Travel superhero Christopher Elliott is wondering if there’s some systematic shadiness afoot in the land of the hotel minibar. He’s been hearing reports of items not consumed showing up on hotel bills, and when the error is brought to the attention of the front desk, refunds are instantly credited with no argument. Hmmm.
From Ellott.org:
Richards’ conclusion — and it’s one I tend to agree with — is is that some hotels are overbilling their customers on purpose, hoping that they won’t check their final receipts.
Which hotels are doing this? Richards thinks many are trying.
For a long period of time last year I was staying at a W almost weekly. It got to the point that before I took possession of the room I would have them come remove the “goodie box.” Recently at a Marriott I was charged $5 each day for a bottle of water I did not even touch, much less consume.
Have the frequent travelers among you noticed this? It may sound cynical, but we’ve noticed that whenever refunds are instantly credited with no argument — the probability that something shady was going on increases dramatically. We picture the hotel employee whistling while she removes the charge from your bill. Nothing to see here…
Scam alert: beware of hotels that charge for what you don’t eat — or drink [Elliott]
(Photo: Richard Moross )
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There’s a sensor in the bar. If you move anything, it charges you for it. They waive it because they know people put their leftovers &c in there. You justh ave to look.
I stayed at the Omni Hotel in Atlanta recently on a trip and when I checked in, the front desk asked me if I wanted the key to the mini-bar in the room. I declined it.
Imagine if there had been charges showing up on my bill, I would have been screaming.
I am pretty sure I know why a front-desk clerk would drop the charges immediately…
because they don’t set the prices or control the bills, generally (yes, they can charge stuff to your room, but why would they? i’ve never known anyone who was that dishonest and was able to stay employed at a service level).
I have, however, heard many, MANY stories from friends who work at hotels about their managers being “huge money-grubbing hogs”. Chances are, a clerk will immediately drop a disputed charge because he/she is only getting paid a little above minimum wage and wants to avoid a screaming fit from the angry customer. “Don’t shoot the messenger”, as it were.
Whenever possible, I stay at a Super 8. I got sick of the pseudo luxury hotels a few years ago, with their overpriced rooms, institutional ambience, and pretentious staff that made me feel like I was lucky to be staying with them. If my meeting is in a snooty overpriced hotel, there is always a clean, new Super 8 just around the corner. No mini bar or bottled water in the room, one price for the room with no surprises, coffee any time, friendly staff, and virtually the same room as an expensive hotel, but for a fraction of the price. And breakfast is included.
Though there probably is, somewhere in existence, a hotel that does scam people this way, there are too many factors to say offhand whether its a scam or not.
However, there is something to be said about the number of people being charged for things they did not buy. I’d say good measuring stick is, “Would the error rate be acceptable if the error was in the consumer’s favor?”
If they truly cared that people were being charged for things they did not buy, then how hard is it to put up a sign that says, “This fridge uses motion sensors to detect if an item is taken. Please check your bill to avoid accidental charges.”?
Recently stayed at the Thompson in Beverly Hills & had a random charge on my card a few days after checkout. Emailed them and received no response but the charge was taken off my account. Was a fabulous hotel but perhaps there is some merit to his claim.
The worst was a certain hotel that now charges for the soap/shampoo/conditioner/lotion/etc when you use it! It’s still in those tiny things…I should have been suspicious when there were so many extra bottles “given” with the room…
I don’t know if this was intentional or not…but while staying at the Mount Washington Resort in Bretton Woods, NH, they “mistakenly” charged us for a $200 dinner we did not eat, at a restaurant we had never been to. Despite this, they effortlessly removed the charge from our bill.
Happened to me TWICE in Las Vegas. Funny how it always seems to happen at the pricier chains. Like I always say, the bigger the company, the bigger the scumbag. Someone needs to do a public expose of this and expose the scumbags. That’ll stop it.
I miss the days of minibars with actual keys that you could decline at checkin, thus pre-empting any dispute at checkout.
@InsaneNewman: if one person has a fake charge and they fix it instantly and without difficulty, that’s good customer service. If lots of people systematically have fake charges and they fix them instantly for those that notice and complain, while pocketing the money from those that don’t, that’s a scam and they know it. See the difference?
