Broken/lost cutlery by Guests

[Dev4]

Dear Hosts!

I am a 'superhost' and I have been hosting for over a year now. I wanted to get some thoughts on how hosts handles misplaced / broken cutlery by guests. After a guest stay, I have noticed that there are either broken glasses or coffee mugs, missing spoons, etc. My thumb rule is that if the damages are under $20, then I do not request the guest to pay for damages. I charge a security deposit on all my listings. Some guests are nice enough and they inform upfront about the damages. But with most guest, my team only notices post check-out when the 1/2 items are missing.

What do you do? How do you prove that a glass (as an example) was broken? Since most guests would throw the broken glass. 

Regards,

Casadell

[Gerry-And-Rashid0]

@Dev4 

Hi there...I agree with your approach that it's really not worth the hassle of claiming for small amounts. 

I am also of the view that accidents happen - cultery goes missing, someone drops a glass (it's like finding odd socks - where is the other one!). We put a small amount by from each booking to cover replacing items from bed linen to other small items.

[Dev4]

@Gerry-And-Rashid0

Thanks for the reply. I apply the same practise for charging an additional amount to my cleaning fee for broken/missing items. I have contemplating to use plastic cutlery that  looks good but is made of plastic, so it is not easily broken. However, I am also concerned about how it will look and I am not big on plastics from an environment standpoint.

[Maria-Lurdes0]

I think it's a cost of doing business to replace broken/damaged items, and while I can see going with a more practical solution like Ikea cutlery instead of more expensive Oneida cutlery, I really feel that plastic cutlery is too cheap looking/feeling.   I DO have good quality plastic drinking cups, alongside glass ones, and it's helped with breakage as people seem to just grab the plastic glasses as they are a big bigger.   Coffee cups and mugs I buy from the local Dollar Tree and ended up replacing them every few months as they tend to get chipped.

I find that the cutlery item most often replaced is teaspoons!  I think people pop a spoon in their bag with a yogurt for their lunch and the spoon stays in the backpack or gets accidentally tossed with the yogurt container.  

[Robin4]

@Maria-Lurdes0 @Dev4 @Gerry-And-Rashid0

A bit tongue in cheek but do you know, there is a company in India that makes edible cutlery, and I believe they are about to branch out into edible crockery as well.....Solves a lot of problems, no washing up, no theft issues, just eat your meal and polish it off with the knife and fork.

I knew the guy who invented it here! He designed it for the take away food market but the Aussie government didn't think it was worth backing so he took it to India and is making a massive fortune.

A touch tacky in a bnb but what a great idea!

Cheers....Rob

[Ellen85]

I have IKEA cutlery AND plastic ware for that very reason.

[Ellen85]

There are some environmentally appropriate cutlery you can find online made out of other materials. They would probably go missing though!