We showed up Saturday night for our vacation.
Ok let me preface this with what led up to this issue. Months ago I booked a room in an relatively isolated vacation spot meaning not a ton of hotels available. I paid for the room in full (nonrefundable) and immediately got a bad hoojoo since the receipt they sent didn’t have the dates reserved or amount I paid. I had to call 4 times to get a copy of the information and after the 4th time got a screen shot of the reservation screen. It had the dates but just indicated I made a deposit … not how much I had paid. Part of the problem is calls to the hotel go to a call center, not the hotel itself. If the money were at all refundable I would have rebooked at another site.
Our plane lands about 4 hours late so I call the hotel and say we just landed but we are coming in tonight about midnight ('bout 3 hours from my call). This call did go to guest relations on-site and she said she will notate it. If you think this confirmation calmed my fears you are wrong. he hoojoo was such that I would not be destressed until I heard, “Here is your room key, sir.” The hotel called about 90 minutes later but we were in a dead zone so it didn’t come through. We get to the hotel at midnight to be told they gave our room away to overbooking and there were no hotels in the area with vacancies due to the Memorial Day weekend.
Has anyone else lost their pre-paid hotel room due to overbooking?
The night manager’s attitude consisted of:
What the F do you want me to do about it?
No, you don’t get your money back.
Was this at a flagged property? If so have you reached out to the brand? They might be able to help you get something in the way of compensation.
It’s odd to me that they walked a prepaid reservation. Normally at the hotels I have worked at; we would pre-check in the prepaid reservations to keep this from happening.
As for the Night Auditors attitude towards you, have you reached out to the GM of the property? Let him/her know what you experienced… unless you say something about the situation they won’t know they have a “coaching and counseling” opportunity needed with the night audit.
Speaking as a former Night Auditor, holiday weekend suck… GM and other senior managers are off for the weekend, and that’s when the shit hits the fan at most places.
What’s part two? Is this in the US? Did you book directly with the hotel or a third party like Expedia, Tripadvisor, etc.?
I’ve only had similar things happen when booking through third parties, not with the hotels directly.
Charge it back through your credit card. The CC company will figure it out with the hotel, or sometimes not even bother with an investigation and just refund you the money. Still sucks, of course. Hope it didn’t ruin the weekend?
Yes! If you booked via a OTA call and ask for your money back with from them.
Most people don’t know this but you’re actually paying the OTA to make a reservation on your behalf at the hotel. The OTA pays the Hotel…Also what you are charged is not what the hotel gets from the OTA … depending on the arrangement the hotel could only be getting paid 50% of what you pay…
My experience with hotels is two-fold. I’ve got a bazillion points at a couple of the major chains due to my career. I’ve also had a girlfriend who worked at hotels and told me a lot about their inner workings. Here’s what I think I’ve discovered:
Hotels do not give a damn about you if you’re not a high-value “member”. If you’re not part of their loyalty program, with a fair amount of activity, you’re last on the list. Meaning you could be “walked” in favor of another customer, reservations not withstanding. I’ve been the victim (and very likely the beneficiary) of this and I think it stinks.
They’re like airlines. Hotels will routinely overbook and guess who gets screwed if everyone actually shows up? Non-loyalty members. Frankly, I think this sort of thing should be illegal, but we don’t believe in consumer protection in this country.
Also, if you book using a third party provider, the hotel will do precisely nothing to help you if there’s a problem. Always book with the hotel itself, for all the good that does. Some minor protection, maybe.
I don’t like the idea of over selling the house either… but a lot of that is driven by people who have MBAs… but we learn the concept of Yield Management from the airlines. And you’re right about the all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others attitude at hotels.
Book with the hotel directly and never use a debit card for payment. And if you can use an American Express card to reserve and pay…. That’s the only card company that will actually look out for you if you’re disputing a transaction. And speaking as someone who used to deal with charge backs, unless I had airtight documents to counter the charge back. I would usually not even bother fighting with AMEX for the money, and just let it go through. They are a pain in the ass to deal with on the merchant side of things.
It doesn’t really matter what the reason was, IMHO. The hotel screwed you over. So you should go out of your way to screw them over as much as possible (and legal). It’s only fair.
