Man stuck in freezing Airbnb realizes host locked him out of the heat, what he grabs from the kitchen solves the problem instantly

An Airbnb guest in Cudahy, Wisconsin, has become popular online after he shared how he got around a locked thermostat at his rental. The guest was staying in a house that felt cold, even though the thermostat said it was warm enough. So he came up with a smart fix using something from the kitchen.

According to Daily Dot, the guest said the house was really nice and the host was cool, but there was one issue. The host put a plastic lockbox over the thermostat to save money on heating bills. The thermostat inside the box showed 71 degrees, but the house still felt cold because it was old and the windows let in cold air.

Then he got an idea. “And then I remembered I watched a lot of movies and I’ve seen this scenario before,” he said in his TikTok video. He figured out that the lockbox was reading a specific temperature that controlled the heat for the whole house. So he went to the freezer and grabbed some frozen food, then put it on top of the lockbox. In just a few minutes, the frozen items made the box read 67 degrees instead of 71, which made the heat turn on. “It actually worked,” he said. “The house is actually warm now.”

People have a lot to say about this thermostat trick

The video went up on TikTok through the account @flackoshahin on November 3, 2025. It got almost 100,000 views and then spread to Facebook, Instagram, and X. A lot of people started talking about their own problems with hosts who lock thermostats.

People in the comments had different thoughts about what happened. A user named A. Winston wrote “Hotels don’t do this…” to point out that regular hotels don’t lock their thermostats like some Airbnb hosts do. Another person called Jospeh said “71 is freezing to you is wild,” which means they thought 71 degrees should be warm enough for most people.

Someone named Queen Navia noticed a problem with the frozen food trick. She commented “That means he had the heat set to 67, he would have to come turn my heat up.” She was saying that because the guest made the box read 67 degrees, he basically set the heat lower than what the host wanted. This means he would need to keep using frozen items to trick the sensor over and over.

This whole situation shows a real problem between Airbnb hosts and guests. Hosts want to keep their heating bills low, but guests want to be comfortable and control the temperature themselves.

This whole situation shows a real problem between Airbnb hosts and guests. Hosts want to keep their heating bills low, but guests want to be comfortable and control the temperature themselves. Many people think that putting a lock on the thermostat goes too far, even if hosts are worried about utility costs. This is not the first time there have been disagreements between Airbnb hosts and their guests about house rules.