Meet Dave Howell. Not to be confused with … Dave Howell.
The first Dave Howell lives in England, where he works as a manager for an export company. But when he checked into the Denver Marriott City Center, he found that the hotel had confused him with another guest that happened to share his name.
First, he was issued the keys to a room on the executive floor that was already occupied, presumably by the other Howell. He was reassigned to another room, eventually. When he checked out, he was surprised to discover someone else would cover his stay. “The bill was made out to a David Howell from New York and was to be charged to his American Express card,” he recalls.
Billing snafus like Howell’s have been happening since there have been hotels, of course. A vast majority of inaccurate bills, also called folios in hotel-speak, are innocent mistakes — a wrong room number, sloppy handwriting or a computer glitch. But some aren’t. Who can forget the 1985 comedy “Fletch” in which Chevy Chase tells his server to “Put it on Underhill’s” bill?
The difference is that in this awful economy, hotels are far more reluctant to fix the mistake unless they can find the guilty party.
“Where hotels generally used to remove an erroneous charge without question, now they are more careful,” says Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst at Forrester Research.
Howell — that would be the English one, in case you’ve lost track — eventually called a manager and straightened out his billing mess, “although they still gave the impression that it had all been my fault,” he adds.
But there are easier ways of ensuring your hotel folio belongs to you.
1. Have an alibi.
When I checked out of The Shores Resort & Spa in Daytona Beach, Fla., recently, I found a “Fletch”-like surprise on my bill: Someone had ordered a cheeseburger, Caesar salad and two Miller Lites at the Tiki Bar and charged it to my room. There’s just one problem: I’ve never been to Tiki Bar. Besides, I’m more or less a vegetarian and I’m not much of a drinker. The charges couldn’t have been mine. I asked them to be removed on the morning I checked out, and they were. It helped that I had a good alibi: I wasn’t physically present at the hotel when the food was ordered. And I could prove it.
2. Say ‘no’ to the minibar key
Accepting a minibar key, even if you don’t intend to use it, can lead to billing problems later on, according to experts like Harteveldt. “When I’m offered a minibar key, I decline it, and ask the front desk agent who is checking me in to note in my record that I have declined the key,” he says. Otherwise, you’ll be held responsible for items that are removed. (Worse, some minibars register a “sale” any time an item is moved, meaning that if you touch it, you buy it.)
3. Keep your receipts.
It seems like a simple thing, but a lot of hotel guests forget to do it. I do. I just picked up a deep-dish pizza from the restaurant at the River Hotel in Chicago, where I’m staying for the weekend, and I foolishly tossed the receipt. So maybe I ought to heed my own advice. Actually, it’s Syl Tang’s advice. He’s the editor of the travel site Hipguide. “When I’m out during the hotel stay, I keep receipts of meals I’ve had outside or taxi receipts,” he says. “A mound of paperwork backs up any dispute. You couldn’t have charged that dinner to your room if you were out at the exact same time, eating a meal in a restaurant, for example.” Similarly, a receipt for a hotel meal or spa treatment is proof that you ordered that particular service, and nothing more.
4. Ask first.
So-called “full service” hotels like to charge you for every little thing, which can lead to errors and surprises on your bill, according to guests like Jake Richter, a technology expert based in Bonaire. “My biggest peeve of late, with respect to extra hotel charges, has been the policy to start charging for receiving packages at large chain hotels,” he says. “For someone that travels as much as I do, I rely heavily on mail order for various supplies and sundries I need, and getting nickel-and-dimed for $5 a package — and worse yet, learning about this only at check out — is maddening.” The solution is to never assume any service, no matter how small, will be free, and to always ask if there will be a charge.
5. Don’t wait to dispute a charge.
If you see an incorrect charge on your bill, notify a hotel employee immediately. Richard Atkins, a New York-based corporate trainer, has endured numerous hotel billing errors, from being charged for minibar items he didn’t use to being double-billed for a hotel parking spot. “In almost every case, a visit to the front desk resolves the issue,” he says. What if you get a surprise extra charge after checkout? Atkins says he can usually get those taken care of with a phone call, although it’s always better to address billing problems sooner rather than later.
Avoiding billing errors is relatively easy if you take a few simple precautions. But some billing snafus are probably best left alone.
Consider what happened to Paul Rasmussen, a vice president for a medical consulting company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. As he was reconciling his expenses at the end of the month, he noticed an extra $60 charge from his hotel. He didn’t recognize the purchase, and since he was out of the office, he asked the hotel to fax a receipt to his company’s accounting department.
“When I returned from traveling, my boss called me in to ask why I charged three adult movies to the room in one night at $20 a piece and secondly, how I could watch those movies for six hours straight?” he remembers. “I obviously did not purchase those, but everyone in the company found out about it and I never heard the end of it.”
