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Hotel Hell.com
By Jennifer Lynne
Investigative Reporter |
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Los Angeles- So you don't believe in hell? Give us a few minutes and a computer and we will introduce you to online hotel booking. What started out as a good idea to save serious money has evolved into an ugly, cold and faceless monster bent on extracting as many extraneous fees as possible from your credit card. And most of the time it's is perfectly legal.
These guys are very smart. First, they live in cyberspace which means they control everything including how and when you can talk to them. More often than not, email or online customer support is their first choice of communication. Telephone support is limited and usually reverts back to e-mail for anything more than a cursory call. When you have a complaint, there is no face to face meeting with them like in the old days. It's just so much easier to take advantage of people when it's a one sided conversation.
When you push the enter button, you just bought and paid for one or all of their products. For better or worse, you are stuck with them. In the event you catch a customer service representative in a really good mood and you have some compelling story why you need to change dates and or cancel a reservation, you might get away with cancellation fees that can range for each reservation from a low of $25.00 to as high as 50% or 100% of the entire reservation. That's if you are lucky. Usually, there are no refunds period. Each booker has different rules and guidelines.
Unfortunately, most people don't stop and read all the fine print when they are in a hurry to book a flight, car or room. If you take the time to read these third party travel brokers 'terms of service' agreements, Their it is as plain as the nose on your face. No refunds for hotels, airline tickets or rental cars when cancelled at check in, or in some cases one day before check in.
If you are from the baby boom generation, you are the most likely candidate to fall victim to the new world of business practices. Baby boomers may as well have come from another planet. Most think the world of business is still honorable. After all, they grew up with 'Father Knows Best, Lassie, Bonanza'... And last but not least, John Wayne, an icon of fairness and honesty.
So, what happened? Somewhere along the way, it became OK to steal your money. Not with a gun, but by electronically accessing your credit card. And when and if they get caught, they manipulate the truth to resolve the problem in their favor. Some just blame it on a computer error. Just because you can pull the wool over trusting people's eyes legally with embedded cancellation clauses buried in the fine print, does not mean you have to use the legalese against your customers to rip them off. But that's exactly what is happening every day to hundreds of people who fall prey to the low prices online sites hook you with. People and companies who will still do the right thing have become all but non-existent.
The flip side of the coin is that if everything goes as you planned and there are no changes to your reservations, you will probably get the highly discounted price for your room. In fairness we did get the discounted price for most of our hotel bookings. The problem is not when everything goes smoothly. The problem arises when something unforeseen happens, causing a cancellation or change in your reservation. That's when the booker cries foul, starts evoking the rules and starts to levy fees.
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If you book directly with the hotel online, you will pay more but the hotels are much more lenient with their guests when an emergency arises. They are in the business of selling and building their brand. Online bookers represent as many as 50,000 hotels. They are not in the business of building and maintaining hotel brands. While it is true- you may get the cheap price, what you may not know unless you always book four stars or better,is that you may be in for a big surprise when you check into the hotel and go to your room. |
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Most third party internet booking sites fudge one star, or in some cases half a star in their ratings for the hotel they are selling. Most hotels don't have to do much to sign up with an online booker. They fill out an application and are expected to be honest about their rooms and amenities that they offer. Of course a lot of the hotels are anything but honest about their properties. They sign up with the booker and upload pictures to the bookers site. In some cases, the pictures are old pictures of the property when it was new. Some are stock photos right off the internet. No one really checks closely. Here are some examples of what you see is not always what you get.
 We sent two investigative reporters undercover on a six month investigation of the most popular third party internet booking sites. The results were less than great. We booked a three star room on Travelocity which turned out to be a Ramada Inn at 3900 Wilshire Blvd. in the Chinatown area of Los Angeles. Travelocity's website listed the properties amenities.
Here is what the Travelocity site advertised for the amenities we could expect to receive when we booked this hotel.
An on property restaurant (restaurant was closed, management said they were looking to lease it to someone),
Complimentary Continental Breakfast (no breakfast of any kind, restaurant was closed),
Business Center (table with an old, non-working computer),
Lobby Snack Shop (vending machine),
guest passes to nearby health club
(We asked the front desk for passes,
they directed us to call the health club direct.
We did, the manager informed us that they no longer had a working arrangement with the hotel, but they could sell us passes. We declined),
laundry facilities (none, only laundry on the premises was for the maids to wash the hotel laundry),
room service (none, restaurant closed),
free weekday newspapers (front desk said they had none),
cable tv (ancient tv with a green picture),
iron and ironing board (yes, but old and slimy),
coffee makers (yes, but no coffee, sugar or cream),
electronic locks (yes),
dataports (56-k dial-up with no connecting cable, we bought a cable and the port was dead),
toiletries available at the front desk (absolutely not, according to front desk clerk speaking in broken English and Russian),
swimming pool (no where to be found).
