Highly annoying French ski apartment check out - is this normal or are my family just dirty cochons ?

[rookiemere]

I posted in AIBU over the weekend but didn't get much response so think this might be quite specific to skiing rentals.

I booked a nice apartment through Booking.com and paid 60 euros extra for cleaning as we were leaving early and because I don't want to be cleaning on holiday. The changeover/cleaning lady was lovely when we arrived - sold me a jar of her DDs overinflated costly honey - I asked her what we needed to do on departure, strip the beds was all she said.

So Fast forward to leaving day. Floor is a bit dusty because outside is muddy and I've not cleaned the bathrooms, but nor have we left any skid marks on the toiled, and we've washed and dried dishes and cleaned the kitchen area.

It's a two bed apartment and pretty compact so not a huge job - with my low standards I reckon about an hour to get it presentable, maybe another 30-60 minutes for it to be sparkling, but 60 euros should pay for a couple of hours cleaning I would have thought.

Well I think you can guess what happens next. Cleaning lady arrives and starts muttering about how dirty it is. I said yes that's why we paid the cleaning fee ( bear in mind it's really not that bad). Oh she said, couldn't you have done a little cleaning at least.
With great reluctance she refunded the 500 euros breakage deposit and I hotfooted it out.

I'm still annoyed about it 3 days later. Similar thing happened in a ski rental a few years ago in same resort - again we'd paid the not inconsiderable cleaning fee. I'd like to point out we've never had issues like this in any other country, and I genuinely don't think we're that bad.

My take on it is she hoped to pocket the cleaning fee but hadn't budgeted in any time with changeovers to actually clean. I'm tempted to message the owner, but of course she'll say that we left the place in a disgusting mess so it's her word against ours.

Anyone else had similar experiences? I'm tempted to never rent from French owners again as it seems like a mismatch of expectations.

@BeepBoopBop you need to precise that french people have always been a pain in arse regarding the cleaning and that nothing but perfect perfection is ever good enough if you want your deposit back.

So it’s not that much that it’s traditional but rather that they’ve had no choice! I remember very well the fear that the owner wouldn’t be happy with a perfectly ok cleaning just because….

[quote rookiemere]@InvincibleInvisibility I do suspect a large part of the way I was treated was because I was not French.
It would have taken about two hours tops to get the apartment to a presentable standard- possibly less. Stupid me, giving the cleaner the opportunity to earn 60
Euros instead. [/quote]
Nope,
I can reassure you, you were treated like any other person, including the French.

Cleaning in rental property in France is a hot subject. The assumption is that you will have left the house/flat in a mess. I get the same sort of reaction and I’m French.

It's all about the mopping in France I find. It's annoying, because you can leave things cleaner than they were to begin with and they never notice those but there seem to be certain things they're very hot on. Mopping floors is high up there I think, sweeping is never enough.

This is all very helpful. I'm so relieved for our next holiday that I opted for a week in a hotel in Lanzarote in October now, rather than a gite in Morzine in the Summer.

So basically paying the cleaning charge means you still have to do the cleaning but may absolve you from some of the frankly battier expectations like cleaning windows. Not paying the cleaning fee means you need to do everything to a professional standard, but you're probably going to get tutted at anyway.

probably for the best that the rookie family have decided that ski holidays are not for us ( When I go with friends we stay in a chalet or hotel).

What's weird - and I say this as someone who is half French and manages holiday lets in other countries - French cleaning standards aren't higher, if anything, I'd say they're slightly lower, they just moan and nitpick more.

Also - the whole cleaning controversy - is slightly the lower end of the market, where - say 20-30 years ago guests would have done their own cleaning and even brought their own bedlinen and towels.

There's still as sort of resentment that hosts have to clean their own houses. They just don't quite get it.

Whereas - at the luxury end guests would never be expected to clean - they expect to send in armies of cleaners.

@rookiemere

This is all very helpful. I'm so relieved for our next holiday that I opted for a week in a hotel in Lanzarote in October now, rather than a gite in Morzine in the Summer.

So basically paying the cleaning charge means you still have to do the cleaning but may absolve you from some of the frankly battier expectations like cleaning windows. Not paying the cleaning fee means you need to do everything to a professional standard, but you're probably going to get tutted at anyway.

probably for the best that the rookie family have decided that ski holidays are not for us ( When I go with friends we stay in a chalet or hotel).

