Sloth Blog

By D. Allan Kerr

This space is employed to express opinions on a variety of topics. Sometimes people disagree with those opinions and sometimes people get genuinely ticked off at me for spouting them.

But trust me, this is one piece you might want to file away for future reference, especially if you plan to travel over the upcoming holidays.  

My family and I embarked on an awesome road trip to the Carolinas this past summer. The only setbacks took place at two different hotels on the same night, in the same town: Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina.

That’s when we ran into what I’ll call the Hospitality Shell Game.

The details are too complicated to divulge completely in this limited space, but it basically boils down to this:

While on the road, we booked a room on Saturday evening at the local Best Western using BringFido.com, a third party website for locating dog-friendly hotels and restaurants, as we were traveling with our two pups.

After checking in, we discovered our first-floor room had a damaged window that wouldn’t close or lock. My family didn’t feel especially safe in such an arrangement. The front desk clerk offered us a room on the second floor, located on the other side of the building.

This room also wasn’t suitable, and my wife – who has an uncanny intuition about these things – suggested we would be better off elsewhere. Let’s just say this particular Best Western didn’t match our usual expectations of quality.

We informed the young lady at the front desk we were going to try another hotel instead. She told us only the general manager could give us a full refund and that individual wouldn’t be back until the following morning.

So we got in the car and my wife booked another room on her phone thru BringFido.com within view of the first, at a Hilton Garden Inn located less than half a mile away.

She got an error message on her first attempt, but the second went thru. She informed the front desk staff about the issue when checking in and they assured her we would only be charged for the room we occupied.

A power outage in the area necessitated the manual input of credit card information but we got our room and had a lovely stay.

After departing the next morning, which happened to be my birthday, we swung by Best Western again to ask about our refund.

The manager was in, but claimed she couldn’t give us a full refund because, according to the woman working the desk the previous night, we had the room for two hours. I assured her that was absolutely incorrect.

She responded by saying something like, “Well, I don’t know why she would lie.”

The point being, I suppose, that I must be the one lying.

She didn’t bother to check her records or anything else, but simply had another employee provide me a phone number for the Best Western corporate office.

We then went back to the Hilton Garden Inn and obtained a copy of our receipt from that stay, which displayed a check-in time verifying we couldn’t have been at the Best Western hotel for two hours.

But later we realized we had been charged for two rooms at the Hilton Garden Inn. Then the shell game began.

Since we had booked both visits thru a third party website, we were told BringFido.com would have to contact the hotels on our behalf. In the meantime, we also registered complaints by phone with the corporate offices of both chains.

What followed was a round robin in which these intermediaries tried to call the respective hotels, we followed up with the third-party reps or corporate community relations on their progress, and they told us they hadn’t heard back yet.

Then, at our insistence, these third parties would start the cycle all over again.

At one point, however, once the Best Western manager was advised of the evidence showing we were not in the unsatisfactory room for two hours, she told our two parties she couldn’t provide a refund because we had been there for ONE hour.

These intermediaries acknowledged there is nothing they can do to compel these hotels to take any action.

We were fairly certain the corporate offices would at least make an effort to prevent an independent establishment from sullying their good name, but apparently each site is an individual franchise and only that establishment can determine whether to refund a payment.

Thru the simple tactic of avoidance, these hotels appeared to be buffered from accountability.

A couple of times, we were advised by these third parties to request a reversal of charges from our credit card company, which in this case was the debit card from our local bank.

We assumed this would be a complex procedure and hoped instead these managers would just see the reasonableness of refunding our money. We were essentially being charged a total of $400 for two rooms in two hotels we never occupied.

After weeks of frustration evolved into months, a lawyer acquaintance provided some friendly advice which ultimately resulted in our bank reclaiming both charges thru our card.

While hiring an attorney to settle a $400 dispute may not be practical, there are some things to consider if you wish to resolve the matter yourself.

• Make sure interactions with the business in question are in writing, to be forwarded as evidence to your credit institution when disputing the charge.
• Dispute inaccurate charges within 60 days of the transaction and demand prompt action from your bank or credit card company.
• Assertively emphasize the non-receipt of services for which the charges were imposed. This establishes the charges were unauthorized.
• Follow up monthly on their progress toward resolution.

In the meantime, you can be assured we don’t intend to check into a Best Western franchise anytime soon.

D. Allan Kerr is not a lawyer, and the advice mentioned here is for informational purposes only. If you require legal assistance, consult someone who knows what they’re talking about.

Follow D. Allan Kerr on Seacoastonline.com, Facebook and the Sloth Blog Threads and Twitter (yeah, we’re still calling it Twitter.)