> We turned up to face building/maintenance work

Building work...

... conjures up images of scaffolding, skips, rubble, dust, cups of tea, football talk and the Daily Sport.

What these guests were in fact "faced with" was a carpenter and builder working in the back yard (re-slating a one square metre out-house roof and making a cupboard door); we consider this work to be minor maintenance and improvements, not "building work" (granted, they may have been faced with cups of tea and football talk!).

> (which we weren't told about).

Our "Terms and Conditions of Booking" (as displayed on our website) contain the following statement: -

* Goofys operates all year round; maintenance, changes and improvements are necessary to the upkeep of Goofys, and may take place without prior warning. Whilst Goofys will endeavour to keep inconvenience to a minimum, no compensation will be offered for facilities offered becoming unavailable for all or part of a booking.

At the foot of every page of our main website is a link to our "Terms and Conditions of Booking", and on the booking summary page (these guests booked their room through our on-line booking system) is the following instruction (immediately below the payment button) linked to our "Terms and Conditions of Booking": -

"Please read our booking terms and conditions before completing your booking request."

And at the very least, the fact that we had told these guests that we were arranging for our builder (also a trusted friend) to show them to their room early (rather than leave them on the doorstep until check-in time) should have alerted them that they were to "face" something.

> When we asked for our deposit back we were told by the bloke that t does say this on the website, to which we thought fair enough!

Shortly after their arrival at around 1pm (bear in mind that check-in is at 3pm), we received a phone call from these guests to say that they were leaving because of building work, and they went on to demand their deposit back.

Our response was that the work will be finished shortly - probably by 2pm, definitely by 3pm.

Their response was to tell us that we should have told them about the work, and put something on our website; they continued to demand their deposit back (despite being told that the work was about to stop).

Our response was to inform these guests that our "Terms and Conditions of Booking" on our website stated that it may be necessary to carry out maintenance during their stay.

Their response was to tell us that they were on the beach now anyway, and that they would come back later to "sort it out".

> When we asked to see where it says this, the owners backtracked and said that they thought that the work was only maintenance and should be expected.

When these guests returned shortly before 3pm (check-in time), they informed us that they had come to collect their belongings, they continued to insist that we should have told them about the (now finished) "building work", and they continued to demand their deposit back.

We pointed out that check-in is at 3pm, it was not yet 3pm, the work (building or otherwise) had stopped, and (once again) we informed them that our "Terms and Conditions of Booking" on our website stated that it may be necessary to carry out maintenance during their stay.

> It didnt state it on the website anywhere.

This statement is simply not true, our "Terms and Conditions of Booking" can be found on our website and have been recorded by the "Internet Archive" (http://www.archive.org).

> My reply was we still didnt get what we paid for because we weren't told of the building work. After 6 hours driving a bit of a relexation doesnt go amiss! Her reply to this was "well, have you seen Newquay?!".

By now it was quite clear that there would be no pleasing these guests, that they simply did not want the room (as they no longer had any reason for complaint), and that they were using "building work" as an excuse to get their (non-refundable) deposit back.

Goofys is in the heart of a colourful and vibrant seaside resort (one of the most popular in the country), if the people aren't disturbing the peace - the sea, wind and seaguls are.

> Disgraceful, unprofessional behavious from, frankly, obvious amateurs. I still haven't received my deposit back, although i fully intend on doing so whether it requires legal action or not.

Goofys is open all year round, and is very popular (and hence very busy); our "unprofessional behavious" and "obvious amateur" approach to running our business for the past five years doesn't seem to put people off returning to stay with us.

Check-out at Goofys is at 12pm, and check-in is at 3pm - we try to fit in all our cleaning, maintenance & improvements between these hours (sometimes we start a little earlier and sometimes we finish a little later) this work has to be done at some time (mostly at short notice), and we consider these hours to be "fair game".

> We fully recommend you STAY AWAY from this HOSTEL.

We believe this is a case of mistaken identity (although we can't be certain), and that these guests thought they were booking something other than a luxury Hostel (as this would explain their confrontational and irrational behaviour).