Theatre of the Absurd Renter

Overheard today -

Someone rents a house on Sanibel Captiva.

The rental is booked through a travel agent.

The rental management firm accepts the booking.

The guest arrives on Sanibel Captiva with the address of the rental in his pocket, courtesy of the travel agency.

The guest goes directly to the property. Since he arrives before the previous guest has checked put, he and his family move right in.

(Important point: If you have ever shown up at at hotel before check in time, you know the staff will not let you into the room before it has been cleaned.)

He and his family move into the room bags and all. There vacation on Sanibel Captiva begins.

There is a problem with the power to a guest house. The owner has not paid the electric bill and the power has been cutoff. Upon notification, the rental manager immediately cuts a check (out of his own funds) to pay the electric company to restore the power.

Numerous additional trips are required as the guests require more dishes, more implements, more service. All is done promptly and with a smile. After all the guest comes first.

The guest was joined by a family fourteen and they stayed throughout the remainder of the rental.

Now the guest calls, demanding five of his days be credited because the house was not habitable.

Yet, his family used the house for the full term of the rental.

His complaint is the house was not clean. But he had not checked in at the rental manager's office and had gone directly to the house BEFORE it was cleaned. When the cleaning crew showed up, they could not do their job because the guest already had occupied the house.

The next complaint was that the house was not as it had been represented to him. Yet, the representation was not from the rental manager. It was from a third party travel agent, a party over which the rental manager had no control.

Yet the guest wanted his money back for five of his seven day rental because the travel agent had "misrepresented" the property. Yet the guest had never checked with the rental manager or the rental manager's web site to confirm the condition of the house.

Nevertheless, out of feeling of responsibility for a happy guest, the rental manager refunded a portion of the guest's fees.

It was not enough for this very demanding guest, who could not grasp that he was operating under representations from a third party that had never visited the property, that he had moved into the premises without checking in and prior to the cleaning and that he and his family had used the facilities for the full term of the rental.

They chose to complain only AFTER they had checked out.