Tre säng, tre badrum pool hemma på en kanal i Pine Island, Florida

Couch and recliner have gone to the big furniture graveyard... New couch and chair installed.

Before this guest arrived, I sent thirteen separate messages trying to establish how many guests were coming and if they had any questions about check-in or the property. They answered none of what I asked. In my last mail before their check-in I asked that they would tell me their arrival time and message me when they got to the house. They ignored me. So I asked my property manager to keep a look out for them. They didn’t ’flag her down’ by chance, and she wasn’t ’riding by’ - she was deliberately in the area because I was so unsettled by the guest’s behaviour prior to their arrival that I asked her to be nearby. Check-in is 4pm. The guest called at 3.58 (despite me asking them to message because I might be unable to take a call). I messaged them within 2 minutes - 4.00 according to the message log. They did not respond. I messaged two further times at 4.15 and 4.16, No answer. In fact they didn't reply in any way for 25 hours. If they had responded I could have directed them to the two other lock-boxes and two further locations of hidden keys. Because the guest did not respond I contacted my property manager at 4.19 and asked her to let them into the house. She met them at 4.20. The log shows they entered the property at 4.37. The lock box worked (the guests used the keys taken from it for a week). The two other lock-boxes also work. And the hidden keys work too. In addition to not replying to any of my messages, this guest: 1) Rang me several times in advance of their stay and asked me if I was VRBO and tried to get me to take payment. Explaining to them that I was not VRBO did not stop this happening again 2) First approached me on a different site using a different name, then had a relative approach me separately on that site. Then they abandoned that and used a new name to book the property on VRBO, with no reference to the previous interaction, but providing a lower (and therefore cheaper) number of guests. 3) Only provided accurate guest numbers when I reminded them what they were saying in the booking wasn’t true, based on the information they provided on the other site using their other name. 4) Were so generally un-communicative with me that I ended up sending 26 messages to them before and during the booking process. They ignored 19 of them. No guest in two decades has ever behaved like that. 5) In one of the few replies they did send, the guest gave out to me for the boat lift not being available for use. It says clearly on the listing that the lift ‘may be available at a separate fee’. I was particularly surprised by this, because they never once mentioned bringing a boat. Never. No guest has ever just showed up at the house with a boat and trailer without even mentioning it in advance. I was even more surprised with the aggressive tone of their complaint about not having access to the lift - “Why do you think we booked this place?” As I explained to them in another message they ignored, 90% of our guests don’t bring boats, and those that do, without exception, have always mentioned it in advance. 5) Told me their “security was at risk” because the front doors “wouldn’t lock” because “the locks are terrible”. These are the doors that were locked when they arrived. I asked my property manger to go around to show them how to use the doors, but both times they were out. There is a guide to setting the deadbolts in these hurricane-impact doors in the welcome guide (complete with pictures). I messaged them this information and re-wrote it all for them in message to be double sure. After that they could work the doors just fine, just like every other guest has done - without any help - since 2007. 5) The guest gave out to me for there being a truck under the house - as I pointed out to them this is the truck I told them about in the check-in guide “look out for a white pick-up under the house”. I don’t know why they found the presence of a pick-up truck so problematic. It’s a nice truck. In summary - This guest would not communicate with me - between August 22 and November 22 I tried thirteen times to engage with them about their vacation, what they needed, what questions I could answer and so forth. The totality of their engagement about their stay across that three month period was this sentence - “would you send me the address for the house.” In three months and thirteen tries, that was it. Basically, this guest created a series of problems they didn’t need to have, then blamed the person who saw those problems coming and put contingencies in place to minimise the impact of them. In twenty years I have never had a guest behave like this.