Following my stay, I sent the following message to Jay & Connie:
"Although your property was adequate for our purposes, I have to say that, overall, we were pretty disappointed (especially considering the cost). Here are a few things that I think that you should seriously consider doing if you’d like to continue renting the place at your current rates:
1. Improve your communication with hotel management. We we arrived at the hotel (late at night and after a long day of travel) the hotel clerk could not find our reservation. I spent an extra 10 or 15 minutes at the counter while they attempted to contact you to straighten it out. Thankfully, and to your credit, they were able to reach you.
2. Add general lighting to the room. In the photos for your listing, the room appears brightly lit. In reality it was quite dark. Even with the curtained open and every light on, there was nowhere near the amount of light depicted in your photos. Add fixtures and consider using “warm white” (2700K) lighting in all areas except the bathroom.
3. Replace the bedside lamps and/or shades such that the light bulbs are covered and not glaring directly into the eyes. For relief, we had to resort to covering them with articles of clothing, which made the room even darker.
4. Make sure that all lightbulbs are functioning when your guests arrive. This is just part of basic maintenance to get a room ready to rent. When we arrived, one light bulb was burned out and one lamp was not working. It turned out that the lamp was unplugged (we didn’t check that). These two issues made the room even darker than it already is.
5. Clean more thoroughly. As you’ll recall, the top of the closest was filthy, with at least a 1/4 inch of accumulated dust and grime that got all over my camera bag when I placed it there. There’s really no excuse for this. If a surface is visible or accessible, it should be clean.
6. Replace the cheap, flimsy plastic drawers and end tables. I literally could not open a loaded drawer without the entire set of drawers falling over, and the face plate of one of the drawers came off in my hand. I felt like I was in a spartan college dorm room furnished from Target. Consider replacing these awful pieces. Even inexpensive knock-down MDF pieces from IKEA or the like would be an improvement.
7. Hide the insect traps and cleaning supplies that are currently left visible and all over the place. Nobody wants to be looking at all this stuff all the time. It felt like staying in broom close or maintenance shed. Install a closed vanity in the bathroom where you can store all this stuff out of sight.
8. Replace the cheap plastic shower curtain. Invest a few bucks in a set of sliding glass shower doors. It will seriously upgrade the bathroom look and feel. It would also be easier to clean.
9. Repair the left faucet handle at the bathroom sink. It unscrewed and fell off repeatedly during our stay.
10. Consider taking the words “studio”, “efficiency” and “condo" out of the property description. While these might be technically accurate (depending upon where your guests are from), I thought they were misleading. To me, a studio, efficiency or condo includes a complete working kitchen (not just a mini-fridge and microwave oven). Your property could more accurately be described as a modest and typical hotel room. Although you did include photos in your listing, I should have looked at them more closing and deduced that this was not really a “studio”, “efficiency” or “condo” as I normally think of those words.
11. Don’t send your guests mid-stay “reminders” about not disposing of food in the sink. It feels condescending and accusatory. No civilized person is going to scrape their food waste into the bathroom sink. If you really think this issue is worth mentioning, just including it in the “house rules” that you provide before check-in, or in a notebook left in the room. If this has really been a repeat problem for you, consider installing a little “reminder” placard/sign/label above the sink."
I will say that communication with Jay & Connie was excellent. They responded to message promptly. They also apologized for the inconveniences listed above, and told me that they would consider addressing them for the benefit of future guests.