Deposit or Not

[Medoc Bob]

Hi I have been renting for 2 years now and touch wood everything has gone well we have booked the weeks we wanted to and apart from one internet issue when our wifi went down we have had no issues.

I was wondering does everyone take a breakage deposit? Over 2 years we have had a few damages, a broken parasol, broken iron and bit of crockery and we use a cleaner to do our turnaround a full inventory is impossible to do after each guest and unless damage is obvious or we meet guest who own up to a breakage then it is almost impossible to prove and it just seems another thing to manage and I was thinking of scrapping breakage deposits for 2012

I would love your thoughts

[la vache!]

A few owners on this forum don't take a security deposit - and I'm one of them. I stopped taking one 5 years ago as for 3 gites and the number of lettings I had it was too more hassle to take one than not. I've had a few things broken, usually people have owned up to them (the most expensive being a broken glass/alu table) but most things break because of wear and tear and in the garden, wind. Perhaps one or two lets a year the houses are left in an unacceptable state of cleanliness, but it still is a lot easier for me not to take one than to take one.
There will be plenty of people who disagree...

[Hells Bells]

I've always taken one. My apartment manager looked after some properties which didn't. She now insists her other owners do so.

[apexblue]

Same as LV - too much bother.

[Corfudeb]

I do take a security deposit and have been thankful when I could retain half of it against a large bill for extra cleaning and laundry, new kitchen mat and specialist cleaning materials for a heavily stained floor. Have only had to do this once but it may happen again so I shall continue to take one.

[Moliere]

I've invoked it on only a few occasions, but I'm glad I have it.

Interestingly, I have an intriguing position at the moment - I had a let at the end of August to a family returning from 2010 - last year a glass side table was broken - they claimed it just suddenly shattered (had my doubts); this year, guess what (?) its companion table "suddenly shattered" - ooh, what a coincidence (!) after 8 years of renting and many hundreds of guests, these two tables broke themselves whilst the very same people were staying! Lordy, lordy, what a thing. Anyway, at the end of their stay, the guests departed in such a rush (late of course) that they left all the windows wide open and the front door too! It was also pretty messy inside, for completeness' sake.

So, for about 6 weeks now, I have been waiting for the keys to be returned (a requirement for return of their deposit) so as to ask them about their behaviour - well, no sign of keys to date. I wonder if I'll ever get them? Nonetheless we weren't burgled and £200 certainly replaces the tables.

So I was always one of the deposit-taking camp and it it proved its worth on a handful of occasions - personally I didn't find it a hassle and it offered me an extra chance to engage with the guests after they had returned to elicit some extra feedback. As well as a bit of recovery of gratuitous damage.

Mols

[CarolineH]

I don't take a security deposit either. I never have - this stems from a holiday that I took in a gite shortly before starting my own where I had to give 150 euros in cash and then was handed it back when I left - hassle for me as a customer because I had to change it back into pounds...

So I puzzled about how to take a deposit without providing hassle for my clients and couldn't work it out. All deposits and balances are taken by credit card and I have the following wording in my T's&C's "To cover any damage or breakages, we ask for details of a credit card to be given when paying the balance for your holiday. No payments will be taken from the card without prior notification."

Now I've never used this - and I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't hold in a court of law, but it's there ....

I also think that it's a whole different ball-game if you are an on-site owner because you can check and sort out problems on the spot.

[kg1]

We always take a deposit £150.00 (£200.00 with a dog) & were glad of it when some guests decided they wanted to smoke on a rainy week-end in our non smoking house. They hung out of the windows & stood at the open doors & in the process dropped ash & stubbed cigarettes out on our door sills & window sills which being UPVC melted. We did get repairs done but it cost them all of their £200.00 (the dog was no problem though!).

[lorca]

Nope - not worth the hassle.