We saved the best for last. The room was an absolute skid row dump. The bedspread had numerous stains, including what looked like blood. Other stains looked and smelled like body fluids. (In all hotel stays we brought our own pillows,sheets sheets and bedspreads.) Enough said about that. Their were stains all over the well worn carpet. Dingy windows that looked like they had never been cleaned. Broken springs in the poor excuse for a bed. Even with our own bedding, we still had bed bug bites all over us the next morning and the room reeked of a musty smell. Last but not least, the air conditioner only blew warm air.
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Maybe you think we are biased or exaggerating our experience with this Ramada Inn. These are customer quotes taken directly from the Travelocity website:
Brian H. of Chicago Il, June 06, 2007, This is by no means a three star hotel. I thought the name Ramada would mean something. The bathroom had mold all around the tub. The sink did not work. Big stain on carpet as you enter the room. Toilet top with big chunk missing. Shower rod hanging off so curtain wouldn't stay closed. Hallways dark and scary. Poor parking. Maybe 1.5 or 2 star at best.
SH or Seoul, Korea, May, 2007, So Terrible!! Never stay here. Staffs are rude and the room is too dirty! The worst of all, too many bugs here. I was bitten severely. They didn't say sorry for that. This is the worst in the world I have ever stayed.
Dawn M., Lemon Grove, CA May 31, 2007, Room was dirty, not enough towels to go around. Not enough continental breakfast to go around., We were told by staff that they were booked solid and don't have enough.
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The Ramada brand isn't what it once was. The problem is, people tend to remember the good experiences they had with a brand and return thinking that they will still get the same level of service they once experienced. If you go to McDonald's in Los Angeles with your family, have a meal and enjoy it you can expect to get an almost identical experience in Chicago or for that matter anywhere in the country because all McDonald's are run under intensive franchise agreements. Nothing is left to chance.
The franchisee follows the rules exactly as McDonald's lays them down or they immediately loose the McDonald's franchise. Not so in the hazy world of Hotel and Motel brands. The controls are much weaker. Franchises are expected to follow the rules but few do. The parent company who has purchased the brand is suddenly faced with hundreds of franchisees doing whatever works for them and their way of doing business not necessarily the franchisers way. This exact scenario has happened to a number of well know brands. Turning that problem around on a national basis is nearly impossible. The brand continues to be weakened by angry customers who didn't get what they expected to get and paid for. Eventually the brand has little or no value.
Just to set the record straight, we called Travelocity customer service and related all of the above. The customer service person was not amused or interested in our problem. Three times we called and were given the run around each time. We had to wait on hold on our cell phone in one case for 30 minutes. All the while, the customer service person said she was verifying our claims with the hotel. We had to ask why you would call the very people we just complained about and ask them if what we were saying was true.
Any travel company in the business of recommending and selling rooms would / should dispatch their own personnel to verify these claims first hand and without telling the hotel in question that they were coming to inspect the property that they were selling as a three star hotel..
In the end, we were told to start all over again and send an email to Travelocity's consumer relations department describing all the details of the incident, a copy of the actual billing statement from the card issuer, Trip ID and ticket numbers, day and night phone numbers, etc. In other words, we are going to make you just through as many hoops as we can. Instead of handling the problem while we were still checked into the hotel. Even if Travelocity agrees with you and decided to issue some sort of a refund, their terms of service advises you to allow 30 days. Other bookers demand 60 days to elapse before you call to check on your refund.
That's a long time to wait for your money with today's electronic payment systems. It only takes seconds to take your money. Credit providers tell us refunds can be credited back to your account within 24 to 48 hours maximum if the merchant wishes to do so. |
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If we were the average busy traveler, we probably would have just suffered the loss in silence and never gone back. However, we are not. So we decided to seek out the CEO of Travelocity. With some research on the net, we found Michelle Peluso, Travelocity's CEO. We wrote a scathing letter to her describing what we had gone through up to the point of contacting her. We did not send our correspondence on INC Letterhead nor did we tell her who we were or about our investigation. We wanted to see how a CEO would handle this type of complaint for the average guy. Getting to the CEO almost never happens. To our amazement Ms. Peluso actually took the time to email us back directly. She not only assigned the case to her senior staff, but she monitored the outcome. The issue was resolved with a refund and several call backs offering direct lines to call if we ever had a problem again. No other booker even came close to the final positive experience we had with Travelocity. It would appear that this Ramada Inn (a franchise) greatly exaggerated their rooms, services and amenities to Travelocity.
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