It means different things in different countries.

If you pay a cleaning charge in the UK or Italy or the US - you don't expect to do any cleaning.

At the higher end of the market cleaning is not a separate charge anyway - it's usually part of the rental price. (Except on Airbnb).

But in France - n'importe quoi.

I spent a summer working in France on a campsite (for a eurocamp/keycamp type company) cleaning the static caravans between guests. The company only really had British and Dutch customers, not French, but the Dutch nearly always left the the caravans spotless. The British ones weren’t filthy (generally) but had mainly just been given a once over without a thought to “I must leave it how I found it” which is how the Dutch seemed to do it.
I’m not complaining about the Brits, they did what I’d do and were generally fine, but frequently the ones the Dutch cleaned we didn’t even have to do anything, they were ready for the next guests. It did just seem like a cultural difference in expectations.

And some of them tipped. They did our cleaning job for us, and tipped us anyway!

Obviously I’m generalising a little bit but it was a very clear divide.

I am not going to be popular here but here goes.

The Brits have a bad reputation when it comes to leaving things messy/dirty in general in hotels and the like and I don't think it is undeserved in many cases.

I would not have left mud on the floor or left the bathroom without giving it a clean.

Also if this woman refunded you the money she is not just the 'cleaning lady'. She is likely to be someone higher up who might even run the place.

I assume the idea is that the cleaner will make the room ready for the next guests but not have to remove days of grime.

''It would have taken about two hours tops to get the apartment to a presentable standard- possibly less.'' Seriously if it takes the cleaner that long it means you have left a hell of al lot of more mess/dirt behind than is actually acceptable...

I've had similar in a French rental. I think I'm going to stick with renting off British ex pats in France now - more realistic expectations

@wingscrow so what's my 60 euros for then, if not 2 hours of cleaning?

I agree, it would have been a nice gesture to hoover - would have taken 10 minutes) ,and do a superficial clean of the bathrooms- another 15 mins tops. If I hadn't paid the additional cleaning fee I certainly would have done these things, but what with needing to leave at 8.30 am and being somewhat worried about getting to the airport on time, I didn't.

Also zero chance of DH or DS doing any cleaning, so the choice is which woman spends her time cleaning- the one who has been paid a cleaning fee or the holiday maker?

@wingscrow so why was OP charged a hefty cleaning charge if she was actually supposed to do it herself? Fair enough if it was clear from the outset and she wasn't charged for cleaning - but she was!

I can’t tell you how much better this thread makes me feel about an experience we had several years ago, if that helps at all, OP? (Also a people pleaser so I know exactly how you feel.)

We’d rented a gite in France from a Dutch owner who had just bought it that year from some English people - all the guest information was what the previous owners had provided, including reference to our rental cost including a final clean. Nevertheless we spent our whole final day cleaning. The owner ended up keeping a big chunk of our deposit claiming that we’d left the place a total state, sending photos as evidence showing (in total) a tissue on the floor that seemed to have fallen out of a pocket, the spot on the kitchen floor where the bin bag had rested before we took it out and left, and some fingerprints on the bathroom mirror that we’d missed. She’d also charged us to replace two extremely knackered sun umbrellas that had given up the ghost on us after what must have been years of heavy use, accused us of causing a fly infestation (in a rural house in France in a heatwave - we arrived to find the house full of unchanged fly papers from the previous holiday makers), told us off for leaving the sun loungers in a different arrangement and also for changing the sheets after a week using some we’d found in a cupboard, and telling her manager that we were doing so.

I was so upset as we’ve never before or since had any issue with our cleaning, and would have taken her to small claims if she’d been UK-based. I felt totally unfairly judged. But it seems we got caught between French and Dutch expectations. I do hope she looks back now, after years of presumably letting the house out, and at least feels slightly ashamed for accusing us of generating the flies.

@Doubleraspberry that was just sheer dishonesty, I don’t think it’s anything to do with nationality.

The security deposit is there for damage and breakages it’s not meant to be withheld for cleaning that can be fixed with a wipe. (Unless something has actually been stained and requires serious/professional cleaning).

She changed her own sun umbrellas at your expense.

To protect yourself from the fly claim it would have been judicious to report that at the start - however you were not to know that you were dealing with someone crooked.

@Doubleraspberry Yep that sounds about right.

