Annoyed with hotel cancellation policy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is why you book a refundable hotel or buy trip insurance.

I just booked a non-refundable stay at a five star hotel and I spent the $55 on travel insurance. I had no reason to think we couldn’t go, but it was a lot of $$ and you never know….

[Anonymous]

Go with your kids and hire a local babysitter through the hotel.

Always, always book refundable with hotels or airbnbs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Email the CEO or Gen Counsel. If you give name of co. I will look it up. Tweeting is also effective. I am a lawyer and have my assistants deal with this stuff all the time. Also contact your credit card co.

Lol, email the CEO. That's hilarious. The CEO doesn't care. Neither does the General Counsel.

We ALWAYS email the top executives whose email addresses we can uncover on my work directory of contacts. Of course, the top people don't usually respond, hut they delegate to someone who responds for them. We get excellent results. Before I graduated from law school, I worked on Capitol Hill in constituent services.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem is that you’re treating the sitter’s hospitalization as if it’s your own. If you were hospitalized and couldn’t attend, you would definitely get some support here. But that’s not what happened. You have other options. There’s nothing stopping you from keeping this reservation.

Well they are my in laws so we are invested in their health. So while we aren’t their primary caretaker it doesn’t sit well not to provide some support either. So while we technically could take the kids we wanted to stay here in case they still need help to transition back home.

I think if your initial communication had been "my husband's mother is hospitalized and we need to stay close" you might have had better luck.

The fact that you didn't even mention concern for her, and just the lack of childcare, is odd.

But that ship has sailed. You've named them so now even if you call and claim your first concern is your MIL they have it in writing that it wasn't.

Why don't you go with the kids and your husband can stay and focus on his parents?

OP is changing the story now the first one has not been favorably received. My parents were in a car accident the night before I was scheduled to fly to a resort. I called and managed to stammer out my cancellation through tears. I was so upset I didn’t even ask for a refund, but the person I talked to was immensely kind and sympathetic and voluntarily gave it to me. “My babysitter cancelled” doesn’t elicit the same level of sympathy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem is that you’re treating the sitter’s hospitalization as if it’s your own. If you were hospitalized and couldn’t attend, you would definitely get some support here. But that’s not what happened. You have other options. There’s nothing stopping you from keeping this reservation.

Well they are my in laws so we are invested in their health. So while we aren’t their primary caretaker it doesn’t sit well not to provide some support either. So while we technically could take the kids we wanted to stay here in case they still need help to transition back home.

I think if your initial communication had been "my husband's mother is hospitalized and we need to stay close" you might have had better luck.

The fact that you didn't even mention concern for her, and just the lack of childcare, is odd.

But that ship has sailed. You've named them so now even if you call and claim your first concern is your MIL they have it in writing that it wasn't.

Why don't you go with the kids and your husband can stay and focus on his parents?

The reason that OP led with the childcare issue is because that IS the issue. My guess is that someone went to the hospital for chest pains. It’s serious, but not something where everyone has to drop everything and run to the hospital. It’s really the lack of childcare that is keeping OP here. I’m thinking that if there were an easy back-up for childcare, OP and spouse would be at the Keswick right now. They’d call the in-laws from Charlottesville to see how they were doing, but they wouldn’t cancel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Email the CEO or Gen Counsel. If you give name of co. I will look it up. Tweeting is also effective. I am a lawyer and have my assistants deal with this stuff all the time. Also contact your credit card co.

Lol, email the CEO. That's hilarious. The CEO doesn't care. Neither does the General Counsel.

We ALWAYS email the top executives whose email addresses we can uncover on my work directory of contacts. Of course, the top people don't usually respond, hut they delegate to someone who responds for them. We get excellent results. Before I graduated from law school, I worked on Capitol Hill in constituent services.

And you don’t seem to get that calling from a Congressman’s office gets a different level of attention?

No one is saying that OP shouldn’t elevate their case, if they really had one. But they don’t. They just think they’re too privilege to have to abide by the terms of a deal they agreed to and/or the results of their failure to hedge their bets with trip insurance.

[Anonymous]

I feel like tweeting the hotel and telling them to stick to their guns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Email the CEO or Gen Counsel. If you give name of co. I will look it up. Tweeting is also effective. I am a lawyer and have my assistants deal with this stuff all the time. Also contact your credit card co.

I know people do this but it seems wrong. Like what do you tell your credit card company? Yeah, I booked it but I don’t want to pay because I’m a dumbass who can’t follow policy? Why should the credit card company (read: other customers like me) eat this cost?

Yes, exactly. Sometimes things don't go the way you planned. That's life!

Credit cards don't automatically refund contested charges. They look into it and if it was a stated policy, they don't refund you. I contested once and lost because the business had a stated policy. I didn't think the policy was well communicated, but I still lost and had to pay.

[Anonymous]

OP is really not thinking big enough. I think she should write to the POTUS or God about this horrible violation of human rights that has occured here.

[Anonymous]

Lack of childcare is not an extenuating circumstance. Even the way you word your OP, it doesn’t sound like someone is dying or anything.

I always pay the higher rate so I can cancel or don’t book hotels that you can’t cancel. Most places you can cancel up to a few days prior to check in. I have the noticed the ultra high end hotels often have a 15 or 30 day window to cancel. Are you trying to cancel like the day prior?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Go with your kids and hire a local babysitter through the hotel.

Always, always book refundable with hotels or airbnbs.

This is an option -- I've done it before, and also hired a local Care.com sitter (it was in an affluent city and she was a local nanny picking up extra work, so it felt pretty safe). It worked out fine!

[Anonymous]

Why not just take your kids with you?

We stay at 5 star hotels and bring our kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You sound entitled and the homeless comment leads me to believe you are an a$$ too.

Finally somebody said it! What a disgustingly callous comment, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel like tweeting the hotel and telling them to stick to their guns.

Lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem is that you’re treating the sitter’s hospitalization as if it’s your own. If you were hospitalized and couldn’t attend, you would definitely get some support here. But that’s not what happened. You have other options. There’s nothing stopping you from keeping this reservation.

Well they are my in laws so we are invested in their health. So while we aren’t their primary caretaker it doesn’t sit well not to provide some support either. So while we technically could take the kids we wanted to stay here in case they still need help to transition back home.

I think if your initial communication had been "my husband's mother is hospitalized and we need to stay close" you might have had better luck.

The fact that you didn't even mention concern for her, and just the lack of childcare, is odd.

But that ship has sailed. You've named them so now even if you call and claim your first concern is your MIL they have it in writing that it wasn't.

Why don't you go with the kids and your husband can stay and focus on his parents?

I’m in the hotel industry and we can’t make exceptions for anything. You should hear the stories we are told. I’m not in the business of telling my staff to be detectives or psychiatrists. If we fell for every sob story we’d have to close. I also don’t understand why OP thinks higher end hotels have more flexibility? Yes we charge high rates but we have thin margins and high expenses. The last thing I want is employees treating some customers differently. We treat everyone the same.