Airbnb host refusing to send AirPods without me paying?

[moryn]

Recently got back from a short break in Paris.

I left my AirPods on the bed, the host refuses to send them back unless I pay £50 plus postage.

AIBU to think this is ridiculous?

But if it's AirBnB, the host can leave a review about you as well; and they can certainly respond online to your review.

It seems a really mean thing to do, though, and it can easily backfire if they respond to your bad review by making you look foolish and unrealistic, just by sticking to the facts and detailing every stage of the task for them/their agents or employees to get your forgotten items back to you, after you decided to vacate without checking properly that you were ready to vacate.

It would have been the easiest thing in the world for them to just keep/bin your stuff and insist repeatedly that your item wasn't found, if they'd actually wanted to be dishonest about it. Indeed, if another guest had already arrived before you alerted them or before they had time to check, the new guest could very easily pocket your valuable, easily-hidden item, deny all knowledge if asked and then the host would be none the wiser. Yet there are people on here who would gleefully expose and denounce the host as a thief, even though there was nothing they could possibly have done or known about somebody else's left-behind item.

I think, realistically, it's incumbent on the guests to check that they haven't left anything before leaving; and if it turns out that they have left something of value (or sentimentally precious), they should consider themselves lucky if they do manage to get it back; and if so, expect it to cost them a fair amount. Bottom line: if it's important to you, make a note to check you've packed it before you leave - surely this is obvious?

They're also sending something outside of the EU, if you're in the UK. Might involve extra, annoying paperwork.

They live in Paris, it’s unlikely to take anything like an hour to get to a post office.

Just because the airbnb is there, it doesn't necessarily mean the owner lives there, though?

No - technically they could live in another country altogether for all we know, but somebody has to go to the property to clean it so it’s reasonable to assume the same person will return the item (at a local post office)

I think it could well cost the Airbnb owner close to that to mail them back. Lots of city airbnbs are managed by absent owners who pay third parties to do things like cleaning. Even at minimum wage, with whatever employers have to pay on top, they're looking at around £20 an hour. And if it's an ad-hoc task, they have to receive money, pay for the packaging material and document expenditures, they probably aren't in a minimum wage role.

Going to get packaging material, packing them up and then taking them to a post office (or French equivalent), waiting in line, making the transaction and traveling back and then documenting what they've done could easily be well over an hour, all told.

Add on the overheads of whichever company the owner contracts with and £50 is probably not an unreasonable sum to charge to be sure they aren't out of pocket.

The person that goes to clean it is probably contracted through another company, who will have their own system for charging that will include overheads. That person will also have to either pay for the packaging and postage in advance or receive an advance from their employer to cover costs. Then they will have to document that. Which may not be something they're trained or set up for, or even prepared to do as a cleaner. They may have no idea where the post office is or what to ask for. They may not know anything about packaging electronics with lithium ion batteries for the mail and so there is a lot of potential overhead to take into account.

But if it's a paid employee having to do it - rather than the owner/host 'doing a favour', 'being a decent human being', wanting to keep potential returners sweet, not wanting bad reviews or whatever - surely that's even more justification of having a charge that reflects the work involved, as well as all of the admin?

So an experienced and skilled cleaner is paid to do a quick yet efficient turnaround on a holiday cottage/AirBnB; and if it's one that people only hire for a whole week, their earning power for that job is already limited. Say they're contracted to do three intensive hours every Saturday, how can you expect them to take possibly an hour or more, to do all of the admin and logistics of arranging to package, pay for and post a parcel, completely unpaid?

Even the extra admin and audit trail of them having to pay upfront and claim that back from the host, who then has to claim it back from the former guest, is not insignificant.

And the chances are that the cleaner is either semi-retired, a mum with young kids or similar, who has deliberately chosen a three-hour-a-week job to suit their lifestyle and responsibilities and won't take kindly to having their week's working hours increased by a third (whether paid or not); or will otherwise have lots of other cleaning jobs here and there throughout the week, and simply won't have time to go to the post office during opening hours!

How’s the cost of living in France and Paris relevant?

No but the person who attends to the Airbnb presumably dies. They’re not likely to have sent the AirPods to the owner in another place are they?

Would you be able to get a new pair of AirPods for £50?

I recently paid £50 to have my phone shipped back from Singapore. I’d left it in the taxi to the airport and the driver found it and returned it to the hotel he picked us up from. I made the arrangements for it to be picked up but the hotel did put it in a Jiffy bag for me.

I think a fee on top of postage is fair enough, to cover packaging and time. £50 is incredibly steep though, I’d expect to pay £25ish.

Organise your own courier to pick them up, that’s what I’ve done previously when things have been left behind

Package them - padded envelope
queues at post office -courier service
complicated rules -courier service will deal

so not massive inconvenience so as long as the delivery courier is paid which it will be, then the additional fee should be about an hour for time spent and 25 quid would seem reasonable.

Maybe a mumsnetter in Paris can help?

I’d guess it’s not the host themselves returning the item but an employee who’s charging for their time, in addition to postage and packaging costs. That could end up being quite expensive for the host.

This is the air bnb version of emailing the school isn’t it!

if I were a host I’d not be returning items to people. Too much hassle.

My friends air BnB is 4 hours drive away so there is no way she would be posting anything back until the end of season shut down. The property manager would have to do it and £50 sounds reasonable to me. Plus postage. It's unlikely to take less than an hour to go to property, find them, package then go to PO to send them and go home.

Staff wages? Ridiculous.

They should be charging postage costs only. Leave a bad review OP, that’s awful service.

£50 plus postage would be reasonable for their time and effort. It's not that easy to send things to the UK now with additional forms to fill in.

I wouldn’t expect my cleaner to work for an hour for free buying packaging, finding parking, sitting in high-season traffic, queuing in the post office etc. Many hosts don’t live on site, so someone has to do it. That’s an hour out of the cleaner’s day where she can’t be doing her actual job. Of course reimbursement is fair.

I work in a hotel and if someone leaves something we generally charge (depending on the item) an amount for packaging, the postage costs, and an hour's labour, which last time iirc amounted to around £20...

£50 seems steep so I'm guessing they've checked out the cost of you replacing them and are chancing their arm 😂

As pp have suggested, there's always an insurance claim...?!

That’s a lot of detail and assumptions about a situation neither of us know anything about. The opposite could equally be true; the owner lives next door, has oodles of spare time and the post office is at the end of the road. I guess we’ll never know, will we 😂

The Air BnB is in Paris.

You will leave something important behind on your next trip as karma for that smug and obvious comment, and I hope the experience makes you more patient and understanding with others.