Reddit Post Shows What Can Happen When You Book Hotels Online
by Daniel McCarthy /
A tale of a business trip gone wrong is one of the more active pages on Reddit this week. While exact details were scarce in the post, it’s just another story of a bad travel experience because the traveler trusted a third-party website with good reviews from anonymous users over advice from travel experts.
The Reddit user was planning for a business trip to a conference almost 2,500 miles away. “Being fiscally responsible, and travelling [sic] to a region I’d never travelled [sic] before I used a 3rd party site to achieve a cheaper booking. I spent a few days looking at reviews, locations, proximity to event and bars/[restaurants]. I settled on one that looked great!” the user wrote.
The hotel — a small, independent one with some great reviews on the booking website that boasted a private patio, in-house restaurant and bar, and massage therapist, that was fairly priced — seemed too good to be true. And it would turn out that it was.
Upon arrival, because the hotel was booked on a third-party website and not with the actual hotel, his prepayment never registered with the front desk, so upon check-in, the hotel’s front desk employee asked for payment again.
“So now I have to argue that I’ve already paid, plus I’m mad ... And now this young lady tells me she doesn’t know how to work the third party check ins, so I have to come back after 3 when someone else will be there,” the user wrote.
After showing an email confirmation to the front-desk girl — “to which she is visibly confused,” the user wrote — he manages to convince her that he has paid. The employee then rushes to clean up the room so he can get in and showered and settled before heading out to the conference that brought him to the city.
Then another problem came up.
“About 4 minutes later I find out?there’s no toilette paper?in my room. Ok. Under the sink? Nope. Waddle out to the main room, under the counter? Nope. (Not a Kitchenette so there’s no paper towel either). Kleenex? Nope.”
Then, another.
“Get out of the shower....no towels.”
He lets the front desk know about the situation at 10:45 a.m. on his first day and by the time he gets back to his hotel at 6 p.m., there’s still no toilet paper. He goes to the front desk, and there is a sign that says, “Knock on Room 108 for the Inn Keeper.”
“Good. This guys about to get it, justified on at least 2, maybe 3 fronts. Knock knock knock. No answer. Knock knock knock louder, no answer. At this point I can hear snoring, great,” he writes.
He manages to get a hold of another employee on the phone, who promises someone would be along to help soon. At least there was the private patio.
“Patio door is locked. Closed for the season. Good, the reason I chose this place is closed. So is the restaurant, so is the massage parlor. Seasonal. All of it. But that isn’t mentioned on their website.”
Then, since the patio was no longer an option, he tries to turn on a movie while he waits for his toilet paper, but it’s a cold room and the fireplace needs to wait for the baseboard heaters to kick in. He notices a cold breeze is coming in through the window, but the window’s jammed from the outside.
After leaving his room, heading around the building, and trying to close the window from the outside with no luck, he goes to head back inside, but all the doors are locked and his key is in his room.
“Good thing that the exterior window doesn’t close,” he wrote, “and good thing I fit … Still no toilette [sic] paper, no word from the manager, no word from the customer attendant, no word from the Innkeeper. Corner store is closed. Bed time.”
On his way out the next day, he again tells the front desk about the toilet paper and window situation “where I received assurance and a smile,” but it didn’t help.
“Come back at 4 p.m.,” he writes, and he does. Still, no toilet paper. “I can’t write an official review as its nearly unbelievable and hard to substantiate, [and I] can’t complain to management because they are inept.”
Moral of the story: Always use a travel agent.