Extractor fan in master en-suite not working
Fair enough, it burnt out at some point and no-one's noticed. Got a replacement part ordered and fitted two days later

5. Underfloor heating not working
He'd mucked about with the control panels and effectively shut it down, requiring a factory reset and setup again

6. Potato peeler not very good
What the hell?

7. Not enough baking trays
Enough for each tier in the oven, how many does he want?!

8. No oven gloves
In drawer, didn't look

9. Wifi not working
Fair enough, it blinked out whilst he was there but we reset the router and it was fine

and a variety of other niggling complaints.

This guy emailed, left voicemails, and phoned a combined total of fifteen times to both my booking firm and management firm.

The management firm had people out to site no less than eight times during his weeks stay. I even got them to take round three new and each one different, potato peelers, three more trays and two sets of oven gloves just to prove a point.

Every one of my team said that whilst they were there, the temperature was unbearable. Turns out he'd whacked on all the heating (electric only) full pelt - wall panels, storage on max output and log burner chundering away on max. The internal temperature of the house was 29 degrees Celsius!

Ended up I had to speak to him on several occasions to resolve issues.

The bugger left a three page, negative review in my guestbook and claimed it had ruined his holiday of seven nights.

Told my booking mob not to issue any refund or compensation, which they fully agreed with.

So. My first complainer and what a horrible experience. The most annoying thing for me was that he ruined my guestbook with his complaints and all I'd had was really lovely feedback so far.

I was about ten minutes away from getting in the car, driving the three hours to the house and throwing him out.

Anyone else had anyone like this recently?
Ecosse
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Post by Ecosse »

What an awful guest - so sorry you had to get him in your first few months of operation. Please be assured that the majority of guests are absolutely lovely, this person was the exception rather than the rule.

While I wouldn't advocate this normally, personally I'd be removing the guest book and asking friends and family (for their different handwriting) to copy the good comments word for word into a new guest book, or, if possible, removing the offending pages from the existing guest book. While you may feel it's a bit dishonest to doctor the book, I would see it more as removing a dishonest review which does nothing to help your future guests.
Kilm
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon Jul 24, 2017 4:23 pm

Post by Kilm »

Ecosse wrote:What an awful guest - so sorry you had to get him in your first few months of operation. Please be assured that the majority of guests are absolutely lovely, this person was the exception rather than the rule.

While I wouldn't advocate this normally, personally I'd be removing the guest book and asking friends and family (for their different handwriting) to copy the good comments word for word into a new guest book, or, if possible, removing the offending pages from the existing guest book. While you may feel it's a bit dishonest to doctor the book, I would see it more as removing a dishonest review which does nothing to help your future guests.
Your integrity and my integrity are sat on the same bus out of here - already done! :D

My management team text me and told me that he'd left it, I told them I didn't want to see it and they said they'd taken the book out the house.

Hey-ho.

Yeah, I can see most are very nice or at least reasonable people. The guests I have in just now have paid four figures for the week over Christmas and not had a peep from them, so if they're happy, I'm happy!
kg1
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Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:23 pm

Post by kg1 »

Wow. What a horror. Did he mention the C word? Definitely get a guest book with tear out pages :lol:
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Bassman
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Post by Bassman »

Id feel like posting the pages back to them, probably not a good idea though :D
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greenbarn
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Post by greenbarn »

Bassman wrote:Id feel like posting the pages back to them, probably not a good idea though :D
Sounds like a good idea to me - although I’d use the pages for something first...
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Bassman
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Post by Bassman »

greenbarn wrote:
Bassman wrote:Id feel like posting the pages back to them, probably not a good idea though :D
Sounds like a good idea to me - although I’d use the pages for something first...
:wink:
Kilm
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Joined: Mon Jul 24, 2017 4:23 pm

Post by Kilm »

kyreniagirl wrote:Wow. What a horror. Did he mention the C word? Definitely get a guest book with tear out pages :lol:
I'm guessing you mean compensation? He hinted at it - the phrase 'This has ruined our holiday', suggested as much.

I told the booking team to tell him to jog on. This I now realise, is the benefit of having local companies deal with bookings - they only post up good reviews of the property and all matters for compensation come down to me at the end of the day, although they will advise me if they feel the guest has a genuine case.

My stance on it is that they're well looked after on site, so the only way they'll ever get any compo from me is if it's a core feature failure such as hot tub, heating, etc.

If you simply felt the potato peeler wasn't quite reaching the manufacturers suggested six tatties per minute peel speed, tough titty!
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