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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To not leave holiday villa at designated time tomorrow?

371 replies

Nextphonewontbesamsung · 03/08/2019 01:20

We are staying in a rural village in the south of France and are supposed to check out of our villa at 10.00 am. Howver, tonight there is a concert in the village square (our villa overlooks this square) and there is a band that have played a 7 hour set at FULL VOLUME. They have gone from Ed Sheeran and Coldplay covers to full on heavy metal and still going strong at 2.14am local time. Currently we're into about the 10th minute of their homage to Feels Like Teen Spirit. I have my alarm set for 8am so that we can be up early to finish packing and cleaning. Aibu to move my alarm back by at least an hour? We won't be ready to leave by 10 but I have a long drive tomorrow and it is not safe when so sleep deprived! Needless to say I am enormously fucked off!

OP posts:
NutHo · 03/08/2019 09:52

How self important are you?
Why do you think you are in a position to give yourself a late check out?
If I were the owner seeing this I would deduct from your deposit for every minute after 10am you leave and for every minute of extra cleaning required.

m00rfarm · 03/08/2019 09:53

We have properties in the Algarve. Our cleaner will not go in before the current guests have left. FOr those of you who say you have never met a cleamner, she does not go into the house or make her presence obvious until the guests have left. It is pretty easy to see when people are still in the house.

One of our properties is 3 bedroom, two bathroom, with pool and terraces. It takes 6 hours to clean properly, strip the beds, remake them, get the pool area cleared, find everything that has been moved and put back to the correct place, check the first aid kits, check all light bulbs and replace, replace all soap and shower gels, clear out fridge, freezer, check all cupboards for random food. It is NOT a five minute job. If one item is in the wrong place, or something is dirty, our rating on the booking websites goes down. We need every second to get our property ready for the next guests.

And it is not the responsibility of the owner of the property to advise you of concerts or other potentially noisy happenings. Most of the time unless they actually live in the village as well, they have no idea of anything happening.

Owners and cleaners of properties have lives as well. For four months a year we get no weekends, people arriving at 2pm turn up at 10pm. People leaving at 10am leave at 11am. No consideration to the people who are trying to work around this. In a hotel, the cleaners can just move to a different room to clean. If I have cleaners waiting to clean three houses on the same day, they are often 5 miles apart. Most cleaners do not drive, so I have to arrange transport for them. Driving to a different house wastes another 15 minutes. The schedule has been arranged usually for MONTHS in advance (as most bookings for us are already in place by then).

And cleaning around people? Cleaning means cleaning a room and then leaving it clean. Not allowing random people to come back in to "just pick up a toothbrust" or "just use the loo". How would you like to come into your holiday accommodation knowing that the toilets had been used before you arrived, the hand towel is wet or dirty, that your bed did not look well made, or that someone had traipsed sand through the bedroom. All of these would be perfect once my cleaner had finished, but if your kid comes through the cleaned areas, then all of this is likely to happen.

This thread has made me irrationally angry perhaps as I have a manic weekend of linen and beds (I do these and the cleaner does the rest) - and I KNOW FIRST HAND how long it takes to get a property ready to the right standard. I also know my cleaner works at the speed of light, not stopping for anything until she is finished, but it still takes us up to 6 hours to do a turn round on a three bed two bath property.

And finally how DARE one of you think it is appropriate to write a snotty email about the concert to the owner, and then give them bad feedback. This could be their livelihood that you are messing around with. And funnily enough, your refusal to leave on time could leave the NEXT guests leaving valid poor feedback because the property was not ready on time or that it was not cleaned to the correct standard.

Get a grip and take responsibility for your own life. Not work out ways you can impact your "misfortune" forward to other people.

MsTSwift · 03/08/2019 09:55

Is it wrong to want more of those emails? The self righteous tone and air of satisfaction that the author has sorted everything out for the op is frankly priceless

CallmeAngelina · 03/08/2019 09:55

find the email address of the concert organiser and let them know how disappointed I was with their lack of consideration towards people who had travelled to visit their area, only to be aurally assaulted until 2:30am, without any prior warning

THIS is why Europe hates us!

FrannySalinger · 03/08/2019 09:56

MsTSwift i know, they are just brilliant!

gregoire · 03/08/2019 09:57

I'd find it cathartic (once I was safely home – or I’d dictate it to DH to help me stay awake as I drove!) to find the email address of the concert organiser and let them know how disappointed I was with their lack of consideration towards people who had travelled to visit their area, only to be aurally assaulted until 2:30am, without any prior warning. I'd also leave shitty reviews all over the internet for anything or anyone connected to it - but then I can be really petty!

Alright, psycho. You would really leave shitty reviews for the owners over a concert they weren't in charge of and probably didn't even know about because of your need for catharsis? Jeez.

