And now it's time for another Vacation Rental Mailbag.
Today's focus is on broken appliances.
Yay. Okay.
Hi there, I'm Angela Brown and this is, Ask a House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question
and I get to help you find an answer.
Now, today's show is brought to you by the community.
And this is over at TurnoverCleaningTips.com
There's a whole community of hosts, and house cleaners, and guests, and property managers,
and professional house cleaners that get together and they answer questions that you might have
about cleaning your vacation rental property.
So, check it out. TurnoverCleaningTips.com
and click on the community tab.
Now, on today's show we're going to talk about broken appliances in your vacation rental.
There was a customer that wrote in and wanted to know, "What do I do, because a customer
complained about the dishwasher being broken."
Alright, well there are a couple of different things that you can do when it comes to a
broken dishwasher.
Number one, you can call a repair and maintenance guy
that you might find on housecleaning360.com,
and get him over there as soon as possible to fix the dishwasher.
If it's a short stay and the guest is only going to be there for a couple of days what
you may want to do, is take another measure.
And this might be, "Hey, in the event that the dishwasher breaks there's a bath towel
in the linen closet that you can put on the counter, and you can pull the bottom shelf
of the dishwasher out and put it on top as a dish drainer,
and just rinse the dishes by hand."
Now, a couple weeks ago we did a video on what to keep underneath your kitchen sink,
and I'll leave links in the show notes to that as well, but if you watch that video
there's a whole video on what you leave underneath your kitchen sink, and one of the items is
dish washing soap in the event that your customer, or your guest wants to wash dishes while they're
at your place.
Alright.
Now, if your dishwasher breaks, nobody's expecting that.
There are a couple of other options.
You can give them a food credit so they can eat out and they don't have to bring food
into your home.
Another option would be, you could provide them with paper plates, paper cups, paper
bowls, and plastic silverware.
That would give them enough to eat off of while they're at your place, then when they're
done they can just throw that away and they don't have to worry about doing the dishes.
Another option, and this has happened with other Airbnb cleaners, or Airbnb hosts, is
they've arranged for somebody to come in every night of the stay that the person was going
to be there until they could get the repair man out, and they washed the dishes by hand.
So, they sent someone in at no extra charge to wash the dishes.
So, there are a couple of different options.
But one option that I might recommend is in your house rules, in the book that you leave
for the guests as they come in you might have just a, "What if," page.
"What if the dishwasher breaks?"
And then have those solutions that are going to be available.
"In the pantry there is paper dishes, paper silverware, all those things so that you can
use those in the event that the dishwasher breaks."
And you can explain to them where you keep the bath towel to put on the counter, and
how to pull out the bottom rack of the dishwasher to use as a dish drainer.
You can put those in as extra solutions, just so that there are no surprises.
Because believe it or not, some guests are not very enterprising and they won't think
through those things themselves.
Alrighty.
So, that would be my suggestion.
I don't recommend that you give them a refund.
It's not part of the stay, it's an added part of their experience,
but it's not part of their stay.
The beds and everything still work, they were still able to take showers, everything else
as far as the stay itself was good.
So, I would not give them a refund.
Alrighty.
So, that's it.
Moving on to the next question about broken washing machines.
"What do you do if a guest comes to your house and the washing machine is broken?"
Alright, there are a lot of travelers that stay at Airbnb's because they're traveling
across the country and they're going to be gone for two weeks, three weeks, five weeks,
a month, who knows?
And so, having a washing machine might be a key element for them.
So, in your listing if a washing machine is available, then you may want to list that.
But if it's not available my recommendation is, for most guests it's not important.
So, I wouldn't make it available.
If it is available put that in your listing and then make sure you have a working equipment.
If it's not available, as a house cleaner or as a host you have to turn the linens on
a regular basis.
So, between every single guest you've got to pull off all the linens, you've got to
wash all the towels, wash all the wash rags, wash all of the kitchen towels,
all of that stuff.
And so, you need your washing machine for your service, your turnover service, and I
would not make that available to the guests.
There are lots of problems that come with having guests use the laundry machines.
Some of the problems that have happened in the past, and they're horrifying stories,
the guests are in a hurry so they throw washing in the washing machine, and then they try
to take it out before the cycle is complete and the door has locked, and so, then they
try to yank the door open and they bust the door of the washing machine.
