Housekeeper Nightmare. What would you do?

[Luke Carl]

Here's the story. We've had this cleaning person and this property for just about a year. She's done some shady things in the past. 

1. I've caught her lying to me (told me a cabin was completely filthy and never let that guest back in there. She didn't know I was in town and visited that cabin earlier that morning and the guest left it cleaner than before they got there). 

2. She contacted a guest one time and asked for $7 because she had to mail their debit card back to them. Lesson learned there... never give cleaning person a guests address. Duh. 

3. She was constantly asking for extra money for cleans because it was "so disgusting". We quickly squashed that. 

4. She could never put the hot tub cover back on because her "back hurts" 

These are just off of the top of my head. 

Recently we had a guest call and say they thought they had bug bits. Yes. The bad kind. We called the housekeeper. She "looked at the house and the beds and didn't see anything." 

We called again the next day. "you know my son came home with bug bites the other day" 

So....  we fired her. 

We have reason to believe she costs us the following. 

$1000 for the treatment of the house. $1500 to replace box springs and mattresses (amazon has great deals btw)

$300 for a deep clean of the house to remove dead bugs and all the filth the old housekeeper left behind. It was bad. 

Upon doing inventory of our linens we are missing $370 worth of linens. After firing her I sent her an email disclosing exactly what is missing. She said "I don't have your curse word curse word and I don't want your curse word and I need my money and I will see you in court" several voicemail and a dozen nasty emails later all of which I ignored because I'm a little too busy to read these novels....  She contacted me again this morning and "did happen to find one set of sheets and 3 washcloths and I need full payment right now" 

I'm left with a decision. Do I withhold the $370 from her pay and risk having some broken windows, especially since this person lives right down the street and I live 4 hours away, or do I pay her in full just to get rid of her. Which would bring the grand total of what she cost me in the past week to around $4300 with the bookings that I had to cancel which of course enraged a few guests and was a customer service nightmare. 

Yet another chapter in my Vacation Rental book. I'd love to hear your thoughts! 

Anyone want to buy a cabin?? LOL! 

[Paul Sandhu]

Not to highjack this thread, but my cleaning lady does all 22 of my furnished rentals for free.  She also sleeps with me.