Planned Water disruption at self contained apartment - Refund refused

Ask the Experts
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Greetings everyone,

I’m currently visiting the Gold Coast with my family, staying at De Ville Apartments through booking.com from Sunday, November 19, to Friday, November 24. We are a family of six, including three children.

On Tuesday night, upon returning to the apartment, we discovered a pile of printed notices at the closed reception, informing residents and visitors about a planned water cut by the local council on Thursday night between 9 pm and Friday 3 am.

To our dismay, we only found out about this by chance and were not directly informed by the accommodation management through email or the booking.com communication channel.

This poses a major inconvenience, especially since Thursday night is our last night in Gold Coast. The water cut means we won’t be able to return late to the apartment, shower, and prepare for sleep as usual.

Upon discovering this, we immediately sought alternative accommodation and emailed the management office requesting a refund for our last day of stay. Due to budget constraints and the short notice, we couldn’t make any bookings until we heard back from the management.

The next morning, we visited the management office when it opened. Unfortunately, the lady in charge was less than sympathetic and refused to issue a refund. According to her, she found out about the water cut on Tuesday late afternoon—the same day we picked up the notice. She believes that placing notices at the reception was sufficient communication. She suggested we contact the council directly to see if they could consider our inconvenience and cancel the water cut. The only preparation provided was two buckets for water use.

We are deeply disappointed as this situation has disrupted our plans for the night. We feel stuck since we can’t move out due to the non-refundable booking.

I’ve been researching my consumer rights and came across resources such as Choice and ACCC. Can anyone advise if the accommodation’s inability to provide basic water supply during prime nighttime hours constitutes a major failure, making it a frustrated contract? Am I within my consumer rights to demand a refund for the night, even now that we are essentially forced to stay? Can anyone advise on the potential next steps or options available to me should I need to take this further?

Thank you for your insights.

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Get up early and shower when the water comes back on or go without, not showering for a day is not the end of the world especially on holiday.

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Welcome to the community @GCvisitor

A not uncommon experience, loosing water to your accommodation as described would be inconvenient. Services to homes, appartments, rented accommodation etc are often disrupted. Some are planned and advised in advance. Others happen as random events. If for a longer period it may be a greater concern. Looking to the terms and conditions of the accommodation provider may offer some guidance, or they may be silent.

Consider also the cause is outside the control of the accomodation provider, and the impacts on one of the included services is for a limited duration.

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Thanks for your input. It is not easy with younger children. Shower in the morning or skipping one won’t work for us and does not align with our habit. Plus we have a morning flight to catch to fly out the country.

While I understand this is beyond the control of the provider, I find it challenging to comprehend why the burden falls on the consumer in this situation.

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Hi @GCvisitor, welcome to the community.

Unfortunately this isn’t the case for water outage outside the accommodation’s control - which in your case, it appears to be as it is the reticulated water operator which caused the outage.

It is possible that the works could have been emergency works rather than planned works which is why no-one, including the accommodation provider, knew about the outage until the last minute. It could have been something like a broken mains, leaking valve etc which needed urgent repair.

It is a little like power outages which can occur more frequently in some areas of Australia (and even more regularly in other countries). While power outages are inconvenient when travelling, they aren’t grounds for seeking compensation or refunds from an accommodation provider.

Notwithstanding this, if the outage caused injury or a monetary loss, many utilities in Australia have compensation schemes which can be claimed against when there are significant losses. Inconvenience associated with a loss of a service for a short period aren’t usually are covered by such schemes.

As the loss of water was temporary and would be considered ‘inconvenient’, under your booking terms and conditions, this could be considered a cancellation instigated by the booking party. The cancellation policy of the accommodation provider (that set within the booking platform) would be used to determine if any fees or refunds would apply.

Generally, after check-in, accommodation providers don’t offer refunds where a guest choses to cancel a booking. There may be circumstances when refunds could be reasonably expected such as if there is a major event where the remainder of the stay can’t be fulfilled (evacuations due to a natural disaster, fires, disease etc). Even in such case, these would most likely be covered by travel insurance. A water outage for a few hours isn’t a major event or a major failure of the accommodation provider.

There aren’t any additional steps you can take. The only option you have is to investigate whether Gold Coast Council covers ‘inconvenience’ in its compensation scheme. It is unlikely it will be covered as it isn’t possible to prove a monetary loss for the outage.

Edit: Your experience would be no different to someone who rents a house (long term compared to your short term stay). If the water utility has a temporary outage in the area, it isn’t the fault of the landlord, but is the fault of the water utility. One can’t seek compensation from the landlord nor break their tenancy agreement for such events as it isn’t the landlord’s fault or responsibility to resolve. Likewise in your case.

For emergency outages, these will most likely be classed as force majeure events, meaning that opportunities to seek restitution may be limited, even if one could demonstrate a valid claim.

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Nonetheless those are the choices available, unless you rebook elsewhere at some cost you still won’t get a shower at 9PM.

If you are after compensation why not deal with that when you return and focus now on going OS with the family which is likely to have greater challenges than being unshowered for a day.

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