Athena Foley and her husband wish they’d never stayed at the Hotel Ändra. This summer, when they checked into the Seattle boutique hotel, a bellhop stole one of their bags after they surrendered it.
Foley lost $1,000 worth of items, including clothes, eyeglasses and medicine. She wants the property to compensate her for the loss. But today’s “Is this enough compensation?” case is not an open-and-shut case, as you’ll see in a second.
Let’s listen to her side of the story first.
When we pulled up in front of the hotel, the bellhop unloaded our luggage from the car onto a cart, and he whisked it away.
It turns out he just parked it in the lobby. When the bellhop brought our luggage to our room later, my bag (holding approximately $1,000 of stuff, including eyeglasses and medicine) was not there.
At my insistance, the hotel finally reviewed its security tapes and sure enough, a week after we left, the hotel confirmed that a man is seen on the tape stealing my bag. The hotel said he looked like a professional.
Washington State’s lodging laws and compensation challenges
Have a look at Washington State’s lodging laws, which essentially let the property off the hook. Foley would need to prove “gross negligence” to receive compensation, and even if she could, the rules limit her to $200 in compensation, based on my non-lawyerly reading.
The Hotel Ändra filed a claim with its insurance company, but, astonishingly, the claim was denied because, according to Foley, “the bag was left in a public space.”
“I say that the bag was in the hotel’s possession and that it failed to use a duty of reasonable care in securing the bag,” she says. “The hotel parked it there without any input from me.” (Related: A stolen West Point class ring, and all I get from my hotel is an excuse?)
After a month of back-and-forth, the hotel came forward with new information about the incident.
We were told that the clerk behind the counter says she offered to move my luggage to a more secure location. That is nonsense. Why would I possibly refuse such an offer if it ever had been made?
I think that the hotel took possession of my bag and handled it negligently. The bellhop parked it in a place where it was vulnerable to theft, and furthermore, it was parked there longer than it needed to be.
Legal implications in the luggage loss incident
I’ve reviewed the correspondence between her husband and the hotel, and I don’t see anything in it to contradict her account. I find the insurance company’s refusal to honor the claim troubling; it appears to be a cop-out. If the hotel accepted the luggage, it shouldn’t matter where it stored the bags; it is responsible. (Here’s what you need to do if an airline loses your checked luggage.)
The Hotel Ändra refunded her one night’s lodging and offered to refund a second night. Foley doesn’t think it’s enough, and she wants to be reimbursed for her loss. It looks as if the hotel, its insurance company and Washington State law is standing in the way of that.
