Well a few months ago I stayed at a hotel and I had purchased a return ticket valid for a month at a cost of £58 for a train journey from a town to the town where the hotel was. I left it in my hotel room when I went down to breakfast and when I came back the room had been serviced and the chambermaid had put some things that were on the floor in a bin or had put it in a bag on a thing she had with the cleaning stuff on it outside the room. I asked her if she had seen the ticket and she looked through the bag but couldn’t find it. However, the passport and other things which I had left on the floor were still there. It was a 2 part return ticket and both parts including the unused return part were missing. At the train station I had to purchase another Single ticket at a cost of £26 to get back to the other town. What I would really like to know is whether I can recover the cost of the ticket that was lost from the hotel and also the Single ticket I had to buy to replace it. But I’m not sure whether I should be refunded once or twice for both tickets but I am sure they owe me twice. There would be one ticket lost at half of £58 approximately £29 and the other Single ticket at £26 plus a further £4 say to cover my cost of contacting them to get this repaid. I think the hotel would be liable for this although whether there is a law that says this I’m not sure here in the UK. What should I do about this?
The hotel might reimburse you as a gesture of goodwill, but even if they would be legally liable for a loss, you probably can’t prove it. I don’t know the law in the UK on this, and it varies in the U.S. by state (IANAL).
Do you have proof that you purchased the first ticket?
If only £29 was remaining on the first ticket, that is all they owe you because that is all they lost. You had to pay £30 to replace it, so there is a case for 30 instead of 29, but there is no way they should have to pay for *both *the lost ticket *and *the new ticket that replaced it.
On the other hand you can’t really prove that the ticket was in the room before the chambermaid came, and gone afterwards. I think you would have to prove that the chambermaid herself took your ticket.
Lesson: Do not leave passport, travel tickets, or anything else of value on the floor of your hotel room.
I think the time to have taken this up with the hotel was at the very moment you discovered the ticket missing, not a few months later. Just chalk it up to experience and hopefully a lesson learned.
The Hotel Proprietor’s Act 1956 has something to say about this sort of thing -
…though the hotel may argue that it was negligence on your part for leaving the ticket on the floor.
But as the others have said the window of time to pursue this has long since expired, and in any case there’s no way you should be claiming twice for a lost ticket.
Since the OP is asking for advice, let’s move this to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
How on earth would you prove this even happened?
If you could claim for this ticket what would stop you claiming there was a winning lottery ticket taken as well?
The other part of the question seems to obvious to me though, of course they should not reimburse both tickets. If your car was lost would you expect to receive payment for the value of the old car AND for the value of a new car?
Agreed, you can’t pursue this and even if you could it’s for one ticket. You would have had to pay for one ticket no matter what.
At a hotel in Seattle, the maid threw away my contact lens case. I didn’t discover it until 1 am when I started to take out my lenses and realized I had no place to put them. I called the desk and basically demanded that they replace the case so I could take out my lenses, and secondly asked where in the neighborhood I could go to buy one (all nigh drugstore). They assured me that there was noplace in downtown Seattle, I would have to drive somewhere, and I was slightly inebriated and with blurry contact lenses in an unfamiliar city. They also said they could send the concierge to get one, but not until morning. Not a great help if I didn’t want to sleep in my contacts, which I didn’t.
They ended up bringing me two plastic cups. And not reimbursing me. And not ever sending the concierge to get me a new case. This would certainly have been a gesture of good will. I used to stay frequently at a fairly cheap downtown hotel in LA and I’ll bet those people would have found me a new lens case that night; that one bent over backwards for their guests.
This was a Hilton, and I gave it a very bad review.
Now with a train ticket I think the hotel could argue that it was valuable and could have been locked in their safe. But I also think they should have reimbursed you as soon as you found out it was gone. But they would only owe you for one ticket, because one ticket was all they lost, or caused to be lost.
How do you know that you didn’t lose the ticket somewhere else? You don’t. I’d say the hotel doesn’t owe you anything.