@smirky: When a business knowingly has a system that is inherently flawed against the customer yet continues to use it, that IS trying to screw the customer.
You are missing the point; try rereading my second response. ANY system tied to the mini bar will have some flaw in it. NO system is perfect, especially when humans are involved. The point is, Consumerist is automatically assuming that the hotel is trying to screw the customer “just because”.
Consider this fast food analogy: You go to the counter and order a burger, fries and a Coke. You pay for it, but when you check your receipt you find that the cashier charged you for onion rings (which cost a bit more) instead of fries.
Now, did the cashier make an honest mistake or is it part of some nefarious plot to suck away a little more money out of you? If you’re really cynical or a Consumerist staffer, it seems that the latter is more likely. In reality, the former is FAR more likely.
@smirky: Do I think they are manually adding the fees? Not at all but they happily offer a service that not only has a horrible track record for accuracy but one that also only favors the business when mistakes occur.
Of course they’re manually adding the fees. Unless the mini bar works with RFID tags or some similar tech, the fees are added by human hand and errors are bound to happen.
Want a non-nefarious scenario? Fine. Let’s say the hotel visitor in room 604 didn’t touch the mini bar. Let’s also say that the hotel visitor in room 406 slammed down a couple of beers. When the hotel staff checks the mini bars in all the rooms, there’s a moment of dyslexia. As a result, the guy in 406 gets free beer and the guy in 604 gets charged for them.
HONEST MISTAKE. INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY.
So far you and the rest of the Consumerist staff (or at least the one who wrote this article) has demonstrated ZERO PROOF that this was anything other than an honest mistake.
I’d would like to add my two cents to this discussion. I’m writing from the front desk at a 4 star inn (a very slow night). I’ll admit we are behind the times and do not use pressure sensors in our minibars or any seals of any kind. It is a simple basket that holds the items.
When our housekeeping staff fixes the room they restock the minibar and fill out a slip for the front desk listing what they put back in. These items are then charged to the person who was in the room since the last time housekeeping was in.
The vast majority of contested charges come from people who did not inform us they used items before they checked out. The bill they have doesn’t show the charges as they would have been posted after they left. We mail out a copy of the updated bill and credit card slip but I imagine this just gets a “what the hell is this? no no this isn’t right” type of response. They call and contest and we take the charges off right away and apologize.
Why do we do this when our housekeeping staff (most of which have been here for more than 10 years) knows for a fact the items were gone? Because the cost of the items is much less than the profit from a return visit. Because it boils down to a he said she said kind of argument which goes nowhere.
There is no way to weed out who we made a mistake with, who forgot months later about an item they had, who had two people in the room and it was the other person who ate it (or a guest), and who just ate one thing hoping to not get charged.
End result is the same in all cases: Eat the loss and hope they come back
Obviously this doesn’t apply to all places and I am totally against the pressure sensor minibars but people shouldn’t immediately jump down the throat of the hotel if they find a mistake. If you can honestly remember everything you ate on any given day a few months ago I commend you. You have a much better memory than myself.
I’m at a Marriott right now for work, so thank you, Consumerist for posting this. I will definitely double check my bill in the am to make sure I haven’t been charged for the bottled water. Fortunately, this Courtyard has free internet and no mini bar (but it does have a frige).
Did y’all know that they charge you for the newspaper? On the key card envelope it provides a form for you to fill out to opt out of receiving USA today – if you decline it, they give you a 75 cent credit. I noticed it last month at another Marriott hotel in Atlanta (a Suites, which did NOT have free internet) and it’s at this one, too.
@picardia: Good customer service might be instituting a system that doesn’t routinely make these kinds of mistakes.
And presuming that ANY given system could conceivably be absolutely flawless, particularly when humans are involved, is an exercise in frustrated idiocy.
@picardia: But they routinely DO make these mistakes, and as others have pointed out, the mistakes are almost invariably in the direction of making the hotel money on stuff the guest didn’t use.
Incorrect, sir. As a matter of fact, people tend to complain FAR more than they compliment. You will, I’m sure, read about dozens of people who have been unfairly charged for mini bar items. What you WON’T read about, I’m sure, is an equal number of people who consumed items from the mini bar WITHOUT being charged.