I think @TatianaBis is right about being grumpy at the idea of actually cleaning the house/flat.
I remember the times when you had to bring your own bedlinen etc… and yes the expectation was that, when you left, you were leaving the house spotless, ready to use by the next person.

The problem, as usual, were people who took the mic and left the place in a state. And in a very French way, they answered with draconian rules where just leaving marks in a mirror means you are charged for the cleaning.

[quote TatianaBis]@Doubleraspberry that was just sheer dishonesty, I don’t think it’s anything to do with nationality.

The security deposit is there for damage and breakages it’s not meant to be withheld for cleaning that can be fixed with a wipe. (Unless something has actually been stained and requires serious/professional cleaning).

She changed her own sun umbrellas at your expense.

To protect yourself from the fly claim it would have been judicious to report that at the start - however you were not to know that you were dealing with someone crooked.[/quote]
We didn’t think to report the flies as every rural house we’ve ever stayed in during summer has quite a lot of them, and the house manager was in and out the whole time so could see them (there was a broken swing that he came to look at and ignore, and a wasp’s nest he also just told us to stay away from).

I’ve never had a security deposit touched before or since. For my own peace of mind I had to give her the benefit of the doubt that she’d never rented out a house before, we were unlucky to stay near the end of summer, immediately before she came out herself and presumably was taken aback at the wear and tear of months of guests, and didn’t realise that the umbrellas should be a business cost to her. But none of that’s an excuse, and although we had no recourse financially, we did write to the local town hall to say her swimming pool didn’t meet safety regulations nor did her approach meet expectations in a tourist host.

@Doubleraspberry I'm glad this thread gave you some comfort. Your story is way worse than mine as you actually spent time cleaning and you lost money. How aggravating.

I also went on a self catering holiday in France where the (horrible) caravan/ cabin had to be inspected before we were allowed to leave. Never, ever again. Hotels or a place where the cleaning is included.

We rented a large villa in France with 4 families for a big birthday. The security deposit was astronomical.. I can't remember exactly but maybe 5K. We apparently broke a clip on the cover for the hot tub and they held the entire deposit until they had replaced it.. the clip cost something like 8 euros.. we got our deposit back 3 months later minus the 8 euro.

@Ionlydomassiveones

We are still traumatised from a holiday in France that our cleaning had to be inspected before we were allowed to leave and given the passcode for the car park exit. We had two small children and the sheer anxiety it caused felt like escape from auchwitz. We will never go back to France - we tried it several times and could never get passed the sheer snotty attitudes everywhere.

What?!!! 😰

Yes, I've stayed in French rentals and I agree they're much stricter about leaving it clean than in England.

@rookiemere

The wider issue is that it has happened twice now. So I wondered if it was something peculiar to us or am I missing something about French rentals and how clean they should be left.

We stayed in these cabins on a campsite in France once and you had the option to clean yourself or pay the fee. One day I was in the reception and the receptionist was absolutely scandalising an English family for how they left the cabin. As well as charging the full fee of course. They had allegedly cleaned it themselves but not to the standards they required. However bad it was - and the couple were adamant it wasn't - nothing would have justified how she spoke to them. The french don't hold back in my experience. Try not to take it personally.

To add insult to injury, just got a French speeding fine through the post today. Seeing as the normally 2 hr trip took 5.5 hrs due to traffic, they must have been trying hard to find us going over the limit .

@ChateauMargaux

We rented a large villa in France with 4 families for a big birthday. The security deposit was astronomical.. I can't remember exactly but maybe 5K. We apparently broke a clip on the cover for the hot tub and they held the entire deposit until they had replaced it.. the clip cost something like 8 euros.. we got our deposit back 3 months later minus the 8 euro.

What agency was that with that they got away with that?

It doesn’t take 3 months to figure out the cost of a clip, normally you refund the deposit within a week.

Yes, only in France. We had an Airbnb last summer. I cleaned it meticulously, backed out cleaning whilst my family waited in the car and then got a snotty call from Madame because I had forgotten to put the dishwasher on BUT crucially I hadn’t paid 60 euros for a cleaning fee- so if you have paid that, you forgo the cleaning, in my opinion.
I am a teacher in France. My classroom cleaner leaves my a note on the board if there is as much as a scrap of paper on the floor ( she needs to read her job description).