Turned away family in the middle of the night, then charged cc for no-show!
My friend reserved a room at Eddy's Motel through Booking.com for her and her two kids as they were traveling cross-country to see family. I put my own card on file to hold the reservation which indicated that she could choose the form of payment at check-in. She knew she would be arriving late, called ahead, but was even later than expected.
The live-in manager couple said that because it was not her card on file they could not charge it for her reservation. She had cash, but not enough on her card to pay for the room (thus my card on file). So they turned her away at 4am and she and her kids had to sleep in their car in a parking lot. They would not charge my card to let her stay, but they did charge my card for a no-show! No attempt to contact card holder even with info on file. Booking.com called them to sort it out but they refused to reverse the charges.
When I called to ask the Motel their side of the story they said they were new to how online CC reservations could be charged and repeatedly claimed that they made their decision based on the hour of her arrival which was very inconvenient for them. When I explained that as a professional hospitality manager with decades of experience in both managing hotels and traveling constantly, I understand getting up in the middle of the night for customers can be hard, it is part of the job and totally irrelevant to check-in policy, that is when they hung up on me. Totally unprofessional behavior. They are in the wrong industry! read more