Charge it back. Email their manager. Email the franchise owner. Email their brand. Leave bad reviews for them on every travel site and Google Maps. Call their state’s consumer affairs department or the closest thing to it. Keep emailing all of the above with every step you take, so you waste as much customer service labor time as possible. Make their shitty policy cost more in labor than the room itself. By an order of magnitude if possible. Take your revenge and make it sweet and slow. Remain polite, firm, and annoyed throughout. Never insult any of the staff but make it clear how disappointed and inconvenienced you were because of their unreasonable and callous stance. They don’t care about you, so your only job is to waste as much of their time as possible, and then some, and then some more. Make it incredibly expensive for them to deal with you.
Independently these things do nothing. Collectively they will eventually cause financial harm to the hotel.
For myself, as a traveler, I never book through third parties anymore, always use a credit card with good chargebacks, and always read reviews.
Part 2
Sometimes the first person to deal with a situation screws it up to badly, it takes everyone else doing their best to even hope to recover from it.
She got us rooms at another hotel … well not really. She found vacancies for us so $1100 later we had a place to stay. Did I mention that we didn’t get a refund for what we paid for the first room? After checking in, I went back to the first hotel to get my refund. She said she sent an email telling them to credit what we paid orginally
“But they didn’t. They charged us full price.”
“But I sent them an email.” (bullshit)
“Can I get you to write down who you sent the email to and what you told them?”
“I’m not allowed to document anything in writing.”
Next day we did our tour and stopped by to speak to the real manager. Apparently, overbooking is a thing although I have never heard of bumping someone that paid in full - only unpaid reservations. And there was a whole procedure for that when if paid for and bumped, they are required to find us a room at a partner hotel. Ok but what about the money?
“Since you paid in full with us, they won’t charge you.”
“But they did.”
“They shouldn’t for the first night.”
“Wait what? The night manager never said get one night there then come back here for the second night. She said she cancelled our reservation so we got both nights there.”
“They should only have authorized the $200 for incidentals.”
“But they charged us $1100 for rooms, resort fees and the extras.”
“Let me see your original confirmation and I will deal with it.”
See OP for how I had to be persistent to even get that. But 30 minutes later she texts me that when we check out, we get all of that money back minus charges.
OK, time to confirm with our new hotel.
“I’m not familiar with that.” “Here’s the text from Manager.”
“You only get one night free since at (the other hotel) you paid for one night.” “Nope, I paid for both nights.”
Eventually that got resolved (I think) and I got a physical receipt showing we were only charged for our two poolside drinks but as that money has not been released yet the story is not yet over.
They tried that with me. There was a lot of disappointment that I booked it directly on the hotel’s website although the end result that first night was still, “Not my problem.”
Yes, in the US so US and State of XXX laws apply, not like I know exactly what those are but I assume at the very least they need to refund your money if you show up and that gave your room to somebody else.
I’ve done the Booking.com & Hotels.com exactly twice in my life and both were unusual circumstances. Booking fucked us over similar to this and yes, we dealt with it ourselves at midnight in New York (but the difference is New York = ton of hotel options) and Hotels saved our ass in Corfu.
I was ready to tell the real manager that I was ready to report it as fraud to the corresponding state agency and my bank and post the adventure on social media. Did not have to pull that out because apparently there was a whole procedure for this situation but the night manager, like that coworker of yours, did their best to create a clusterfuck from the start and it was up to everyone else to figure out what was going on.
It might’ve outright been a scam. What kind of hotel doesn’t document things in writing? That’s their only recourse in case of chargebacks. They were just giving you the runaround.
Don’t listen to their bullshit. Whether out of incompetence or malice, they completely failed to deliver the thing you paid for.
Give them a few days to sort out the refunds, but after that I would still leave all the bad reviews and state complaints.
If they don’t refund you in full (at the minimum), charge it all back, and maybe consider taking them to small claims.
Oh, I’d Iike to point out how screwed we would have been, like sleeping in the car, if I didn’t have an extra $1100 to throw at a room.
I’ve thought about that for two reasons. When we went to Venice, it was impossible to get a confirmation of the room cost and our payment despite multiple emails and they ended up charging us twice what was advertised. Second, given how horrible the lines of communication are I suspected the night manager assumed we were not going to show up and decided to sell the room for extra money, hence why she was completely flustered when we did show up. He had so many lies. “You didn’t pay for the room.” “Really, here is the bank transaction for it.” etc.
