Guest misconduct.
I currently have guests staying in my apartment that arrived on the 28th. There was a problem with the kettle, so I took another along to replace it. Upon leaving, I noticed the key was in the door but without the power cut-out fob! I mentioned to the guest and he said that he went jogging and some others in his family stayed in the apartment. My thoughts are that they go out and leave everything powered up (such as AC) but cannot prove this as I'm living away from the property. I told him that the two must remain on the ring and he put them back together - my guess is that he took it off again as soon as left, but cannot prove this until my electricity bill comes in. I have a €50 deposit. What are people's thoughts on this? my bills are 3 monthly, so retaining the deposit is awkward. The guests don't speak much English which complicates matters. When they leave, I will solder the ring so it can't be taken off, but the fob is only plastic, so future people will probably have the cheek to break the fob off...
We inherited a system of credit card sized keys for the doors and power, most unsatisfactory as any card will operate the power switch!
As these have been slowly failing we've been replacing them with the key fob style you mention, we then solder the key ring shut. If the two are parted we consider it customer damage and charge for new keys.
One of our clearly stated policies is that the electricity is designed to be off when the guest exits the room (except the fridge and charging socket) and interfering with this system carries a charge in itself.
The big posh hotels now have systems where everything can be monitored and overridden from a programme on the hotel computer, me likey but cannot affordy!
Seems I'll have to solder this ring too, I neglected to do it but will do so before the next guests. I did pop back to see if these guests were out, they were and the air con was off, hopefully they're playing ball now!
Electricity is very expensive in my country, so this is what I do:
1) include in house rules that electricity is on Fair Usage monitoring. I guess myself what does it mean ? but after reading this kind of words guests started to behave
2) remind anywhere I can and as many times as I write in this forum ? I keep sending them messages before and during their stay.
Some guests when check out write me a message that they behaved very well...turned aircon when left... ?
Is there anything else I can do?
Oh, I also buy everything Inverter now and my electricity bill became 3 times smaller.