And your insane, emotionally manipulative email is a peach as well!

StarlightIntheNight · 03/08/2019 09:58

If the cleaner is coming, then don't clean tomorrow. No need. I would have finished most of the packing in the night, while you couldn't sleep as then you would only really need 30 mins to finish up in the morning.

Smokesandeats · 03/08/2019 09:59

That email is hilarious!

C305 · 03/08/2019 10:02

Surely that email must be a joke 😂 it's amazing

TonTonMacoute · 03/08/2019 10:02

Agree with others, YABVU.

Haven't RTFT, but get the impression that OP would be less than impressed if she turned up at a holiday villa at 4pm, and it wasn't ready because the previous people had slept in because of a noisy concert the night before.

FrannySalinger · 03/08/2019 10:04

Betsy, can you please write an email from the perspective of the guests who have to check in later today because op slept in and the cleaners couldn't do their job? Please?

my2bundles · 03/08/2019 10:04

The cleaners have a schedule they need to stick to otherwise it means working past their finish time and delaying guests. You are on holiday in France on a Friday night, did you really expect silence?

Hecateh · 03/08/2019 10:08

If the music was keeping me awake I would have got up and done the cleaning and packing until the music stopped and then could have slept in loinger the next day and still got out on time.

Toddlerteaplease · 03/08/2019 10:10

Laughing out loud at the email. Surely no one would actually be so arrogant as to send it!

myrtleWilson · 03/08/2019 10:10

I'd like Betsy to do a compilation of her "Emails For All Occasions"

Doubleraspberry · 03/08/2019 10:13

I think Betty should do a book of those emails. A great Christmas stocking filler! Anyone else remember Henry Root?

This thread is bringing back horrible memories of a vile owner years ago who kept half our deposit for nonsense reasons. Her house manager turned up as we were leaving and we had spent the entire previous day cleaning. We walked him through the house (dead on time to leave) and he said nothing. We later got emails from her accusing us of being disgustingly dirty, with ‘evidence’ like children’s fingerprints on a window, the spot on the kitchen floor where the final bin bag had rested on the way out, and a tissue on the floor that none of us had used. She also billed us to replace knackered patio stuff that had clearly seen years of service and had given up the ghost during the week we stayed and blamed us for the fact that there were flies in her rural house. The whole thing was so unpleasant I have refused ever since to stay in a privately-owned rental.

OMGshefoundmeout · 03/08/2019 10:13

I went on holiday to Goa some years ago. The accommodation was bamboo huts on the beach. Very remote, very peaceful, very beautiful - until about midnight when goods trains started trundling by, blowing their whistles throughout the night. The train line was actually a good half mile away but because the nights were so quiet it sounded like they were the other side of the bamboo walls. One of my fellow guests suggested contacting the train company and asking them to stop running these trains as it was disrupting our sleep. She seriously thought that distribution of food and goods across an entire continent was less important than some tourists getting some unbroken zzzs! In fact after the first couple of nights we all got used to it and slept perfectly well.

At the time I thought my fellow guest was shockingly entitled, nI’m wondering if it she is actually the OP? Desperately travelling the world trying to find somewhere quiet to sleep?

TSSDNCOP · 03/08/2019 10:13

Does someone have a link to the other thread where Betsy has composed an e-mail? The one on here is fantastic.

Toddlerteaplease · 03/08/2019 10:14

@myrtleWilson just laughed so hard at that it actually hurt!

TooTrueToBeGood · 03/08/2019 10:18

Is to out-arsehole a legitimate verb? As in "Well done Betsy, you have out-arseholed the OP".

Alsohuman · 03/08/2019 10:19

@TSSDNCOP, here you go. Penultimate page.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3654597-Family-asking-to-stay-in-our-home-when-we-are-away

spam390 · 03/08/2019 10:21

What on earth has the entertainment in the village square got to do with what time you have to leave the villa ?

I don't get it. The two are totally separate issues.

You've to leave the villa by 10, then you leave the villa by 10 !

You've no right to alter the leaving time cos it doesn't suit you.

If the band kept you up, you could've used the time to pack and clean.

Stop being a bloody snowflake !

Doubleraspberry · 03/08/2019 10:23

As they are house cats, they must not leave the safety of our house; they have not been vaccinated so any interaction with a different cat could be fatal to them.

Wonderful stuff.

missbattenburg · 03/08/2019 10:26

BetsyBigNose your email is a fucking classic.

Send that OP. It'll cheer the owners day up no end with a laugh. Email a complaint to the concert organisers as well (who presumably advertised their concert somewhere so did give notice); they also need a good chuckle after pulling off such a big concert.

chaoscategorised · 03/08/2019 10:27

'Aurally assaulted' 😂😩