Last Updated on November 5, 2019 by Lucienne
Our aim is to always give our guests the best and most comfortable stay in our cosy garden cottage. But sometimes even the best laid plans don’t turn out the way we want them to. When things go wrong one needs to have a contingency plan in place.
When Things Go Wrong – Collapsing Locks
The booking for the Monday arrival was for a lovely German couple. They arrived from the airport quite late in the evening. I gave them my usual welcome to South Africa and welcome to our cottage speech. Part of that is to explain how to open the glass double doors onto the courtyard garden. February is quite a hot month in our part of the world so being able to open those doors and enjoy the fresh air is quite important. After my speech I left them to settle and scampered off to bed.
The following morning I sent my usual ‘how did you sleep and are you comfortable message’. This was the response I got:
I didn’t think much of it at the time, I just thought perhaps they had used the wrong key. I went over immediately to help them out. Sure enough the key didn’t work and the door would not budge. Oh horrors of all horrors why now on this incredibly hot day?
A line of sweat immediately popped up on my forehead. I was nearly 8 months pregnant at the time and must have looked totally ridiculous leaning over my huge belly to reach the key to wiggle it this way and that in the stubborn door lock. They were a young couple and I could sense their worry that I might at any minute go into labor and then what will they do?
I realised that I was not going to succeed so I gave into calling my engineer to sort the problem out. He always manages to fix things…. Well blow me down… not this time, that door was not going to budge.
Calling in the professionals
With the temperature sitting around 33°C (91.4°F) I realised I had no choice but to call in a professional locksmith. We had to get the doors open to cool the little sitting room down. I had also raved about how wonderful it was sitting in the courtyard garden on their arrival so I couldn’t let them down now… The problem was I had no idea who to call as we had never had this problem before?
I remembered seeing a key cutting service close to our local grocer. Hopefully they would have some locksmiths, I had no idea, but I was now desperate to get this door open. I gave them a call. To my delight they did have some locksmiths and there was one 20 minutes away.
Jean arrived in his Datsun 1400 to save the day. He had all number of tools at his disposal and had the door open in a few minutes. The lock had collapsed, he said, which happens every couple of years. He worked away some more and managed to get the lock working again – Yay! We didn’t have to replace the lock!
By this time the guests were fed up with us invading their space and they had disappeared to go and do some site seeing. I had to do something more I couldn’t just leave it at that.
Making Amends
The engineer suggested a complimentary breakfast at our favorite spot might just do the trick. Our cottage is self catering so we are not nearly equipped to whip up a breakfast ourselves. I raced off to The Countess to see if they could help. Mandy, whom is the manager there, is such a superstar. Not only was she willing to give them a breakfast the following day, she would also open a little earlier so that they could get on the road for their next leg of their journey.
I shuddered to think what kind of bad review would be waiting for us after this terrible ordeal. A bad review is any hosts’ worst nightmare as it sits there counting against you for the next year! This is what they said:
I couldn’t believe my eyes! It had been such a drama on the one day they had spent with us and they were still kind enough to leave 5-stars. We had made a terrible loss on this booking but for a review like that it really didn’t matter.
What I learnt
What I learnt when things go wrong was that even the worst situations can be turned into a positive review so don’t panic. My contingency plan is to keep a list of people I can call on should the need arise. This list includes Mandy! It was a great thing that we had such a good relationship with Mandy. I will certainly call on her again should we have another disaster like this one. Calling on Jean once a year to come and service our locks will also be part of that contingency plan.
Have you had an incident when things go wrong? What did you do about them? I would love to hear from you in the comments below.
Thank you for reading my post. If you would like to read more about being a host on Airbnb please follow the links to my other posts below:
Ultimate List Of Bedroom Essentials
Styling Your Space For Professional Photography
A dire situation well managed and therefore appreciated, well done!