Rasmussen offered to call the hotel to dispute the charges, but a manager told him not to bother.
“No,” he said to Rasmussen, “it’s worth the $60 in grief you will have to live with as long as you work here.”
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
It took me a couple of weeks of back-and-forth emails to get my hotel points, that had been erroneously posted to the account of a Carolyn Charney in Austin, TX. I must look her up when I go there sometime. Could be a distant relative.,,
So who’s right?
Is it Henry Harteveldt, the travel analyst at Forrester Research when he states that “Where hotels generally used to remove an erroneous charge without question, now they are more careful,”
-OR-
Richard Atkins, a New York-based corporate trainer, who believes that. “In almost every case, a visit to the front desk resolves the [billing] issue
My personal experience is that Mr. Atkins is correct, at least insofar as you are perceived to be a valuable customer, e.g. member of the hotel’s loyalty program.
I had an erroneous charge for $40 US on my credit card after checking out of the Sheraton in Seattle. It was for valet parking; I had come to Seattle on the passenger ferry and got around using public transit and taxis. When I had checked out I signed a bill saying there was $0 owing, so the transaction had been processed without my signature or approval. I phoned the hotel and they agreed to refund the money, but in the process I lost $3 due to the difference in exchange rates betweent the day I was charged and the day I was refunded. It’s obviously not the end of the world, but I would have been really angry if it had been a $400 charge and I’d lost $30 due to an exchange rate difference. How can this be avoided?
The name mixup happened to me once at the Frankfurter Hof in Frankfurt. I have a very common Irish-American name, but of course it’s not so common in Germany, so when they got two of us coming in for a trade show, they figured there was a double booking and didn’t save two rooms.
However, when I showed up at the front desk after the other guy had already checked in, and they realized there really were two confirmed guests with the same name, they were very classy about it, and gave my wife and me a very posh suite at the regular room price. That alone got them future visits from us, not to mention a good-sized group booking for a company trip.
As an aside, the Frankfurter Hof is a great hotel with wonderful service. On our first visit, my wife and I ordered tea and cookies each evening upon returning from dinner after the trade show. After the first two nights, I’d dial room service and they’d say, “Good evening, Mr. —, are you ready for your tea and cookies?” And they kept a record and prepared tea and cookies on future visits years later, too. Amazing.
Again I’m amazed that we allow this, or have to have alibi’s or proof that we *didn’t* incur an expense (by keeping random receipts for where *else* whe were). The wishy-washy “just note your room number” thing is a major problem.
We need to make it clear (with laws) that it’s the *hotel* that needs to substantiate each expense if challenged — a printed room number simply shouldn’t be sufficient and should result in immediate reversal of the charge with apology. A signature (that matches), a room key swipe, etc, should be required, and if the hotel *chooses* not to ask for those at the restaurant etc, that’s their problem, not mine.
Josh
@Josh
I can understand your point. European hotels generally ask only for my room number, but US hotels seems to ask for both Room number and name. Its like any other form of credit. How difficult do we want to make it for transactions to occur. I suspect that this erroneous billing is relatively rare and we don’t want to make it too onerous else the hotels will stop offering the easy ability to charge items.
For example, on business trips, I often meet clients at hotels. I will usually sign the valet ticket and have it charged to my room. I’d rather have that type of flexibility and chance a hotel screw up then to then tighten up and lose the ability to do
Some years ago, I arrived very late in the evening for a convention at the Hilton in Minneapolis. They “lost” my reservation. After a few exasperating words with the late-night front desk personnel, they sent me to a suite. Nice. The next day was a long one. Convention sessions, meetings, etc., stretching late into the evening. I returned to my suite at about 2 a.m. to find security at the door, a couple of housekeepers and some sort of manager waiting patiently outside. The Minnesota Vikings had reserved the entire floor. They packed me up and hustled me out in a matter of minutes. Suddenly I was back in a regular room with two queen beds. Un-nice.
@ Carver,
I agree with you on the convenience. It’s just that, as you point out, it’s a form of credit, and should be treated as such. It’s the responsibility of a credit grantor to verify the identity of their customer so they can collect later. It’s up to them to balance the convenience for their customer against the ability to prove the charge; if they can’t substantiate that the person they’re charging is the one who actually incurred it, then they need to smile, apologize, remove the charge, and eat the loss.
One of the problems with identity theft is how casual random businesses are in ensuring the customer is who they say they are, how vigorously they will try to collect against the wrong person later, and how hard it is for that wrong person to prove a negative — that they *didn’t* incur such charge. A hotel has an advantage in that they only extend restaurant etc credit to a small set of people; they just need to use technology (e.g. card swipe) to ensure they’re picking the correct one of that set.