Stove Repair - what would you do?

Here are the facts:
* In January, the tenant reported that some of the gas burners on the stove were not working so I authorised a plumber to come out which cost $219.
* Looking back through rental statements in April I noticed that the following comment on the repair invoice from the plumber: "Checked gas cook top and found gas pipe and injectors to 2 burners were all blocked with liquid spillage. Pulled apart the cook top and cleaned. Refit. Tested operation - Ok"
* I suggested to the PM that this sounded like the fault of the tenant and asked the PM to recover the costs from them
* PM communicated with the tenant and sent the tenant an invoice
* PM is now reporting that the tenant "would prefer file this up with VCAT and so they can decide if they should pay the repair charges". The sum of costs in doing so exceed $500 including their attendance and preparation

Firstly, am I correct in thinking that this cost should be covered by the tenant? I don't want to be an A-hole about it, but I've been pretty relaxed in dealing with tenants in the past and I reckon I've been taken advantage of because of that. The timing is a bit unfortunate as it coincides with a $10 increase in their rent (up from $410 to $420 after 2 years). They've been fairly decent tenants otherwise, generally pretty timely with rent and keep the place pretty tidy. Likewise I think I've been pretty quick to approve repairs and maintenance but in this case I'm of the opinion that it's something that is their responsibility rather than mine (but admit this could be a bit grey and open minded to being wrong on this).

Secondly, how would you manage this?
Clearly it's not worth getting the PM to pursue the matter via VCAT from a financial viewpoint, and after taking time off work, handling it myself isn't really worth it either (and there is still the VCAT fee itself).
I could just let it slide and be more pro-active in future before authorising repairs. This is something that the PM should be looking after though isn't it? (although the agency was in the process of changing over PMs at around that time so could have slipped through).

Thoughts?

 

@rjw180 - The pipe sounds reasonably inaccessible so anything more than wiping up a spill on the stovetop is overly unreasonable. To access it usually means pulling off the burners, lifting the stovetop and a bit of fiddling around to get to the pipe. Then get in to clean the pipe out.

Gut feel is that it would be unreasonable to expect a tenant to take the stove apart for cleaning.

This is for an electric stove

or for gas stove

 

$219 = less than 4days vacancy.

Just pay it and move on.

 

I wouldn't have got in a tiz with this and just paid it, VCAT would consider it petty on the landlords part, tenant should be able to cook on whatever I supply with the premises without issues like this.

 

Cheers all, looks like I was being unreasonable. Thanks for the advice - I'll just ignore it and move on.