The presence of complaints doesn’t prove ulterior motive. It only demonstrates humanity’s affinity for complaining.
@picardia: The hotels have a choice between fair and efficient systems or mistake-ridden systems, and they go with the latter to make more money. It’s not so cool.
Describe to me a “fair and efficient system” for this situation which won’t cost the hotel more than the system is worth.
@The Rude Bellman: Well, I’m not 9 years old, but I do travel with small children. So perhaps the earlier suggestion of using duct tape might help me.
If there is a minibar or bottled water in the room, as soon as I get in the room I call the front desk and demand the crap be moved out of the room and I get the employees name and badge number to make sure there is no further scam.
A Wyndham in Billerica MA, tried to charge me $5.00 a day for the removed minibar, it took a charge back to get my money back.
Its best to get that scam crap out of your room as soon as possible.
When I stayed at the Kitano in New York in April, my
problem wasn’t with the minibar, but with the two
bottles of Fiji water sitting on the desk. The hotel
was kind enough to attach labels showing the price was
$5.00 a bottle, which I thought was outrageous, so
whenever I needed to get anything to drink, I walked
over to the Walgreen’s at the ESB. When I checked
out, the only charges listed on my bill were for the
room. A few days after I got back home, I received a
final bill from the hotel, and this time they listed a
charge for the two bottles of water totaling $12.46.
The charge was taken off after I complained. Do I
consider it to be a scam? Yes, I do, particularly
since the bill shows that the charge was added after I
checked out.
@sgodun:
We’ve been conditioned to assume these things by rampant petty fraud on the part of Corporate America. It’s so routine now that the very idea of an honest mistake seems quaint.
Here’s why we smell a scam when the desk clerks automatically remove a contested charge – the overwhelming anti-consumer experience in the past few years. Hotels, and other service facilities, have become more and more hard-a**ed about removing charges. It is a major trend.
I was once a desk clerk and this is exactly how it was at my property. If there was a complaint about the number of local phone calls placed, we just voided the charges, no questions asked, due to the faulty (i said fraudy) system we had. But, we went to the mat on any other charge. This was the one area where the hotel manager himself would back an employee against a customer.
I also had the special enjoyment of plowing through hundreds of phone, and other receipts, when a chargeback was attempted by a former guest. The hotel won a huge number of those disputes. If the guest won, it was usually due to receipts missing from that entire day. In a small minority of instances, the guest was correct.
My now ex-girlfriend was quoted a loan rate for someone with much worse credit than hers. When she brought it up, the loan guy didn’t seem upset at all, just printed a new sheet.
Difference would’ve been over a thousand dollars over the course of the loan. I want the employee to be upset about fucking that up.
Happened to me at the Wyndham in Chicago. I had only been there about 10 minutes and decided to check the tv based bill thing. It said I had spent like $108.00 at the mini-bar. Called and they instantly reversed it.
The W is certainly the worst I’ve encountered. I’ve stayed at at least a half dozen W hotels (I travel frequently for work) and have had the mini-bar issue at every one. Even worse, some of the charges did not come through until well after my stay was over (once a couple of days and once over a week later) and I’ve had to contact the hotel after departure to have them removed. The “mini-bar” isn’t really a mini-bar at all, just a box full of snacks and goodies. They clearly need a better system, but I think most patrons wouldn’t notice the charges after the fact. . .
Those sensor-fridges are like booby-traps. They makes for a bad customer experience, because you’re left wondering what else you’ll be charged for. Accidentally flipping to the wrong channel on the TV, using the wrong thing in the bathroom, etc, etc.
It’s never happened to me, but it just feels scammy.
It’s an honest mistake when it happens once or twice. But when it happens six out of six times at the Boston Sheraton, three out of three times at the Philadelphia Hilton, and over five times at Residence Inns, it’s not a mistake, it’s intentional. Twice at the Hilton, we were given rooms that didn’t even have a minibar, but we were still charged for raiding it.
Well, on the flipside, we went to DisneyWorld abt 20 yrs ago, and our son, age 7, had quite a few snacks from the mini-bar. They didn’t charge us for any of them, and we mentioned it at checkout and they just let it slide.