It’s no secret that hotels are tightening their rules to lift faltering earnings. But how far will the lodging industry go to bring in more money?
If you said “too far” then you must have read Matt Holly’s mind. He ran into a problem with a Days Inn reservation earlier this week and nearly had to pay for two rooms.
After he made reservations on the Days Inn site for a stay next weekend, he was taken to “a strange dialog box” that mentioned a special offer.
I assumed this was a marketing ad to entice me to enroll in a program, so I ignored the ad and closed the page, expecting to receive a confirmation email. But I never got one.
I began to worry that maybe the reservation did not go through; maybe I was supposed to somehow respond to the “live chat” box?
So today, I checked my credit card statement online, and there was no charge. I attempted to log in to the “Retrieve a Reservation” portion of the Days Inn Web site with my name and credit card number, but it said there were no reservations on file for me.
So Holly made another reservation. And wouldn’t you know it, he ended up with two confirmed reservations — both nonrefundable. That’s when the fun began.
Holly wrote a brief, polite e-mail to Days Inn, describing what had happened. Here’s its response:
Thank you for contacting Days Inn Customer Care. Our records indicate a reservation was booked on October 10, 2008 for arrival October 17, 2008 and a second reservation was booked on October 13, 2008 for arrival on October 17, 2008. Both of these were booked with no refund allowed.
The rate you booked allows you to purchase discounted rooms at a non-refundable rate. This information is provided to the consumer at the time of booking. In addition, you cannot submit a reservation without checking a box stating “I understand by selecting this checkbox, I have read and accepted the terms and conditions on this page.”
These terms and condition specifically provide that “There will be no credit or refund for early departures, cancellations, no shows, or changes in your reservation for any reason. Guests will not receive any refund or credit”. Accordingly, you were advised of the fact that this reservation was non-refundable and there was a no cancellation policy prior to purchase.
Nice form letter.
Here’s how he replied:
With all due respect, this is just getting silly. I have no problem with the Days Inn non-refundable policy as long as it works as it is supposed to. The nonrefundable policy is in place to offer cheaper rates to customers – this I totally understand.
However, the problem here is not a customer trying to weasel out of your policy – the problem is that a customer did not receive confirmation of their hotel room and a customer was not able to access his reservation online and was instead told “We could not locate your reservation.”
I do not understand why the Days Inn refuses to assist a customer that was a victim of their own technological glitch.
To its credit, someone from Days Inn actually read Holly’s letter and answered.
Thank you for your comments. We have been in contact with the property and have been given permission to cancel your reservation. I apologize for what you experienced and for any inconvenience this has caused you.
Holly was correct to be persistent, and Days Inn did the right thing by actually reading his response. But I wonder what this says about how hotels are handling cancellations and enforcing other rules? The better certain rules are enforced, the more money a hotel makes. But that approach can also alienate customers.
Is it worth it? Looks as if the hotel industry is testing its limits.
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{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
I don’t see the problem here. The answer is simple — don’t do business with places that require a full payment up front. Yes I understand that a lot of businesses are doing this now and I’m not patronizing them anymore because of it. I’ve been sure to tell each of them this when they ask why I have suddenly stopped staying at their properties. Hopefully it’ll sink in sooner or later.
Thanks for this posting, Chris. I just wanted to add a couple points to support your conclusion, as well as add some takeaway lessons I learned.
First, I only ever received a single confirmation e-mail; most customers would not realize they had two rooms booked until they showed up at the front desk to check in. I only discovered the double booking because I took the initiative to check my reservation status on their web site, both before and after making the second attempted booking. I somehow went from zero reservations before, to two after. Be careful if you book online at the Days Inn; if you do not receive a confirmation e-mail, I’d recommend calling their reservations number rather than attempting to find your reservation through their web site.
Second, the first “brief, polite e-mail” I sent was after attempting two telephone calls to cancel the extra reservation – one to the customer service center and one to the hotel directly. In both cases, they refused to cancel the extra reservation, even after I explained the entire situation. So their first email response quoted above was actually their THIRD refusal. You have to wonder how many customers would finally just give up and pay for the two rooms; clearly that’s what the Days Inn was banking on. Should a hotel really be calling a customer’s bluff over the sake of one room? Indeed, “[this] approach can alienate customers.”
