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Airbnb owner claims holiday makers running cables out the window is theft if electricity.
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It’s not theft unless the owner specified in the conditions of the rental that car’s couldn’t be charged at the property. (Even then “Theft” is a strong word!)
That being said - there is obviously a big difference in charging your phone and charging a car and really we are at a point where this should be clear in all holiday rental agreements one way or another.
I don’t think the owner would be happy if someone just turned on all the taps in the house and left them running for the entirety of their stay. There is a sort of “fair use” which is assumed (if not actually in writing)
Question comes if car charging should always be assumed “fair use” or is that above and beyond? Or is it a gray area that just “depends”… Much better for everyone if all this is made as clear as possible in the agreement right at the beginning.
I’m sure the courts would agree it’s not theft, but it really is taking the piss: a typical UK home uses on the order of 10kWh per day - and an electric car can easily take 60kWh to charge. This isn’t like charging a mobile phone which is basically noise - it can mean someone staying for 5 days can easily end up using twice what the reasonable expectation for electricity use was.
Having said that, if I were the owner of a holiday home, I’d probably install a proper electric car charger as a selling point and I’m sure it would be possible to set the daily rate for the property to cover the cost of charging a car.
Turning all the taps and leaving them running actually cost more…
It seems like the obvious thing to do would be to get a metred EV charging point and bill the tenant separately. There are even grant schemes to help pay for the cost.
It’s not like EVs are going away. Every house with a driveway is likely to have one eventually. She might as well get ahead of the curve.
Alternatively I remember when I was a kid my grandparents would spend several weeks in a holiday let that had a coin operated meter for the electric, we had to keep feeding it coins to keep getting power, surely they could do the same thing these days.
We once stayed at an Airbnb in Florida. The property owners were not local. They had an employee come give us an orientation to the house upon check in. During the check-in he had us read the electric meter. When we left we had to read the meter again. The electric rate was in the rental contract so it became part of our final bill. It was a little strange but it made sense that we would pay for what we used.
🤣 I really, really don’t get the appeal of airbnb… It’s like the worst part of homeownership, while also paying hotel prices. From cleaning rooms to now paying for electricity… What is even the point? Not to mention whenever I check the prices they are basically on par with hotels. Absolutely bananas.
It used to be a cheap and awesome alternative to hotels. You could rent a house for the price of a hotel. Or rent a room for far cheaper than a hotel. Now, greed took over, everyon wanted to get in on it, and it is much less reliable and trustworthy than it was before. I don’t even check AirBNB anymore, just opt for hotels
Depends on where you live and what you rent. Here, in France, it’s a lot cheaper to rent a full house for a week vacation for 2 families (let’s say 4 adults 5 kids) than renting 2 or 3 hotel rooms.
Also at Airbnb you have a full house with commodities which you don’t at an hotel. So to the price of the room you need to add restaurants and laundry costs.
There are alternatives in France, other renting networks which predate Airbnb. But Airbnb killed the market because it’s so easy for the renter and the owner
We had two families staying at a house with a pool. We had a kitchen and plenty of room for everyone. I still think it makes sense in certain cases. The extra electric charge at this property was out of the ordinary, but I suspect the pool had a heater which used a lot of power.
Would it make sense if a hotel did that?
Some hotels charge a hidden “resort fee” and $20 a night for parking. So yes I really could see a hotel charging a fee to charge your car.
Not really, but I can imagine a very cheap hotel doing it.
These delusional Airbnb owners just make crap rules on the spot.
It’s not theft. If they don’t want you doing it, they need to specify it
Better to use hotels instead, at least you know what you’re getting
In the first place, an AirBNB host should either: a) have house rules about how any electricity is used, regardless of source; or b) should factor uncontrolled use into their budget and thus expected pricing of the unit.
An irresponsible guest leaving the lights, TV, and some of their personal appliances on all day could do more damage than charging a car.
So could an irresponsible guest that sets the AC at 65 all day long. I can say from experience that A/C use costs more than charging my model 3 nightly, especially when I’m home all day and the thermostat can’t go into away mode.
I generally agree about hotels, but most hotels with EV chargers that I’ve stayed at were blocked by people in ICE cars, and hotels usually won’t make the offending car move. (Not that I’d ever plan a trip that way… too risky.)
