tuapekastar
In memoriam
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2005
- Posts
- 4,424
I did actually receive an explanatory letter subsequent to noticing the extra charge, but the sentiment in the thread title is still true in any case.
A few days after a recent short (one night), pleasant and uneventful stay at a Hilton property, I was checking my credit card transactions online and noticed a charge of ~$80 to the property in question. Was quite sure I had not incurred any extra charges but racked the old brain anyway and recalled as best as I could from checkin to checkout, but could not think of any reason I should be charged. My 'receipt' was clean.
So I rang them and the pleasant lady at the other of the phone 'looked me up' and was as perplexed as I was, and said she would get her boss to call me back after they investigated. An hour or so later I checked the mailbox and there was a letter from the property, and while I won't quote it verbatim, essentially they were charging me for consuming 10 mini-bar items (all drinks, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, and each listed individually). Now it is possible I opened the mini-bar fridge door for a look (I like to nose around when I check in to hotel rooms) but there was no way I consumed a single item from it - I rarely do. In fact, I was probably in the room and awake for about 2 or 3 hours total, and part of that was showering/dressing/packing so I would have been 'sloshing' around had I managed to put myself outside that much liquid in that sort of time frame!
So I rang back and advised the same lady I now knew what they were charging me for - mini-bar, and she said to me without prompting something like "and you did not use it, correct?", which I confirmed as correct. She apologised and without hesitation said she would reverse the charge.
There's good and bad in this:
First the bad: that it happened in the first place. The 'system' (honesty at checkout, essentially, for a single night stay, or the last night of a multi-night stay) is not the greatest.
Then the good: that they wrote an explanatory letter and detailed/itemised what the charges were for, rather than just charging the CC and leaving it at that, and the polite and efficient way it was handled on the phone (assuming the reversal happens as promised
)
I can only speculate on why it happened: wrong room number recorded somewhere, mini-bar had not been restocked after the prior occupant's stay, some sort of fraudulence on the part of a guest or staff member, who knows?
I liken it a bit to rental car returns: you park it in the lot, drop off the key and off you go. From the minute you walk away from the car, anything can happen to it and because they don't usually have someone in the parking lot to inspect it, potentially any damage that occurred after you parked and left it could be attributed to you. Just like they don't inspect your room/mini-bar when you check out. I understand that is not really practical, but it could potentially lead to errant extra charges like those above.
Anyway, subject to the reversal happening soon, I'm perfectly happy with the way the property handled the issue.
I cannot recall this happening to me before - anyone else had this sort of problem (not just with Hilton) before, and what was the outcome?
A few days after a recent short (one night), pleasant and uneventful stay at a Hilton property, I was checking my credit card transactions online and noticed a charge of ~$80 to the property in question. Was quite sure I had not incurred any extra charges but racked the old brain anyway and recalled as best as I could from checkin to checkout, but could not think of any reason I should be charged. My 'receipt' was clean.
So I rang them and the pleasant lady at the other of the phone 'looked me up' and was as perplexed as I was, and said she would get her boss to call me back after they investigated. An hour or so later I checked the mailbox and there was a letter from the property, and while I won't quote it verbatim, essentially they were charging me for consuming 10 mini-bar items (all drinks, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, and each listed individually). Now it is possible I opened the mini-bar fridge door for a look (I like to nose around when I check in to hotel rooms) but there was no way I consumed a single item from it - I rarely do. In fact, I was probably in the room and awake for about 2 or 3 hours total, and part of that was showering/dressing/packing so I would have been 'sloshing' around had I managed to put myself outside that much liquid in that sort of time frame!
So I rang back and advised the same lady I now knew what they were charging me for - mini-bar, and she said to me without prompting something like "and you did not use it, correct?", which I confirmed as correct. She apologised and without hesitation said she would reverse the charge.
There's good and bad in this:
First the bad: that it happened in the first place. The 'system' (honesty at checkout, essentially, for a single night stay, or the last night of a multi-night stay) is not the greatest.
Then the good: that they wrote an explanatory letter and detailed/itemised what the charges were for, rather than just charging the CC and leaving it at that, and the polite and efficient way it was handled on the phone (assuming the reversal happens as promised
)I can only speculate on why it happened: wrong room number recorded somewhere, mini-bar had not been restocked after the prior occupant's stay, some sort of fraudulence on the part of a guest or staff member, who knows?
I liken it a bit to rental car returns: you park it in the lot, drop off the key and off you go. From the minute you walk away from the car, anything can happen to it and because they don't usually have someone in the parking lot to inspect it, potentially any damage that occurred after you parked and left it could be attributed to you. Just like they don't inspect your room/mini-bar when you check out. I understand that is not really practical, but it could potentially lead to errant extra charges like those above.
Anyway, subject to the reversal happening soon, I'm perfectly happy with the way the property handled the issue.
I cannot recall this happening to me before - anyone else had this sort of problem (not just with Hilton) before, and what was the outcome?