Eventually they did IF we get the refund they promised.
It was one person and maybe they’ll deal with her or maybe not. All know is eventually we gat a room at a nice hotel, had a great vacation and if I get the money back I was promised I’m moving on with life.
Ok I understand your frustration but going straight to DEFCON 1. Is too much to fast.
If you booked directly with the hotel:
First call and ask for the front desk manager and calmly explain what happened and ask them for a refund and points if you are a member of the brand’ program. Be calm and polite about it and you will likely get something back from them. Being aggressive right away will just make them dig their heels in more.
If that doesn’t work then get in touch with the GM or if the hotel has one the DOSM, once again be calm and polite and explain what happened and what you would like them to do about it.
Failing that, that’s when you contact the brand for satisfaction. Contacting the brand will notify pretty much anyone involved with the Property and if it’s a IHG or Hilton product they will be all over the place until it gets resolved.
If you booked 3rd party OTA you need to contact them directly for any refund… I don’t know if you know this but the hotel only gets paid $40-$50 for every $100 you are charged…. Like if you paid Expedia $239.00 the hotel maybe only get $80-$120 of that… the rest of the $159-$139 went to Expedia’s pocket… just saying.
I went straight to DEFCON You need to find me a room. Everything else was calmly dealt with the next day with the real manager who when she started out, “Here’s the procedure we follow on overbookings …” made it into Let’s work for a resolution rather than the night before of Fuck off and go sleep in the street.
There is no refund. Instead the second hotel is supposed to be paid for by them. As for the refund from the second hotel, they agent and manager worked hard to figure out what was going on; it was a very friendly conversation. And AFAIK it should be completely refunded but you never know for sure until it clears the banks.
Again … didn’t do that. Reserved for the hotel’s own website.
I think the OP already jumped through many hoops. More than reasonably necessary.
It’s not like you’re burning down the hotel because of one bad experience. You’re just being honest about a shitty experience caused by shitty hotel policies. It’s only fair.
If the OP manages to get fully comped in the end and doesn’t want to bother with anything else, that’s totally fine.
I still would, just because it also helps other travelers know which hotels have a pattern of shitty behavior. The one offs can be ignored, but it’s the ones with an aggregate 2 or 3 star rating and a pattern of reviews all complaining about the same things that should be avoided.
They fucked up…. Stay on them until you get your money back.
As for my guess what happened:
Someone forgot to close the system to take reservations from OTA/ GDS until they were way over sold… for example where I am at now we only allow the system to except 3% over available inventory. Or 4 rooms over the 128 rooms. There is a whole bunch procedure in place that keeps us from walking guests as much as possible. The night audit person who was there probably had a rough night and it likely was not their fault… The manager that was supposed to mind the reservations earlier in the day or possibly the week before depending on when the sellout actually occurred, they setup the Night Audit for “success” that shift…
This happened to me at Westin Harborview in Portland, ME. I had paid in advance for a room (directly with the hotel). They kept saying the room “wasn’t ready.” We’d keep going out for a walk and checking back, having dinner, checking back, going to a show, checking back. Each time they either said the room wasn’t ready, or once someone mumbled that there was “someone else in our room.” At the end of the evening, after the show, and not knowing where we’d be sleeping that night, they finally put us in the president’s suite. Nice suite, but all we wanted to do was go to sleep. I would never book there again.
Curious about the brand? Of the Hotel that you booked at originally. And the brand of the one you ended up at?
Yes the original hotel is the one that is supposed to pay for the second hotel. Just for clarification the manager “there’s a process that is supposed to be followed “ is that the original hotel or the second hotel?
Unfortunately depending on State laws ( USA 50+ ways of doing things!) the “Inn Keeper” might not be able to move out / evict the guest in the room the night before, even if they were originally due to depart, then stayed over. Without getting the police involved or a court order to do so… in some states you’re technically a tenant and some aspects of tenants law may apply…example I’m in Texas and at one hotel I worked at we would only allow 29 nights consecutive stay, to avoid making the guest a renter with tenant rights possible. We did have snow birds staying for 3 months in the winter but we would check them out and back in every 29 days to avoid creating a landlord/ tenant relationship from forming.