Perhaps the most surprising lesson I learned is that sometimes situations are better resolved via e-mail than telephone. I assumed the personal contact of telephone conversation would resolve things most swiftly, but this proved to not be the case. E-mail letters allow one to explain the situation in a logical, thoughtful manner; a compelling written argument may be more difficult to dismiss than a spoken one. Similarly, by writing an e-mail letter, I was able to attach a screen shot of my e-mail account search results, demonstrating that I absolutely only received one confirmation. Supporting materials like this may give the customer more credibility.
Confirmation emails are the only thing that bridges our reservations, and if they can’t do a good job at keeping it, something should be done. I mean, I hate double bookings and non-refundables.
Thanks, Matt, for sharing your experience.
Chris, I’m curious…. Could Matt have avoided this problem if he had called Days Inn when he noticed that his reservation wasn’t there? (rather than booking a second one and trying to contact the hotel then?)
I’m very paranoid about where my credit card number goes. If I had given it out and not received a confirmation, I would be worried about a scam.
Sounds like a badly designed web site coupled with an extremly unforgiving cancellation policy. Good to know.
The question is how do you prevent this from happening in the future. If you are a frequent traveler then you can limit your travel to those providers in which you have achieved status. That status may help you in such cases. Otherwise, I agree with the first poster. Be very wary of booking non-refundable rates. Getting bitten just once can wipe out any savings from these rates.
I respectfully DISAGREE with almost everyone.
I work in a hotel chain and what is NOT being said here is revealing.
Firstly, most chain hotels do NOT send confirmation emails. When you book an online reservation, you will get a confirmation number immediately. There is no need for a ‘confirming’ email. If the party here saw a statement that said he would get a confirming email, he should have written down the confirmation number and when no email was received, could call the 800 number for Days Inn and follow up. I’m guessing this party simply ‘expected’ a confirmation when one was never promised. Or perhaps it was put in the SPAM folder automatically – something hotels cannot control. (I’ve answered MANY direct emails to our hotel and when we sent a confirmation (as we state we will for email requests), we were BLOCKED BY THE RECIPIENT because we were not on their approved list to receive emails!)
Secondly, hotels do not pre-charge for rooms as a general policy. Only Third Party discount sites charge your card when reservations are made and they tell you that up front. Again, if this guest says the reservation was declared as pre-paid and had a legitimate expectation of a charge to his C/C, I stand corrected but I am guessing that is NOT the case. I suspect he ‘assumed’ it was pre-paid.
I know no one will feel sorry for hotels (especially after Chris’s lead in) but this is NOT about any ‘policy’ to increase earnings. No respectable hotel OR chain would gouge the public nowadays – not with forums like this and Tripadvisor at the ready to be-head you at the first hint of overcharging. What this is about is protecting YOU – the public.
Because every person who (by design or inadvertently) books duplicate reservations and then sticks the hotel with an empty room by claiming it was the web sites fault is costing YOU money to cover these events. If people are afraid of booking a hotel on line, we all still have 800 numbers where you can leave the inputting to professionals AND get the same lower internet rate. Hotels would MUCH prefer people do this than show up with 3 rooms reserved and tell you they only need one. I know – it happens a few times a year at our hotel and hotels are victims as well as we do not know if someone legitimately needs 3 rooms or they are possible ‘dupes’. Now, our hotel is one that allows people to cancel dupes without charging them but we may be the exception here (apparently).
I disagree with Days Inn for not immediately refunding the money. Mistakes happen and they should allow for the benefit of the doubt. The response by Days Inn sounds like a ‘canned’ response and is also inexcusable given the complaint but Days Inn are franchises and it is actually up to the impacted hotel to refund any charge – not Days Inn corporate. In the end, it will cost you the consumer for errors like this as well as the hotel so in all honesty, you all should be annoyed as much with the guest and not the hotel because it sure sounds to me a lot like the guest ‘assumed’ things that are not reality. Again, I will stand corrected if any of these ‘assumptions’ were clearly indicated in print and the guest was justified in their expectation. It just isn’t the policy with most franchised hotels.
I had a similar run-in with Hampton Inn which I thought was just a computer glitch on their part but after reading this article, I wonder whether it was actually a way to get me to forget about my reservation. I had a res at an HI that I’ve stayed at before. I made this res about 3 months in advance. They always send a reminder email about the reservation and you have until 4pm the day before to cancel. Well, this time they did not send a reminder email, and as it turns out, I had forgotten about the res because my plans had changed about 1 month into the res and I literally forgot about it. Until it was too late to cancel the reservation. I was promptly charged for the night and when I went to go look my reservation up on the system as I’m also a frequent guest member, the reservation was nowhere to be found as a historical reservation. Weird and annoying. But, it taught me a lesson! Thanks for the article!