[katiebythesea]

We take a deposit of £250/275 Euros - normally done by bank transfer or cheque and whilst it is a bit of extra work think it has been worth it, have had a couple of times when we didn't return it all due to some damage. Think it makes a psychological difference to the way people treat the place especially as we are not on site and can't see what is going on or be there to establish a rapport with the guests. Some that have done damage did not seem to see what the problem was so would not have offered to pay for anything.
Mind you I have heard of some places taking ridiculously large deposits of over 1000 euros!! Can't see many people gooing along with that!

[tavi]

I've always taken one since we started in June. All guests have paid by internet bank transfer to my UK or Euro account and my repayments have been the same way so no trouble whatsoever.

I've never needed to discount against it...touch wood!

[esentziak]

Sometimes I do and sometimes, I don't !

Most of our clients come from non-Euro and non-Sterling areas.

I work via an owners' association and an agency and when I joined, I just took the manager's advice and/or went in line with most other owners.

The deposit is 700 euro if by cheque or 500 if in cash.

If clients have a bank account in a euro or sterling zone, I take a cheque and don't lodge it to our bank account.

Some people come with the 500 euro cash without my having to mention it, they have seen it on the website and it does not cause them any problems.

For non-euro zone clients, I take a cheque drawn on their bank, be it the USA, Canada, Australia, etc. I don't lodge it anyway and if I had to, it would be because there were major damages so bank charges would probably be an insignificant part.

So it is a bit "à la tête du client" !

We entered our third year this February and have had the glass top of a coffee table broken (repairs 35 euro) and a broken kettle lid, but the kettle was old anyway.

Things like saucepans and frying pans which have suffered a bit: I don't bother as they need replacing on a regular basis anyway.

Extra cleaning and the apartment being left in a total mess: happened once at the beginning, had to give deposit back in cash as client from Sweden and leaving for the airport and I totally under-estimated how long it would take to get the apartment ready for the next guest, but I learned from it and if it happens again, the client will not get away with it .

Dominique

[greenbarn]

We stopped taking a deposit this year - our third year in business. We've got three units, weeks, weekends and midweeks, so that's a lot of hassle.

Sure, there's been times when the place needed extra cleaning, which would've meant deducting say twenty quid from the deposit; we didn't - not worth the aggro in the great scheme of things. We would never have charged for minor breakages, and proving that something wasn't a pure accident would also have been problematic. The only time we had damage that was significant but within the amount of deposit the guest was mortified, showed us what had happened, and asked us to let her know if the deposit didn't cover it and she send us the extra. (There was a certain irony; the guest had shut her two dogs in the wetroom while she did a very good job of cleaning the place. Unfortunately the dogs decided to chew through the thermostatic control on the bottom of the towel heater )

Like LV (whose approach to the topic and experience swayed my decision) we're on site. We're also in the UK, and don't have expensive outdoor items like swimming pools that can incur big costs if guests are negligent, and most of our guests are out during at least part of the day.

I don't think there's a one size fits all answer to this. No - make that I'm certain there isn't, there's so much recurring debate on LMH about deposit taking!

[Medoc Bob]

I am seriously thinking of going sans deposit. We only rent in the peak 6 weeks ( our daughter is lucky and gets 10 so we still get half of July )
As I mentioned in my first post one of the items of damage was an iron. It only cost 30€ so it was not a money issue. However who broke it was from a safety perspective. If it was our last renters, so be it they were aware it was damaged.
However if it was our first or 2nd families, then there was a safety and reputation issue for subsequent families.....and did the breakage deposit stop the culprit ( I don't mean that in a harsh term, as accidents happen ) owning up to the damage.


Bob

[Nightowl]

I had some one last week who was very apologetic that she'd broken the 'glass in the fridge'. When my colleague went to do the cleaning she reported back that the fridge was fine, no breakages,.... but the front door had been left wide open since the guests left. Nothing missing luckily....

I emailed the guest and said that we'd found nothing wrong in the fridge, was it a drinking glass she'd broken..

yes it was

Of course we don't deduct for that...

but I did mention... the cleaner found the front door open...

she said, oops, we left in a bit of a hurry, must have forgotten...