Holiday cottage dirty dishes question

[thetinsoldier]

Staying in ‘luxury’ cottage. It cost £1510 for the week.

All v nice, but most of the dishes have been put away from dishwasher dirty - one was absolutely clatter in something brown. Chocolate? The previous guest can’t have failed to see it was dirty!

Both oven trays were oily to touch with encrusted food on them. One was unusable as the surface was peeling off.

There were no wooden spoons.

The two frying pans were badly scratched and unusable.

We went out and bought a frying pan and wooden spoons (which we will take home). Owner is very apologetic and asking what she can do to make it up to us. She has already given us an extra bottle of Prosecco.

What would you want/expect in compensation?!

You are generous then 😊
Yes, I could look for properties only with dishwashers, but on a holiday, we don't cook every meal at the accomodation. Plus, its just DH and myself, so happy to hand wash if there isn't one.

We’re veterans cottage holidayers, and keep a Tupperware packed with a mini bottle of up liquid, a mini antibacterial surface spray, a small washing up sponge, half a dozen dishwasher tabs, a couple of thin tea towels, some klippits, and ziplock bags. Just sling it in with the packing and we’ve always got enough to cover any shortfalls without having to find a supermarket.

And a decent knife. I love a Victorinox tomato knife because you can cut bread with it but also peel or cut up vegetables. Or to put it another way when my sister was travelling she wanted "a knife you could cut bread with and butter it as well" and it works a treat for that.

Never stayed in a rental house yet with enough knives and certainly not ones which are sharp enough.

You are quite right, of course, and I do have a serrated mid-length all purpose knife just like that in the same box, along with the picnic sporks so we can pick up or pack a lunch :)

The cleaner/cleaners often won't be doing one property in the 4-5h window, though - in a holiday town, they will be changing beds, hoovering, cleaning loos, unloading the dishwasher etc etc in one place then moving on.

There is not enough time for them to take out a pile of plates and see if the middle ones were cleaned properly, or count utensils.

But when you're paying for more than an hour's work, you should be getting that work. If the owner is paying them for much less than they're charging the people letting the property, that's the owner's fault.

Ok - but if I pay my cleaner at home for 3 hours (say) she still doesn't check the dishes in the cupboard and count the spoons.

Yeah but that's your house. You use the crockery. You will be the same people using it again.

Of course I understand that. I’m saying that no matter how long a gap between checkout and check in, it’s unlikely that a cleaner would be able to check everything.

We do this too.

But food contact items? That's more important than vacuuming the floor if the owner has set clear guidance and understands risk?

I think the risk of someone taking a visibly dirty plate out of the cupboard and using it without washing it is minimal.

Plus it’s not just severity, it’s probability weighted risk. The risk of a prior guest having put stuff away dirty is fairly low in the first place. Whereas a floor that hasn’t been hoovered for a week of guests going to and fro will almost certainly need a vacuum. And there’s a non-zero chance - probably higher than the “dirty dishes prior guest” chance - that the next guests will have a dust sensitivity.

I don’t think we are going to agree on this!

@LazyCatLtd you really ought to read people’s posts properly before attempting to correct their maths.

Air BnB don't set pricing, each individual owner sets their own. Air BnB is literally just a marketing platform.

Ducks in a row!!!

Call 999

NOW!!!!

That would be every single utensil, piece of cutlery, plate, bowl, glass, cup, pan, scissors, probably more that I cant remember.

Luxury experience for £1510 a week?
You fell for advertising.
Nothing at that price is luxury.
You can’t even get a centreparc lodge for a family of 4 for a week for double that price from May onwards.

£10k is what you pay for a basic luxury cottage per week.

Says who?

That would be me and the centreparcs website.
£1560/ week doesn’t get you much these days.

Center Parcs isn’t luxury. It’s aspirational: aimed at middle class families who want to entertain their kids for the week with loads of activities and who don’t want to go to Butlins.

And it’s absolute nonsense that you have to spend 10k a week for a ‘basic luxury cottage’. Absolute bollocks. Also tautology.

What is ‘luxury’ anyway? Is it peace and quiet? A wonderful view? Solid gold taps?! To me, it’s a house that’s solid, good quality, with furniture, showers, kitchens etc that are better than you have at home… and things you don’t have at home, e.g. a hot tub, games room, etc.

And of course I wasn’t ‘falling for advertising’ - what a weird take! I looked at all the photos, knew what I was paying for.

£10k?!

you’re not looking in the right places. We stay in UK holiday cottages most years. We’ve had some fabulous stays in fabulous,comfortable, well equipped and luxurious places for less than £2k for a week during school hols. Copper baths, secluded homes with views, hot tubs, star watching domes, waterfall showers, beautiful linen, denby crockery etc etc.

She’s done enough. You shouldn’t be asking for anything else at all - she’s apologied and given a gift . It’s hardly awful and the cottege wasn’t that expensive. Can’t believe you’d ask for something else?!

“Hot tubs”

A 'gift' of an extra bottle of probably bulk-bought Prosecco. Whoop.

As for the cottage not being that expensive, maybe it's not the most expensive cottage you could rent, but it is nonetheless a lot of money to be discovering dirty plates and oven trays, a lack of cooking implements and unusable pans. Actually I'd expect (and have always got) better than that in much cheaper properties.

£210-ish per night is not a high price, especially if you’re in a larger property. Since Covid I’ve struggled to find simple self catering for 3 adults under £100 a night.
Says who? Says me.
Rural Wales, low season, 4 nights booked well in advance.
£580 including Genius discount on Booking.com.