Strange one this: I've just come back from a very pleasant three-night stay in Edinburgh. We stayed in a flat on Calton Hill that was very well-placed and, although compact, was fine for our purposes. For four of us it cost <£250 for the stay.
Anyway, on the first morning at about 8.30am, a window cleaner cleaned the outside windows. No big deal. However, the owner emailed me, as group leader, to apologise so profusely I thought it was a piss take, but no. The next morning, this time at 6.30am (presumably to carry out a changeover clean/tidy up), a cleaner appeared. She was politely sent away, and was very apologetic. I emailed the owner to politely ask her to ensure that the cleaner didn't appear again at 6.30am and to ask her to show up today after 10am, when we were leaving. The response this time was again excruciatingly apologetic. The owner offered us another weekend free of charge or a sizeable refund. Bugger me, all I wanted was to ensure we got a peaceful lie in after a hard night's, ahem, culture.
So what to do now...? When we showed up, the bedclothes were piled higgledy-piggledy on the beds and we had to put them on ourselves. The towels, although clean, were thrown into the bathrooms. The promised bottle of wine, milk and coffee weren't there. It felt like the owner had got her dates wrong, although the place was clean, if not spotless.
To me, these things were a minor inconvenience, but the owner seems to treat it like a catastrophe. (I'd hate to be a service provider to her!). Do I just tell her to forget about it, as we had a great stay; accept some small refund; or take her up on the free weekend? The latter, to me, would be totally out of proportion to the small inconvenience we experienced. I guess after a lifetime of camping my expectations are somewhat lower than her average visitor!