Last Saturday evening we went to bed early as we only had one couple
staying – only to be cruelly awoken at 11.45 by the gate bell being rung
– repeatedly… As I have a slight hearing impairment the bell is set to
ring very loudly and to discourage people from ringing it repeatedly it
is also set to ring loudly at the gate. Desmond went down to open the
gate as we could see that these people were not taking no answer for an
answer.
To my surprise I could hear that he was actually booking them in – we
normally, as a security measure, do not take off-street bookings after
hours. It transpired that they had made an online booking earlier and
for some reason the text message notification never came through on my
mobile phone, so I did not know about their arrival as I never checked
my computer between returning from a late afternoon movie, making dinner
and retiring early. That they did not think it unacceptable to book in
nearly midnight without prior arrangement just added to the chain of
events of how things go very wrong when they start going wrong.
They told Desmond that they had booked a different room to the one he
gave them and they were none too happy when he insisted that that was
the only room that they could have booked (the others were closed for
renovations).
The next morning I printed out the confirmation e-mail to
show them that they had indeed booked room 2 and Room 2 was the room
that they got as it (fortunately for me!) had a number 2 on the door…
And that is where things just went from bad to worse. To the point where
I said to Desmond that I wondered if I could give myself a bad review
on TripAdvisor?
Over breakfast they said that the shower was not draining properly
and that they therefor could not shower. I asked their permission to
send our housekeeper into the room to check out the drain while they
were having breakfast. Prior to them I had guests who stayed 5 days in
that room with no problem, but as we know: when things go wrong they go
wrong …
I gave Liesbet a dose of bio degradable drain cleaner with
instructions to pour it down the drain of Room 2 , add a liter of
boiling water, to replace wet towels and to make sure the electric towel
rails were on. She came back reporting job done, but found it strange
that the water ran down perfectly well and that the towels were unused and dry. Well, you guessed:
Liesbet had gone into Room 1, not Room 2! This transpired when the
understandably unhappy guest came to me with a look of exasperation on
her face and frustration in her voice to tell me that the wet towels
were still lying exactly on the floor as she had left it…
What more
could go wrong? Desmond being Desmond answered: ‘ they could eventually
have a shower and the gas bottle could empty right then”!
As a fellow guest house owner told me: ‘Only one thing to do Philda. Make
yourself a cup of tea, go and find yourself a quiet spot in the garden,
take your guest book and read all the gushing thank you’s and
compliments about excellent service, hospitable hosts etc. etc.!!
I
still wonder if I could save the guest the trouble and give myself a bad review on TripAdvisor?
copyright reserved
Lesson learnt: systems, systems, systems. The staff need rules - after this incident the rule was made that in the first week of every month every drain gets a dose of 'drain clean' on the same day that the mattress gets turned. We also changed the online booking system that no bookings can be made after 3pm on the day of arrival.
No comments:
Post a Comment