We don’t travel often. I’ve always heard room reservations could easily be canceled with a couple days or more notice. I’ve canceled reservations at least once or twice in the 90’s. I know one time we got delayed during a cross country car trip and had to check in a day later than planned. We called ahead and it was no big deal.
I Made this reservation July 12 for Aug 29 and 30. This is what was emailed to me. They charged my cc for the **entire amount **as a deposit. A full 6 weeks before the dates I reserved.
Yesterday I looked at Tripadvisor.com and this Days Inn has 5 complaints registered for dirty rooms in the past month. :eek:
What can I do? I don’t want this vacation ruined by a filthy room. Is there any way I can fight this and get my money back?
I need to decide tonight if I’m calling and canceling. If necessary I rather eat the $153 loss than disappoint my wife. Theres nothing that ruins a nice trip quicker than a nasty hotel room.
You can always try and call, but you’re likely going to be eating it.
Rooms are evil now - unless you specify that you want a cancellable room, you get a nonrefundable reservation, and the price for the room goes up if you want it to be cancellable.
Shit like that is why I tend not to book ahead any more. There are enough hotels out there that I can find an empty room when I need one.
In my experience reservation practices can vary from hotel/motel chain to chain. But I’ve certainly seen exactly what you describe. The cancellation terms and conditions are usually made pretty explicit when you make the booking. I always read them very carefully before pressing the final button. If I see something like this I take my business elsewhere.
I’ve never heard of such a policy, but if that’s what they said when you made the reservation, you may be stuck.
You could call the credit card company and see if they can reverse the charge. You can call the Wyndham Hotel and try to get a manager to complain to, and see if you can get the decision reversed. (You might want to make up a sob-story rather than just that you changed your mind, your dog died or your mother-in-law was taken to the hospital or whatever, and you’ve cancelled your trip.)
First, call and cancel the reservation. If they refuse to refund you, next call your credit card company and tell them you refuse the charge and why. Now it’s on the hotel to prove it’s a legit charge. It COULD go in their favor, but it probably won’t.
It sounds like you booked an advance purchase rate. That rate gives you a discount over the other rates by having a no cancellation policy.
A higher rate would allow cancellation. 24 hours prior is common, but I’ve also seen same day, 3 days, 1 week, and even cancel by 30 days prior to check in.
What you normally see at a site like that (if all rates are available) is the lowest price displayed first, then a higher price for a rate that can be cancelled, then possibly other package rates.
We just don’t travel enough to know what to watch out for. They did discount the room from $90 to $76.50 a night. I thought that was because we booked six weeks ahead.
$90 a night for a Days Inn should be a nice room. Thats why these bad reviews came as such a shock.
Based on what you’ve written here, you weren’t cheated. You agreed to their terms when you hit ok. You can try to refute the charge to your credit card company, but you will not be successful if it can be shown that you were made aware of the cancellation policy and agreed to it.
I’ve made this mistake myself and it sucks and it is expensive, but you’ll certainly never make the same mistake again.
ETA: It’s worth a call to the hotel, though. I wouldn’t count on getting the charges reversed, but it doesn’t hurt to politely ask.
It’s weird, but sometimes a condition attached through buying through certain websites/methods that give a cheaper price. Southwest has tickets like this, but they issue you credit (that might expire) for the cancelled flight instead of giving you a refund or pocketing the cash. Maybe this is similar? Call anyway.
But: The stars are a ranking of the fanciness of the hotel as ranked by Expedia, no? In other words, you know that you aren’t staying at the Waldorf+Astoria. This hotel gets 2.8/5 as ranked by visitors.
I would not necessarily recommend the second part of this approach. If the non-cancellable nature of the booking was stated at the time of the booking, it is a legit charge. The conditions form part of the contract. As others have stated, hotels now often offer lower non-cancellable rates and higher cancellable ones. Airlines do it literally all the time. As someone who books both airline flights and hotels quite frequently I always need to weigh up the savings against the risk - sometimes I come out ahead, and sometimes I need to suck it up and take the loss.
