it was good of chris to get motel 6 to issue the other vouchers, but it should have gone further to refund the money for the improper charged nights stay. a lot of trust is put in a hotel for, as a minimum, a safe, quiet, comfortable nights stay…a very basic expectation…if they dont deliver…then forget the voucher, refund all fees, because the hotel did not deliver the service.

Bad service (crack pipe in the room — and the gases from those new CFC bulbs are deadly and are supposed to be handled by Hazmat teams if broken because of mercury AND a bad voucher) at one location does not mean that service should be expected to be better at another location. Write off Motel 6 as a location to stay at and move on to somewhere else. Receiving vouchers from Motel 6 for future stays is like getting certificates to a restaurant that is infested with pests. You still don’t want to go back.

Lots of these complaints that Chris Elliott responds to are the fault of the consumer. If you get a voucher and you require a reservation, you have plenty of time to ask if the voucher will be accepted at the time of the reservation. Or you might get an idea if there might be a problem, since these hotels are franchises and each one has its own rules.

Motel 6 may not owe Ms. Pope a voucher for her child finding a meth pipe in the room. But if the pipe was in fact fashioned from a CFL bulb, she may want to talk to her doctor and a lawyer about her grand-daughter’s exposure to mercury (a potent neurotoxin, especially in children). Also, I wonder about the need for testing her for exposure to methamphetamine (again, a potent toxin). Or is the motel exempt from all responsilility? The smell of smoking meth is pretty potent, someone on the cleaning staff would have noticed it, and may have reported it. The CFL bulb was broken and at least part of it would have been in the trash, indicating a need for more detailed clean up to deal with the mercury. Perhaps that more thourough cleanup would have found the meth pipe, before Ms Pope’s family (and how many others? Guests, staff) were exposed.

And Chris, I hate to pig pile on you, but I have to say Jennifer, Jim and Lianne make valid points. A voucher is a voucher. If they’re not good, don’t issue them. If it was only good for the San Antonio property, the manager should have told her this. Travelers are responsible for their travel, to a certain extent, but shouldn’t have to play Sherlock Holmes in every case, just to ferret out facts they should have been told by the people who knew what they were talking about. Motel 6 dropped the ball on this one. Still, I’m glad your intervention helped this woman get some satisfaction.

Whether or not Ms Pope was *owed* the voucher, the motel chain saw fit to *give* her one as a “good will” gesture. They can’t just blow her off on a technicality later and expect her not be upset.

and @ Joe Farrell

I often agree with your comments, so I really hope you aren’t insinuating that budget travelers aren’t deserving of a clean room or decent customer service. Motel 6 may not be the Waldorf Astoria, but it is a nationally recognized chain and should have basic standards of service.

In this case, all that mattered was that Ms. Pope was issued a voucher. It should have been good and wasn’t. That’s Motel 6′s problem, not Ms. Pope’s. It is completely irrelevant why she was issued a voucher. If you feel the story is less interesting without the crack pipe angle, you’re free not to write it.

There are times when the customer is wrong, maybe lots of times, but not every time. I certainly would hesitate to ask you for help because it wouldn’t be worth whatever compensation or assistance I was seeking.