How to
Negotiate the Best Hotel Room Rate Part Four
Hidden Extra Fees and How to Resolve
Them
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A hotel room safe is seldom very safe, but perhaps better
than nothing.
Sometimes offered for free, sometimes at a daily rate
triggered when you activate it, but sometimes, you're
charged a surcharge for its availability whether you use it
or not.
Be sure to understand what the real total complete cost
of your hotel room will be, and understand what is included
and excluded in the rate so as to avoid nasty surprises when
checking out.
Part 4 of a series on How
to Negotiate the Best Hotel Room Rate - please
also visit
1.
Optimize the Dates of Your Stay
2.
When is the best (and
worst) time to make your hotel reservation
3.
What is Included and What is Extra
4.
Hidden extra fees and how to resolve them
5.
Who to Speak/Book With
and What to Say
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An increasingly common game, in
many industries, is adding a poorly or even not previously
disclosed extra fee onto the cost of a transaction.
Some hotels in some regions
used to be notoriously dishonest at doing this. The power
of public exposure and shaming, combined with prosecutions from
state Attorneys General, has massively reduced such dishonesty,
but it may still be lurking in the background.
If you have the proper
documentation with you to establish what you are getting and
what is included/excluded/extra you can quickly squash any such
attempts to trick you into paying more than you fairly should.
Unexpected Extra Charges When
You Checkout
Sometimes you may find an unexpected fee is added to your bill
without warning or advance notice, and it only appears when
you're checking out.
If there is no clear added
extra benefit over and above what you would normally expect in a
hotel of that type given to you in return for the extra fee,
then don’t pay it. Dispute it. Say ‘if this is a
mandatory fee that everyone has to pay, like it or not, why
wasn’t I told about it when I asked about the rate?’
Indeed, if you’re really working up a good head of steam, also
ask ‘if this is a mandatory charge that everyone has to pay, and
in return for which nothing much extra is given, why isn’t it
just part of the room rate?’
A previous example of an
often hidden fee that you should dispute is an energy fee.
Hotels have sometimes charged an ‘energy’ surcharge to
compensate for the supposedly higher price they might be paying
for electricity or gas or whatever. This surcharge seems
to range anywhere up to $5 per room per night. But you
don’t get anything extra for this fee – indeed, the same hotels
that are charging more for electricity are also going around and
replacing the already dim light bulbs in your room with even
dimmer ones!
Other examples include
resort properties trying to charge a ‘facilities fee’ for the
mere availability of the resort facilities, whether you use them
or not, and hotels charging you a mandatory fee for providing an
in-room safe, whether you use it or not. One such hotel
attempted to justify this hidden charge by saying they
were charging the fee to draw to the guests’ attention the
availability of the safe for storing their valuables!
To protect against this, it
pays to print out and carry with you copies of the pages on the
booking site where you booked your hotel showing what was
described and disclosed. There have been several court
cases and also prosecutions by state Attorneys General of hotels
that have been 'cheating' by not disclosing fees up front.
Many times hotels will
reverse out these hidden charges if you have a good case to show
that they truly weren't disclosed to you in advance, and it
helps to be resolute about the matter, because you are truly in
the right. But if there was some subtle disclosure which
you simply failed to notice, then you're in the wrong, and you
have a much weaker case to support your claim for reversal - in
that case, you should be polite and apologetic rather than
strong and certain in your claim (see our series on
How to Complain for
suggestions on how to proceed in such cases).
Giving in without giving in
If you're getting nowhere
arguing about the claim while checking out and you need to hurry
to make a flight or business meeting (and this is what the hotel
hopes, of course - they hope that the time pressures acting on
you will cause you to give in), go ahead and pay them the
amount they're asking for, but write alongside your signature on
the credit card charge form 'Under Protest' or 'Disputed'.
That way you can continue the argument through your credit card
company, through the booking agency that made your hotel booking
for you, and you can also complain to the Attorney General in
the state the hotel is located in, if you feel strongly enough about
the matter.
Another appropriate place to
complain is to the head office of the hotel group (assuming the
hotel is a member of a chain rather than an independently owned
and operated hotel). Usually the hotel chain's management
is as horrified as you are to discover such deceit, which is
almost always not official company policy. In such cases
they may help you get the problem resolved, and will take steps
to prevent it re-occurring in the future.
Who is at fault?
Sometimes hotels will say
'I'm sorry, but this is not our fault. We told (the
booking service) about this fee and they should have shown it on
their website. You need to complain to them, not us about
this.'
