When we first arrived at the house, I instantly found it charming. You could tell that the owner put a lot of care into things. (We rented two houses for our family and friends to attend my daughter’s wedding in Tiverton. We came from all over: Texas, Colorado and other states.) My husband and I stayed at this house our first night, until our other rental house became available.
At any rate, we placed our older daughters (all in their 20's) in this house for the remainder of the stay and also had room for some other family and friends. We had the maximum number of people there, eight people. In the beginning, I messaged Richard about this, but I don’t think it was clear that my husband and I weren't staying there the entire time. -Our other house was five minutes down the road.
Anyways, very little time was spent by them at this house except for sleeping. Activities occurred elsewhere. -Upon checkout, I told the girls to strip the sheets off of the bed, leave the towels on the bathroom floor and follow the closing instructions in the book. -They assured me that they did. -Then, my husband and I came back to the house and did an additional walk thru, from the basement to the rest of the house. -We thought everything was in order.
Today, I felt like I got the “third degree” from the owner about why so many sheets were used. -I talked to the girls. Two said that they switched beds because the bunk bed mattresses were uncomfortable. They didn’t want to take the sheets off of the beds for some reason and just looked for and used additional sheets for the mattresses below the bunks. (I agree, they should have asked before doing this.) Another didn’t want to sleep in the same bed as someone else. (Again, she should have asked.) -Needless to say, I was a bit distraught over his messages. I offered to pay an additional cleaning fee, but have not heard from him yet about this.
Honestly though, I think that to offer up a home as an AirBNB, one must expect everything will not be exactly in place or as it was. I have always strived to leave homes, hotels, anyplace better than I found them and apparently, Richard did not think we did. For that, I am truly sorry. It makes me feel bad that my family displeased this host. I don't know if there was anything else I could have done to fix the situation, except what I offered to him. I also talked to my daughters about trying harder to be extra careful.
So basically, all of this to say, we used too many sheets for the eight people there. So… if you stay here, don’t have anyone switch beds, make sure you stick to the same towels and make sure you try and follow the closing instructions exactly. -What would happen though if an accident happened or someone got sick? These type of situations should be anticipated. Nevertheless, make sure that you communicate well with this owner on his expectations and yours. After all, it's not cheap to rent houses and also not cheap to provide them. Everyone should be happy.
By the way, I also contacted my other host again because I was a bit paranoid from this experience, and this person told me that everything was left in great shape. We had more people at that house. And… they wanted us to come back. Just saying….
Other than that, I believe that the girls really enjoyed the home. So... in spite of everything, thank you for letting us use it.