Last month, I drove up to Providence to see a friend’s band. I stayed at the same hotel as the band, the Providence Biltmore. Though the band made the arrangements, I was paying for my own stay. The band was there two nights; my own reservation was for a single night.
Long story short: the Providence Biltmore is convinced that I showed up at the same time as the band, and they’re charging me for two nights, and the guest services guy I talked to refused to believe that I was only there a single night. We had one of those infuriating circular conversations, where I kept telling him his computer was wrong and he kept telling me what his computer said.
Anyway, this is a longshot, but does anybody out there know somebody who can set this one right? (The Biltmore appears to be part of the Grand Heritage hotel group.) In the meantime, note of caution: be very careful with this hotel if you happen to be passing through Providence — they appear to be easily confused and you may end up paying for it.
Update: It just gets better and better. I just called the hotel back, after realizing I had proof that I was nowhere near Providence at the time the hotel claims I was (I rented a car in a different state the morning after they claim I checked in) — but no dice. I may have thought I was at home in bed on the night in question, but according to them, I was actually in Providence, and that’s their story and they’re sticking to it. At around this point, with admitted frustration, I mentioned that I was blogging the whole thing, and that refusing to rectify such an obvious mistake probably wasn’t going to reflect very well on the company — at which point, the not-very-p.r.-savvy guest services guy suggested that the hotel might sue me. Which at least gave me my first really good laugh of the day…
(Note to any well-intentioned Biltmore or Grand Heritage people: I was travelling under my real name, Dan Perkins, not my nom-de-cartoon, Tom Tomorrow. And I promise you, I stayed at your hotel for a single night, for less than twelve hours — and since I have the location-specific receipts to prove it, there’s no question I can challenge this successfully through my credit card company. But that takes time, and it would certainly be preferrable not to have to go through all that trouble to correct your mistake.)