If that happens, ask the
person advising you of this to quickly write on a piece of
letterhead what they've just told you (a short note simply
saying 'We advised XYZ Travel that we will charge you an ABC
fee, and they should have told you about this; it is their
liability to compensate you, not ours.' is all you need.
You can then address your
complaint to the booking service, with this semi-official note
from the hotel to support your claim - but only if they have
also taken money from you. If they don't have any of your
money, they're not likely to cut you a check and send you a
payment to compensate you.
Sometimes you'll find that
the person who not ten seconds previously confidently told you
it was not their fault will now refuse to write the letter you
fairly asked for. They might say they're not authorized to
write letters on behalf of the hotel. Ask to speak to
whoever is authorized, and if no-one is available, put the
problem and the responsibility for solving it with the hotel
staff member. Say 'Well, how do we solve this? I
need something to show to the booking service to establish that
it is their liability, not yours, to cover this cost - what do
you suggest we do?'. Perhaps if time allows you could
suggest 'let's call XYZ up and you can talk to them on the phone
and sort it out with them right now'.
If they refuse to do these
things, you could also say, in a friendly positive tone of voice
'Look, it isn't really the small dollar cost that is my issue
here, but it is the principle of the thing. I know you
have the discretionary ability to make customer service
adjustments - why don't you just make an adjustment to the total
bill and we get the issue resolved positively now without
involving XYZ or anyone else?'
If the booking service
didn't take any money from you, tell the hotel 'I understand
that, thank you. It looks like we both have a problem with
XYZ Travel. But, they didn't take any money from me, so I
can't ask them for a refund when I never paid them. Can I
ask instead that you deduct the cost of this fee from the
commission you pay them?'
If necessary, you can point
out that XYZ Travel's website is publicly accessible, and it is
a shame the hotel didn't check to make sure the fee was being
correctly disclosed, and you can even gently wonder why it is
that you are having this problem - surely previous guests have
also been inconvenienced, and surely it behooves the hotel to
quality control the resellers who are committing the hotel to
accepting certain rates and terms of service associated with
those rates.
Unexpected fees disclosed when
you checkin
Sometimes you'll find a
situation where the hotel tells you about an unexpected fee when
you checkin rather than trying to spring it on you when you
checkout.
In some ways, this is even
more objectionable because the hotel is trying to further trap
you at a time when you're most susceptible - maybe it is late in
the day, you're tired, and there are no other hotels
conveniently nearby. And they'll subsequently use this
against you when they say with a dishonest smile on their face
'Well, we told you about this at checkin, you didn't have to
stay with us if you weren't prepared to pay the fee'.
Use a similar approach to
what you'd use at check-out. Show the printouts of what
you were promised and what you booked, and say 'I have this
confirmation (show it to them) that quotes me for a room at this
rate (point at the rate on the confirmation and state it) and
nowhere does it say that I'll have to pay extra for this hidden
fee. I want the hotel room I was promised ('and which I
paid a deposit for already' - if applicable) and guaranteed per
this confirmation number.'
If you can't persuade them
to honor this, do the same thing of writing 'Disputed' or 'Under
Protest' on the checkin forms. Then continue your dispute
with the hotel general manager during your stay, so that you can
show you were actively trying to solve the problem while staying
there, and follow up as
needed afterwards.
You should also try and get
the booking service to help you. Contact them and explain
the situation - 'I booked this hotel stay through your service,
and you never advised me there'd be this extra fee, but it
appears there is no way I can stay at the hotel for the rate you
quoted me' and ask them to solve the problem for you - 'Clearly,
someone somewhere mis-communicated to someone else about this
hotel's booking terms and conditions, and it isn't for me to say
who is at fault, but it doesn't seem fair that someone else's
mistake means that I'm now penalized'.
Conclusion
Don't reward bad behavior
when it comes to being confronted with unexpected and
non-disclosed fees. Be polite and positive, but firm, and
be sure of your facts - if a fee really truly wasn't disclosed,
then you're in the right. The hotel knows it is being
dishonest and deceitful, and if push comes to shove, it will
usually back down.
Read more in the rest of this
series
This is part 4 of a series on How
to Negotiate the Best Hotel Room Rate - please
also visit :
1.
Optimize the Dates of Your
Hotel Stay
2.
When is the best (and
worst) time to make your hotel reservation
3.
What is Included and What is Extra
4.
Hidden extra fees and how to resolve them
5.
Who to Speak/Book With
and What to Say
Related Articles, etc
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Originally published
19 Sep 2008, last update
30 May 2021
You may freely reproduce or distribute this article for noncommercial purposes as long as you give credit to me as original writer. |