Tag: SMOKE

Smoked out of the Days Inn

By Christopher Elliott |

no smokingQuestion: I have a concern that I tried addressing with a specific Days Inn and with Wyndham, which owns Days Inn, but have not received a response. I recently stayed at the Days Inn in Fernandina Beach, Fla. I made a reservation for a non-smoking room and was given a smoking room when I checked it.

I spoke with a manager, who told me he was sorry he couldn’t offer me a non-smoking room. The only rooms the hotel had left to sell were smoking rooms.

So, my question to Wyndham is: Is it their policy to accept a reservation for a non-smoking room when no such room exists? I wrote to Wyndham, but after several emails, it stopped answering.
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A fee for lighting up in my rental? But I don’t smoke

By Christopher Elliott |

smokeQuestion: My wife and I traveled to Las Vegas for a trade show. I decided to use my credit card points to cover my car rental through Dollar Rent a Car.

At the car rental desk I was pressured to take the optional insurance, but I told them I had checked with my insurance agent and that I was covered. After 10 minutes of saying “no” she insisted on making a copy of my credit card. I let her and went on my way.

I rented the car for five days, drove a total of 83 miles, and returned the car with a full tank. A Dollar employee checked the car when I returned it and said everything was “OK.”
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What are we owed for two “horrible, stinky nights” in a hotel?

By Christopher Elliott |

Erika Spott is a card-carrying member of Choice Hotels’ loyalty program, and she gives the hotel chain her business because she can always count on getting clean, reasonably-priced room.

Until she visited Avon, Ind., for a family event recently.

“We booked two non-smoking rooms at the Comfort Inn,” she says. “When we returned from spending the day with our family around 10:30 p.m., our room reeked of cigarette smoke — enough to gag a smoker.”
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Smoked out of my suite on the Carnival Miracle

By Christopher Elliott |

Andrew Besterman’s eight-day cruise to the Bahamas on the Carnival Miracle was something short of divine. For the duration of the journey, he was annoyed by the odor of cigarette smoke which seeped into his mini-suite from the cabin next door.

“Every time the passengers in the next stateroom lit up their cigarettes the smoke came into our room,” he says. “Since our bed shared a common wall, we could tell exactly when our neighbors smoked.”

A few days after his cruise, Carnival tightened its smoking policy, banning smoking in all staterooms. But alas, not in time for his vacation.
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“The pictures clearly show ashes. We will not be able to remove the charge.”

By Christopher Elliott |

Two weeks after Mary Garrow rented a car from Budget Rent a Car in Tulsa, she got an unpleasant surprise: A $250 cleaning charge for her vehicle. Budget claimed someone had been smoking in the car.

Garrow doesn’t smoke. She’d been in Tulsa for a funeral, which explains the presence of the ashes on the seat, and she believes the charges are unfair.

Budget sent her photos of the car (see above) but Garrow isn’t buying it. I’d like your opinion on this case, because frankly, I don’t know what to think.
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