Consumerist
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marriott
Marriott Emails You To Let You Know That You Did Not Give Permission For Them To Email You
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 » -
incidental holds
Crowne Plaza Hotel Blindsides You With A $235.13 Hold For Incidental Charges
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 » -
smoking
Violating A Hotel's No Smoking Policy Could Cost You $250
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?
It costs Marriott over $1,000 to scrub the smoke-stink off a room, a charge they happily offset by smacking smokers like Dan with a $250 fine. More »
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travel
Marriott Fails: Hotel Still Under Construction, Leaves Your Door Wide Open, No Hot Water
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 » -
hotels
Marriott Ruined My Wedding Night!
"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 » -
googlemaps mashups
DC Madam's Favorite Hotels
Inside, an interactive Googlemaps Mashup showing the most popular hotels from the DC Madam's phone records. More »
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your tax dollars at work
Top 10 Most "Ho-Friendly" DC Hotels, Based On The DC Madam's Phone Records
If you want to have sex with a prostitute in Washington D.C., try the Marriott.
We took the DC Madam's phone records, (she allegedly ran a high-class prostitution ring. It was part of her operating procedure to call the client once to confirm the appointment) converted them to a text file with a OCR (optical character recognition) program, had a batch program run the numbers through a free online reverse number look up service (you enter a phone number and it gives you an address) sorted by call volume, then extracted all the hotel results.
1. Marriott: 489 (18 numbers)
2. Hyatt: 168 (6 numbers)
3. Hilton: 151 (5 numbers)
4. Holiday Inn: 132 (5 numbers)
5. Ritz-Carlton: 118 (4 numbers)
6. Embassy Suites: 117 (3 numbers)
7. Renaissance: 84 (3 numbers)
8. Double Tree: 59 (2 numbers)
9. Westin Grand Hotel: 40 (1 number)
10. Willard Inter Contiental Hotel: 36 (1) -
followups
Marriott's ISP Blames Scam Site Redirect On World's First Bisexual Rootkit
There's been a comment war boiling as Marriott, Will, and the hotel's internet access company (GTS) duke it out to discern the vulnerability redirecting Marirott internet using guests to a casino scam site. More » -
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videos
Marriott Server Compromised, Rerouting Guest's Internet To Casino Scam Site?
Will's mom was surprised when opening up her laptop at a Marriott to find that if you mistyped addresses, it took you to a popup that said, "CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU'VE WON VIRTUAL REALITY CASINO ! CLICK on OK and Get up to +200$ BONUS NOW!" More » -
travel
Best Hotels For Free WiFi
Hotel Chatter has unleashed their yearly survey of that most elusive of perks, free wifi! We don't know if any hotel executives read this blog, but if you do, put free wifi in your hotel. Do it right now. Then call your friend Bob who works at an airline and tell him to put free wifi in his terminal. The Jenny who works at the library and Peter who works at the Parks District... More » -
marriott
Faked/Altered Customer Satisfaction Suveys: Marriott
Since writing about the manner in which some Toyota dealers fake or alter customer satisfaction surveys in order to get a higher score (and more money from Toyota), a former Marriott employee has written in to explain how Marriott franchisees ensure that if you're unhappy with your Marriott stay... you won't be receiving a customer satisfaction survey. Our tipster writes: More »
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