We have really struggled over whether to write something. We have all been to restaurants where the food was a bit hit and miss, but the people were lovely – so rather than write a rather negative review, you just don’t.
We have stayed in AirBNB places that – on paper – were divine, but turned out to be absolutely grim. But the owners were wonderful, and inexperienced. Again, you just don’t say anything, to give them a chance.
So what do you do when you have a bad experience in a beautiful place? If you can’t write a kind review, is it better to say nothing?
On this occasion, for the first time, after much heartsearching, we can’t stay schtum. It simply wouldn’t be fair to future clients.
Just to put this in context, I am anything but a cleanliness fiend. In my view, a dirty, messy house is a lived-in, happy house. And we certainly accept our “fault” – we made a mistake and certainly ought to have read between the lines of previous reviews before we booked.
So we will try to be objective, and try to see this from the owner’s point of view…
They are a very small family, living in Italy, staying for two weeks. The mother seems OK – we’ve chatted quite a lot.
Then the trouble starts. Since I live an hour away, when these clients call to say the loo seat is not fixed properly, my handyman went quickly to fix it and another small problem that they hadn’t mentioned. He didn’t stay for lunch, although they offered.
Then a WhatsApp message at one o’clock in the morning saying it sounded as though someone was trying to break in. A reply could have been left until the morning, but I answered straightaway to reassure them.
A couple of days later, a message that the washing machine wasn’t working. They’d been trying to sort it out for two days, cleaning the filter and whatever else. 48 hours later, my handyman reported that it seemed dead. Well, only a few days to go. They will manage. What’s a week without a washing machine when you are on holiday?
They’ve gone. The house is clean. The beds stripped, towels and bedlinen washed (until the washing machine died, I suppose). The bathrooms are now spotless. On that note, a filter ought to be fitted on the swimming pool to clear away the accumulation of dead insects at the bottom, but that can wait.
And the kitchen is cleaner than it has been in years – positively sparkling. That’s a good couple of days’ work. There is now space for guests to put their things – gone are old bottles and packets and spices dating back to 2012.
They’ve even written me a thankyou note.
But look at the doormat! Admittedly it’s years old, and it is now white and green, rather than grey. But it’s falling apart! What has she done? I bet she put it in the washing machine and that’s why it died.
If you were the owner, what would you do at this stage?
Would you just be glad that the washing machine was sorted and the house was so clean and tidy?
Or would you phone them straightaway?
We were chuffed – she was probably calling to thank us for all the cleaning. But no.
She would not accept that we hadn’t washed that disgusting doormat in the washing machine. She even sent a photo of the “evidence”. What were we thinking of in washing it? It is “not as if we had to eat off it”.
We offered to pay the technician, but the offer was batted away in the constant assertions that it was our fault, even though the washing machine was now working fine.
It transpired that one of us had – after all – put that stupid, disgusting doormat in to “spin”, as the handwashing had left it soaking and weighing a ton. But we remembered that too late to apologise, after we had blocked the owner on our phones to avoid any more nastiness.
I am sorry about the doormat. We would have replaced it and paid for the technician, who was probably actually the lovely DIY man. But we will certainly never stay here again. There are other issues I would like to warn people about, but my husband – probably quite rightly – says enough is enough.
The house is beautiful, the setting divine. Let’s remember that.
The owner will probably reply to this review, and be understandably defensive (perhaps we did other things wrong – who knows?).
But we will not read the reply. We want to forget the nastiness and remember the beautiful setting.