marriott

—>After it broke last week that Stamford Marriott Hotel & Spa was claiming it was the fault of the victim and her two toddlers that she was raped in their parking garage, the hotel has decided to withdraw the claim. They also apologized for the rape in a general sort of way—but not for subpoenaing her friends and professional acquaintances who otherwise would not have known about the crime.  More »

—>[Update: Marriott has dropped the appeal.] If you want to live dangerously, why not try an unrelaxing visit to the Stamford Marriott Hotel & Spa? It features a game room, a BBQ/picnic area, $10 a day Internet access, and the occasional mentally unhealthy transient wandering for days around the parking garage waiting to attack you. Best of all, if you are attacked Marriott will let you take all the credit for it, and then subpoena your friends and professional contacts, thereby permanently ruining any anonymity you hoped to maintain. Because at Stamford Marriott, if you're raped in our parking garage by a guy our security should have noticed and kicked out, don't come crying to us!  More »

—>Reader Stephen writes in to let us know that the Marriott Residence Inn in Boulder, CO was nice to him when some random jerks charged food to his room.  More »

—>Marriott really wants to know what you think of their hotels. Unfortunately, they don't have permission to solicit your participation in surveys. The solution? They email you to let you know that you asked them not to email you.  More »

—>Much like that nasty little gas station problem we talked about awhile back, hotels just love to slap holds on your debit or credit card accounts for "incidental charges." There's nothing wrong or uncommon about the practice, but its difficult or impossible to tell exactly how much the hold might be — and for some consumers who aren't expecting it, the holds can cause big problems. Reader Eric recently got slapped with a $253.13 hold from the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Kansas City, and he's a little irked because they didn't disclose the hold when he was checking in, and they only refunded $160 of it when he checked out.  More »

—>Hotels are starting to to hit smokers with hefty fines for violating their no smoking policies. Take Dan Cole. He didn't light up in his non-smoking Marriott room, honest. Those butts in his garbage can? Um, he smoked them somewhere else and threw them out in the room?   More »

—>Reader Allan stays at Marriott hotels a lot. He has platinum status, meaning that he stays at Marriott hotels for more than 75 days a year. One might think this level of loyalty would mean that he'd get a response to his complaint letter.   More »

—>"I got married over Labor Day weekend in North Chicago, Illinois. We did a lot of advance legwork to set up a hotel for our guests that was close to the venue and convenient. Our wedding venue recommended the Marriott Courtyard in Waukegan/Gurnee. It was more expensive then the other hotels in the area and a bit further away, but they offered something irresistible— a free shuttle to and from the wedding venue for all of our guests staying there. Since we had been contemplating hiring vans to shuttle our guests around so no one would drive drunk, this was a no-brainer. Plus, the Marriott has a good brand name and we felt confident things would go smoothly.  More »