Hey team,
So I posted recently about my interaction with Peerspace regarding adding a $50 extra charge to a guest who did not return our studio to its original condition and damaged one of our self-made sets. It was minimal but the response from Peerspace has left us concerned for future incidents and protection for our studio in the case of worse damage and gross mishandling of our items.
How have other hosts handled penalty fees/fines/extra charges for things? Do you list in your host rules certain prices for things such as re-setting fees, damage fees, no smoking fees etc. And how have you handled such costs if your rules were broken? If you have fees for things like “Cyclorama re-paint fee” have you determined the price based off of only the products used (in this case, paint/roller where a receipt can be provided) or did you factor in labor time too? Because PS said they cannot accept personal/labor time and work without a third party invoice. We fix and clean our own sets, but we cannot invoice ourselves. They said they cannot accept arbitrary prices but could not answer us as to how else we can price the things in our studio. Aren’t all our personal rental prices, over-time and add-on’s already arbitrary?
It seems that Peerspace cannot directly answer my question as to how we can guarantee protection on things if they don’t have a retail price/third party invoice. Regardless if charges are stated in our rules. They denied us charging our “Re-setting fee of $50” regardless of it being in our rules and having video evidence of the guest not meeting our studio standards. They denied us charging a fee for damage and extra cleaning to one our self-made set backdrops, one that we constructed and designed ourselves and so cannot provide a store-bought receipt that proves it’s value, regardless of having evidence of the actual damage and us having to fix/replace it.
We’re left wondering how we can charge for anything now if so much of our studio is self-made art pieces and vintage/antique items not available to re-purchase if needed to be.
The only answer PS suggested was to remove guests who break our rules (even though we explained that extra charges are usually determined at the end of a booking) OR add these as “Add-on’s”
So now I’m wondering how to go about that too, for example do we make an add-on charge for “Damaging our 1958 classic car” or “Spilling food on our art work” or “Purposefully vomiting on our Cyc floor” Our list will be ridiculous. (yes these things have actually happened)
I just don’t understand how we can have specific and clearly written rules for our studio but when they are broken by guests, we’re not able to pursue the listed charges even with evidence.