Solution? Don’t use non-refundable rates. I’ve always been able to find a similar rate at another hotel by digging a little deeper.
With airline delays and other unforseen circumstances, the little bit that might be saved…to me…is not worth it in the long run.
David, even companies like Starwood and Marriott offer pre-paid rates on their own website. It’s not limited to 3rd party websites any more
For example, in the past when I’ve search for reservations at a Starwood hotel (usually a Sheraton or a Westin) I have usually been given the option to book an Internet Only Rate which requires payment in full at time of booking OR booking a fully refundable rate. And this has been an option on their website since at least 2005 as I booked one of those internet only rates at that time.
@ David:
It sounds like you’re just projecting frustration. “The guest” as you referred to him checked his credit card and the Day’s Inn Retrieve a Reservation function before booking a new room. Sounds like Mr. Holly did his due diligence before rebooking to me.
Also, I always receive some sort of “Thank you for Booking with us!” email when I book via the web. I can’t think of a single time when I have not.
And Wrona is also correct about the Starwood and Marriott, I’ve also seen is when booking Hilton rooms as well.
Something overlooked in the comments here is Mr. Holly’s mention of a ’strange dialog box’. I had a similar experience in booking a room at one of the motel chains and found that the dialog led to a sleazy tease for some kind of subscription program – first month free, of course.
I scrambled to escape that pitch without getting hooked and in the process was not able to return to my reservation sequence. I ended up calling the reservation number to see for sure if my reservation had registered (it had). Until I called I did not have a confirmation number.
I had to ask for a confirming e-mail so I’d have something to show if need be.
I Stayed at a Days Inn in baton Rouge , La. for three weeks and they charged me for four weeks. I notified them of there mistake and they treated me like a third , no fourth class citizen by not responding to any of my calls, actually hanging up on me one time and then telling me there was nothing they could do about it and to this date nothing has been done. I spoke with the “so called headquarters” at which there response was wait for three weeks and they will take action. There action was to call me and tell me I had to wait another week. Then they called me and wanted receipts from my credit card company and the hotel receipts. I faxed these to them and still no responce after she said she would get right back to me within a couple days. It has been five now and no word. Absolutely absurd. As soon as I saw this charge on my credit card it had not even been a week yet and I called the hotel from Texas and asked why they had charged me. They could not give me an answer nor could they even talk to me about it.
I guess my question is who do you talk with at Days Inn ” Head Quarters” to get some type of responce or correction?
Lianne and wrona
Can you direct to me to one of those sites where you actually see a rate that says ‘non refundable’? I have looked on Starwood and Hilton and cannot see that specified anywhere. If you are talking about some special deal (like to Hawaii) that is non-refundable, is that what Matt is talking about as well?
Internet rates are not the same as non-refundable bookings – even Expedia allows you to cancel a pre-paid room up to 24 hours prior to check in. I have scoured Intercontinental (Holiday Inns et al), Choice Hotels (Clarion, Quality Inns etc) Wyndham (Travelodge, days Inn, Super 8) and no where was I able to find a rate that said non-refundable. I’d be interested in seeing the hotel’s corporate URL that actually shows a non refundable reservation (assuming it is not within 24 hours of arrival – which was NOT Matt’s case either).
I just got caught up in one of these situations. I booked an online reservation through the Holiday Inn Express Web site about a month ago, and subsequently found I had to cancel it about three weeks before my intended stay. Stupidly, I was in a hurry when I booked and didn’t read all the fine print (totally my mistake). The cancellation cost me over $108 in fees for the cancelled one night stay including taxes, etc. The outcome was clearly my fault for not being more vigilant in reading all the terms. Unfortunately, I trusted that I could cancel the same way as if I had made the reservation by calling the property or the 800 number since I was dealing directly with the hotel chain all along. I won’t book online again, so I’ve learned my lesson and likely won’t deal with the chain again either because of the harsh rules.
One thing I did learn over the past years is to check my reservations by phone. And I usually make reservations where they don’t require up-front payment.
So I made an email reservation for a hostel in Vienna, got a rather “weird”-ish replay and the next day I called them to confirm everything. Thankfully everything was fine and we paid at arrival.
“Firstly, most chain hotels do NOT send confirmation emails.”
I have always received an email confirmation for every hotel room I have booked online. I always use their website and the confirmation comes automatically. Even when I call because of a special rate, I receive an email.
If I did not receive an comfirmation email, I would bet the reservation did not go through.