Hotel to avoid : skam with your deposit!
Hotel to avoid : skam with your deposit!
It will be now two months since my husband and I left this hotel and they are not willing to refund our deposit without any reason and won't reply to us. I already contacted the hotel several times to get an answer but no one is able to reply or I am given a different answer every time.
Here are the facts to recap on how it went (if you have been through the same nightmare or know how I can make things move forward, please let me know):
- Start of June : Contact person n1 at the Front desk confirmed the deposit is not reimbursed yet and told me that is because it is international payment. The line we saw on our bank account should disappear in two weeks max and I should get reimbursed then...weird but ok, we waited.
- Sunday 2nd of July (so a month after) : Still no reimbursement. Contact person n2 at the Front desk told me that she does not understand and everything on her side looks fine so I should reach Accounting. She told me to call 2h later as the Accounting Department is not working yet.
- 2 hours later on the same Sunday : Contact person n3 at the Front desk explained (in a very annoyed tone) that actually we are Sunday so I should call back tomorrow... I tried to find an email address so I can contact the relevant intermediary but it seems impossible to find it on your own...so I have to stick with expensive international calls which are very inconvenient when you live in France.
- Monday 3rd of July : After trying to reach the accounting team multiple times without success, I reached out to Reception and got Gretchen (Guest service Manager) on the phone. She was not able to help but would not put me through with Accounting Department anyway...weird. I asked for proofs/details of transaction they made but she would not share them. She asked me to contact my bank to check the pending operations and to come back to her via e-mail then...weird x2 but I proceeded as she asked me too.
- Tuesday 4th of July : I went to the bank and of course there is no operation waiting on their side regarding the deposit. The bank provided me with a phone number for fraud as they confirmed the hotel has to release/reimburse the deposit and they advise me to press charges if they still ignore my request as the reimbursement should have been done a long time ago already.
I then sent an e-mail to Gretchen with all my information (bank account extract, phone number, e-mails...etc) for the hotel to proper investigate and come back to me. I gave them a week before I took legal actions but I am still ignored.
So now I don't know if the hotel held the deposit on purpose and tried to rip us off or if they are just inefficient and lost track of the transactions with my card but in both cases it is really annoying, not fair and time consuming.
I will proceed as the bank requested and take the appropriate actions while I still hope the hotel will do its job in the meantime.
For former clients : If you have been through the same situation, please don't hesitate to reach out and share your advices.
For future clients/victims (especially if you don't live in the US as apparently they don't know how to work with international transactions) : Just find a better hotel, it will be super easy.
Honestly this situation and the behaviors of the staff just ruined our experience in Lahaina.