Oh, wait, I know this one… there is no missing dollar/pound!
You paid 29 pounds for one ticket. It disappeared. If the hotel pays you back 29 pounds, you are out no money and have no ticket. Then you pay 26 pounds for one ticket. They don’t owe you 55 pounds to compensate for one ticket.
And no, they don’t owe you four pounds for you picking up the phone.
But I agree with others, seems like you’ve long lost your chance to address this issue if it happened several months ago.
Wait, wait. You left your passport and tickets on the floor?
I don’t think the hotel has any liability for throwing away a ticket left on the floor. That’s what happens to stuff that you leave on the floor.
I’m not a contact lens wearer but I am horrified at Hilarity N. Suze’s story! WHAT IF YOUR CONTACTS WERE IN THE CASE??? I mean, I hope contacts wearers carry glasses around with them but I’m sure not all of you do. It’s just as bad as throwing away someone’s glasses, and could leave someone in quite a bind (a blind bind!) and have them out quite a bit of money.
Glad you left them a bad review. I hope they taught the offending cleaner what NOT to throw away.
What the hell? I don’t understand how you could even begin to think you might be entitled to both. Your additional expense, over what you willingly paid for the original ticket, is only the cost to procure the replacement ticket. Why are you thinking you should get essentially twice that amount in compensation?
I’ve reviewed all the testimony and have come to my decision.
The hotel owes Dunmurry a contact lens case. At the discretion of the hotel, said case may be either new or used, although it must be one in serviceable condition.
Additionally, Dunmurry owes Hilarity the sum of 25 shillings 7 pence.
All rise. We are adjourned.
Another vote that you can’t be certain the chambermaid tossed it. You may well have put the unused ticket somewhere else as being of value, or kept the used portion accidentally while tossing the unused. Most hotels would have reimbursed the ticket if you’d brought it up immediately, but simply as a gesture of good will.
Even assuming you did leave it on the floor, an assumption that it was trash would have been perfectly reasonable. At no point did anybody “owe” you anything, and there is no argument whatsoever for their having to reimburse you twice.
In my books, this doesn’t even qualify as an excuse to not tip the chambermaid.
Assuming for a moment that it was the hotel’s negligence and we are taking as given that they are liable, then their liability would be for the cost it incurred to you. Think of it this way, if someone breaks your window, they owe you the cost of replacing that window.
In your case, if I understand correctly you paid 58$ (I’ll use the dollar sign since I’m in the US, but you get the idea) for a round-trip ticket. You used half of the ticket to get to the hotel. It was then lost presumably due to their negligence. You then paid 26$ to essentially replicate the missing part of the ticket. Since the cost to you for the ticket being gone was 26$, then that is what they would owe you, at least in most US jurisdictions.
Don’t most U.S. states have an innkeeper law that basically says, “Hey, if you don’t want it stolen or lost, put it in the hotel safe. If it gets stolen out of the hotel safe, it’s on us. If you leave it in your room and it’s not there when you get back, you are screwed.”?
FYI, this happened in the U.K., there is zero expectation to tip the room cleaner.
To the OP, you’ve left it too late, let it go. If you had approached management on the day, maybe they might have reimbursed one ticket, as a goodwill gesture, but personally if I was the manager I’d decline, assuming you were just trying a scam on. Who the hell leaves passports, tickets, etc on the floor? That aside, I can’t fathom how you would ever think you deserve a refund of both tickets? And £4 ‘for your troubles’?
Yes I just wanted to say that I can confirm that I bought both tickets as I have a bank statement with the debits shown on it. I found it odd that the passport was still there. In my opinion where you leave things in a room that go missing should be irrelevant. I think she should have put them on a table as it was clear I was coming back. So do you think it’s fair to say that I am only owed £26 by the hotel for the replacement ticket that I had to buy? And not the £56 or £60 that I basically originally thought about?
Coming back “a few months” after the incident plus your careless handling of valuables means that although you may have a right to moral outrage, you almost certainly have no argument under the law.