The Customer is Always Right

This can be a hard pill to swallow when it comes to your own home. The home that you put so much love, time, and effort into. Things can go wrong for a guest and putting them right can be the difference between a bad review and a good review.

One time I had a guest come in at 5am in the morning. When booking he did not indicate that he would be coming in so late and if he would have I would not have accepted him. At the time I had a Russian family staying with me and their 1 year old was an extremely loud child. The mother didn't speak english and for the life of me I couldn't communicate with her that he needed to be quite in the morning. Needless to say that man did not get a lot of sleep. He knew that I rented multiple rooms but he had only gotten 4 hours of sleep before being woken up. Needless to say he was not pleased. He complained and asked for a partial refund which I gave him and he didn't leave me a review which was fine by me.

When I first started I had a old metal wind turbine for ventilation in my roof. Whenever it was super windy this turbine was very noisy. I only happened once and a while and I never noticed it. Until I had a guest staying here. I laid awake that night praying for the wind to stop. It did not. In the morning I apologized and made my guests breakfast free of charge. They left tired but full, and I got a good review.

Unfortunately you can be super upfront with guests and they can still be unhappy. You can give them all their money back and they will still leave you a bad review. Those people suck, they are few and far between, and I pray that you never get them. I've only ever had one of these people. I let this woman know that I had this super noisy Russian family staying with me before she booked (I wasn't going to make the same mistake with another guest). She got to my house and decided she couldn't handle the smell of the food the Russians were cooking (I had made the same mistake again). I gave her all her money back and she went somewhere else. I figured she wouldn't leave me a review. She did and she ranked me poorly. :-(

It's hard to have someone not love your home and what you have to offer. These people are the exception, not the rule. Do your best to make it right and move on to the next guest.