That said, I would definitely try the call-and-ask approach - it has been known to work (usually when my wife calls rather than when I call ). Just remember that you agreed to the conditions in the first place, so you are asking them to do you a favor. If they say no, you have no reason to get upset with them.
Did you book directly with the hotel (or on their website) or did you use a third party? If it was a third party your chances of a refund go down as they can put the blame on the hotel and tell you their hands are tied. They keep the money and you’re ticked at the hotel. Win win for them. (just noticed you made the reservation through the Wyndham so you should be good here but this is a good thing to remember, when you make reservations through a third party your options for dealing with issues decrease as you have to deal with the third party and not the hotel in most cases).
If you booked through the hotel directly you have a better chance. If you are willing to put up with the hassle you can call them and ask them to waive the penalty. Chances are you are going to have to go through several levels and if you get someone that would rather listen to your complaints than pass you along to the next link in the chain you may be out of luck. Assume that they are making notes on your reservation so don’t think you can call back with a different story if the first time doesn’t work. If you want to play to recently deceased relative gambit, do it from the start.
I work for a luxury chain, although it has been 7 or 8 years since I was in reservations and we have several properties that take full stay non-refundable deposits, especially on special internet rates. As well, if there is anything special going on in the area it can result in a special cancellation policy that is more extreme than the norm. He’ll, we had one property that had non-refundable deposits where the only way you could get the deposit back was if there was a family death and you faxed the death certificate in to them.
First, it sounds like you booked the advance purchase (discounted) price. In return for that discounted price, you gamble that you won’t need to cancel your reservation. It’s a crapshoot, and the terms are usually on the website. If that’s the case (and that’s what it sounds like to me,) you have two choices: Pay for a room you don’t use, and just book somewhere else; or check in per your reservation, and if the room isn’t up to standard? Document, document, document, try to have the room deficiencies fixed during your stay, and - if the hotel doesn’t fix the problem adequately - complain to Wyndham’s customer service. They have more leverage to enforce brand standards than you have as an occasional traveler. (In all probability, this Day’s Inn is a franchise. Wyndham doesn’t own the property, but they can remove their name if the property doesn’t meet their minimum service and maintenance standards.) But cancelling and then disputing the charge with your credit card company probably won’t work. I’ve documented plenty of these disputes during my days in hotel management and service. I’ve never lost a dispute when there was a pre-paid booking made via the corporate website, because the language and restrictions there are made quite explicit to the traveler. It does cost the property a lot of time and hassle, though…
The other thing that may be in play here is holiday/high demand travel days. During some high-demand periods, supply is low, demand is high, prices rise, and reservations are only taken with restrictions, like limited cancellation periods, monetary penalties for cancellation, etc. (Example - my town has a pretty large university. There are only about 1000 hotel rooms within 30 miles of campus. On football weekends, the prices might rise by 3x, and cancellation policies are pretty tight.) In this case, Labor Day weekend probably raises the demand for rooms, so many hotels will add restrictions to their reservation policies.
Definitely. And tell the manager that if deficiencies aren’t corrected they will be sent to Wyndham and splashed all over the web. Only after he refuses, of course.
I did get an advance purchase room refunded when my wife had health problems. That was a higher class place, and we’d been there before. I just booked it for a conference - I’m going to tell them that I chose them because they had been so nice to us.
One possibility would be for the OP to go and if the place was not satisfactory call the reservation number and ask for a switch to another company property without penalty. I’ve done that - not with an advanced rate - and the reservation people were very nice about it.
My wife and I talked it over and we’ll drive up and check in. If the room is unacceptable we’ll document with photos. We’re hoping most of the rooms are ok. The 5 bad reviews may not represent all the rooms.
We can always use another motel. But since this room is prepaid it makes sense to look at it.
They charged my cc for the **entire amount **as a deposit. A full 6 weeks before the dates I reserved.
). Just remember that you agreed to the conditions in the first place, so you are asking them to do you a favor. If they say no, you have no reason to get upset with them.