Another thing is, there are hours of operation.
Where, let's say that you have two or three rooms that you're renting and your rules of
operation state that it's quiet time from 10PM until 10AM, and then you have guests
that are in doing laundry at 2:00 in the morning because they're going to have an early flight
somewhere, and they're going to check out early, they want to wash their clothes the
night before.
And then the washing machine is rolling, and making noise, and tumbling, and stuff is clicking
through the washer and the dryer process during the night.
And then the other guests aren't happy, and then they want a refund.
So, lots of things can malfunction when it comes to having a washing machine available.
My recommendation to you is this.
If you have people that are traveling across the country you may want to list in that "What
if," scenario that I talked about, that you might say, "What if you have clothes that
need to be washed?
We have a laundry service that we use," and then give them the phone number for a laundry
service, "Here's the bag, you put your clothes in it, you leave it out on the door, you call
this number and someone will come pick up the clothing, they will bring it back the
next day, and your clothing will be cleaned.
For that you pay an extra service, and that's between you and the cleaning company."
So, then as a host you're not collecting any of that money, you're not the one sending
the bag out, you're not picking it up in the middle of the night, none of those things.
So, they can outsource it to a laundry service and you just provide the number.
So, that would be my recommendation for that.
Yay.
Alright.
Now, the other one is, "What do you have if you have a broken oven?"
This is a tough one, because a lot of people choose Airbnb's because they want the cooking
experience, so they can stay in a home like environment with lots of people and they're
not paying to eat out at every meal.
So, it saves a lot of money.
If they get to your house and they find out that the stove or the oven doesn't work you
need to have alternative options.
And so, on that, "What if," page that we talked about,
"What if the oven goes out while you're here?"
And then you might recommend, "In the bottom cabinet over to the right, next to the refrigerator,
is a toaster oven and you can pull that out, and you can cook smalls in the toaster oven.
Feel free to use the microwave."
And there are other things you can do.
You might even have a hot plate that is not on display that it's one of the cabinets,
or the cupboards, or the pantry that in the event that the burner on the stove goes out,
they can pull out the hot plate and they can still cook their omelets or whatever they
cook for breakfast.
So, there are other backup solutions that you can have.
And I wouldn't even highlight it and make all that stuff available.
Of course, you make the microwave available, but I wouldn't make all the other stuff available
unless there's an issue.
Okay?
And then there's, on the "What if," page, it just shows you where everything else is.
Again, I would not give them a discount, or a refund on their stay, because although cooking
is part of a stay, if you have other options and other alternatives, then you're not always
trying to figure out, "Well, do I give them a refund?"
Or whatever.
Because believe it or not, there are guests that have learned how to hijack the system,
and they will come to your house and they will find things that they can break, or disable,
or dismantle, or something, and then they ask for a full refund saying,
"Oh, you totally ruined my stay."
So, to avoid all of that up front make it very clear, "I won't give any refunds, if
something breaks this is a normal home and lots of stuff is being used, and anything
could break at any time.
However, we have a "What if," page and all those solutions are on here.
Find a solution for your current situation."
So, you fix the problem, you let them know, it's in your listing, you've explained what's
available and what's not, and in your house rules then, you can explain, "What to do in
the event that something malfunctions."
Now, having said that, stuff will malfunction.
And so, you want to have repair people that do small appliances on speed dial.
You want to have those people in your back pocket, and you want to be friends with them
and maybe even give them something like Savvy Perks as a little ongoing incentive and bonus
to keep them motivated to jump in and help you immediately when there's a problem.
So, there are ways of doing that, but if you run an Airbnb stuff's going to break.
There are lots of people that use things different ways.
People will break your dishwasher, they will break your oven and your stove, they will
break your washing machine, and any other appliances that have knobs, dials, on and
off switches, they will get broken.
Okay?
So, it's not "If," it's a matter of "When."
Alright?
So, that would be my suggestion, and those are our tips for today's Vacation Rental Mailbag.
If you found this helpful please pass it on to a friend, and if you have tips and better
ideas that you'd like to share with us please do so in the notes below, and you can also
jump over to our community at TurnoverCleaningTips.com and join the conversation there.
Alright. Until we meet again,
leave the world a cleaner place than when you find it.
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