my issue is with ppl who say no compensation at all
I'm afraid I have to agree with spanket on this one. The tenant had arranged for electricity to be connected; it's not their fault that the property had a potential hazard. (This was the electricity company's view, not the tenant's, remember!)
As for perishables, I've had a substantial volume of perishables with me every time I've moved, which I've moved in eskies. I always have a full freezer and fridge, and whilst you can reduce stocks a bit, there's still hundreds of dollars' worth of sauces, frozen meat, etc, which I inevitably have when I move. If I were the tenant, this could very well have cost me $460. And the electricity companies do compensate you for lengthy outages, actually.
I'm not saying that the particulars of their claim are justified. All I'm saying is that this
would have been extremely inconvenient for the tenant, and it wasn't the tenant's fault; it was the landlord's problem to fix. I think the days off work and hotel are a bit excessive, but as somebody else pointed out, your emergency electrician may not have been much less.
They definitely should be compensated, and I don't think they're being
ridiculously excessive in what they ask. And whilst they should have called out the after-hours electrician as per the lease, bear in mind that the landlord hadn't yet signed the lease, so they probably hadn't been given a copy.
All in all, given that Olive had at least "two strikes" against her - for not having the signed lease in place, and for having a problem with the property - I think I'd be inclined to assume the tenants' request is in good faith and offer them some reasonable compensation (probably around $300 would be my guess).
Way too many problems are created when people discard the assumption of good faith too soon. Just as the tenants should not assume that Olive tried to let them an uninhabitable property, we shouldn't assume that the tenants are being too demanding and are going to be problematic.