Charges can be quietly added to your hotel bill after you've left. And increasingly, they are.
When John Richards was a weekly guest at a W Hotels & Resorts property, the items he found on his credit card bill after checkout were often bogus -- a candy bar he hadn't eaten or a bottle of water he hadn't drunk. Although he successfully fought to have the charges reversed, "it got to the point that before I checked in, I would ask them to remove the goodie-box from my room," he says.
Just a year ago, about one in 200 bills at full-service hotels were revised after checkout, according to Bjorn Hanson, an associate professor at New York University. Today, as hotels struggle with slipping occupancy levels and flat-lining growth, properties are wasting no opportunity to add late charges. As a result, the number of re-billings has doubled.
The late charges are usually correct, say experts. And if they aren't, most hotels are quick to correct the error. But not always. Some properties either resist crediting their customers or refuse.
That's what happened to Charles Garnar when he stayed at the Renaissance Fort Lauderdale Hotel recently. "When we checked out, we were told there were no charges so we had a zero balance," he remembers. But when he returned home after a cruise vacation, he found an unwelcome surprise on his credit card statement: a $57 charge. "It took two days to get through to the accounts payable department," he says. "They said we used the minibar."
The hotel only removed the charges after he proved it couldn't have been him. How? Garnar had turned down the minibar key when he checked in.
This shouldn't be happening, of course. The latest hotel accounting systems let you see your room charges in real time, often from your TV screen. There's no reason the bill that's slipped under the door on the morning of your checkout shouldn't include all of your charges, with the possible exception of your breakfast check. "It should be your final bill," says Robert Mandelbaum, a hotel expert with PKF Consulting.
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Source - CNN
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