I get the safety concerns but does she say “no charging cars” in the terms and conditions. I am not sure this is theft any more than charging mobile phones and tablets would be. If she is worried about how much electricity then take meter readings and make it accepted terms that all electricity is to be paid for. What if one guest choses to use the oven for a five course meal. Is that theft of electricry
NEWS BREAK: Landlord gets slightly less money in the mail one month.
Then she should get a proper charging point put in she can monitor and bill, it’s not like the shift to electric cars had snuck up on people.
Charging an electric car via the mains rather than an official charging station takes much longer and can cost homeowners hundreds of pounds.
It doesn’t typically cost any more to charge slowly than it does to charge fast. Unless you’re on like an economy 7 plan with cheaper rates overnight, but even then charging at the same time would incur the same cost per kWhr. If anything it’s far cheaper than any paid charging station.
I think there’s a typo. It should be hundredths of pound. It’s way cheap to charge at home. I pay $8/mo in US.
I think it’s about the scale of things. I have actually seen properties that ask electric car owners notify them, and charge if they use an excessive amount.
Charging your phone, you’d probably struggle to use more than 10p of electricity over a week’s stay.
If I have a 30KWh battery in my car, and charge half of it a night for 6 nights, that’s £30 in electric.
It’s possibly not theft, more akin to leaving the oven on constantly, but it’s cheeky as fuck to do it without checking first.Additionally, a property that hasn’t ever considered electric car charging may not have electrics that stand up to hours of 3KW+ draw on top of the base load.
Technically though they’re paying for the use of the property which presumably also includes electricity use. Legally I’m not sure where the line is drawn, presumably there is some kind of fair use usage clause but I’m not sure where that would be.
Is it theft to charge any other device at a holiday house? No, of course not. That’s ridiculous.
Equally though my phone probably doesn’t draw even 1% of what an electric car might take.
I’ve not read the article because I refuse to give the Express any attention. They’re only very slightly better than the Daily Mail, and that’s only because their reach isn’t as great. This article will almost certainly be coming from the perspective of “new things bad, old things good, so we’ll sow a feeling of distrust in our aging readers”, and I have no time for that shit.
But to answer the question; no, of course it isn’t, unless, as /u/Hogger85 has said, the AirBnB owner has specifically banned EV charging. If they haven’t, then it should be considered part of the cost of doing business and accounted for the same way they would any other energy usage.
and if they have banned EV charging they should realise nobody is going to honour that rule anyway and stop being such a dick, suck it up, and get on with running their airbnb like a normal person that doesn’t care about a few of £ of electricity per mo
At least in that situation they might win a court case on it.
Technically, no, as in the UK, you can’t steal electricity… you can only abstract electricity, which is an offence in its own right. (IANAL)
I’ll get my coat.
Jesus Christ, no.
This is an easy problem to solve. In many countries, tenants pay for the power they use. They record the meter on arrival and when leaving. The rate is in the agreement. I wonder why she doesn’t just do that.
That’s so weird. What countries do that? Even with the AC cranked and the windows open, airbnb hosts are still profiting a shit ton at the end of the stay.
I would refuse to stay at a place that records my usage. I mean doesn’t it cost like 15 dollars to charge a Tesla from dead to full? I’m sure they could find a way to spare that money in their $300 per night stay lol.
Plus it’s not like it’s an every day occurrence. Seems insane to me. The guests that use a bit more will get balanced out by the guests that basically use none. Whenever I used an airbnb, it’s been strictly for sleeping. I pretty much use no lights, and go straight to bed.
I own a holiday home rental in Denmark. That’s the norm here for holiday homes. Short AirBnB stays don’t do it though. I think it’s the norm in Germany and the Nordics too. Power is much more expensive in Europe than in most places in the U.S., so that might be the reason. Charging your Tesla could cost closer to US$30, depending on time of day and model. Also tenants are using lights and heating and dryers and all kinds of other appliances. So them paying for only what they use encourages efficient energy use which is great for the environment, but also allows us to keep rental prices down. For reference, power for a week’s stay is typically between US$50 in summer up to US$80 in winter.
For reference, power for a week’s stay is typically between US$50 in summer up to US$80 in winter.
That’s cheap. In Canada, my power bill in the summer is $400 CAD per month and over $600 CAD per month in the winter.
Ouch! Just for comparison, the charge here is typically around 50c CAD per KWh. It was much higher last winter thanks to the Ukraine war, but it’s settled back down. What is yours? We have very high insulation standards so heating costs are not too crazy. We also typically don’t have AC, so costs stay lower in summer.
Airbnb is theft too.
Property is theft comrade
