Beware outrageous charges for using hotel room phones!

[BRUGUY]

During my stay @ JW Marriott BKK I needed to make a brief long distance call from my room due mobile battery being empty.
Thinking (obviously wrong) that anno 2009 telephone calls would be charged at a reasonable rates, even with a considerable top-up commission for the hotel I was astonished to learn that for my 3min 54sec call to an Amsterdam land-line I had been charged 935THB (nearly 20EUR)!
I very much realise that the only one to blame for this is me as I should have read the top-up extras that JW Marriott BKK applies for "long distance calls"... Charging (for just "using" the phone) 125THB EXTRA FEE per minute for the 1st minute and 220THB EXTA FEE per minute for the next minutes is just outrageous and no longer of this time. As a comparison, making a 25mins call would have paid for my nights`stay here.
Having said this, the hotel is just wonderful, service is impeccable, especially the executive lounge is great. So, I would definitely recommend this hotel .... just ... dont call from your room !! )

[tcook052]

Were you sipping at 10 EUR Coke from the mini-bar at the time? While in no way condoning or excusing hotels charging outrageously ridiculous prices for certain conveniences it is sadly nothing new despite the modern times.

[DCBob]

Originally Posted by BRUGUY

During my stay @ JW Marriott BKK I needed to make a brief long distance call from my room due mobile battery being empty.

Huh? If you were in your room, you should have plugged in your charger and THEN made the call from your mobile phone. I don't know anyone who travels regularly who isn't fully aware that long-distance calls from ALL hotels (except the Hoxton Hotel in London) are outrageously expensive.

[dartagnan]

Made a conference call from Bangalore, at the Leela Palace, back to a couple people at the home office. $6.50 a minute, which jives with your pricing.

The same time, one of the guys on the team made a bunch of calls from his AT&T mobile back home. Every call was a good 20-30 minutes, twice a day. He (the company) ended up with a $3,000 cell phone bill - and that's with the international plan. Crazy.

[djk7]

Originally Posted by tcook052

Were you sipping at 10 EUR Coke from the mini-bar at the time? While in no way condoning or excusing hotels charging outrageously ridiculous prices for certain conveniences it is sadly nothing new despite the modern times.

Originally Posted by DCBob

I don't know anyone who travels regularly who isn't fully aware that long-distance calls from ALL hotels (except the Hoxton Hotel in London) are outrageously expensive.

The thread should be retitled "Never make long distance phone calls from a hotel room phone".

[wxguy]

One word: SKYPE

[satori]

I remember trying to console a public school teacher in Stockholm 1993 who made a 15 minute call from the Sheraton Hotel to talk with her hospitalized father in the states. She was hit with a $250 phone charge.

I learned from that experience. I have had to make direct calls a number of times from overseas due to the difficulty of figuring out phone systems when trying to use a calling card.

Typically I leave a contact number and have the person in the states use an international calling card to call me directly at the hotel. This saves a lot of money and grief and usually keeps the hotel phone call charge under $5 USD.

A $20 calling card from Costco can go a long way and save loads of cash.

[PaulMCO]

20 Euro -- you got away cheap.

[wareagle98]

You want to compare horrible phone mistakes?!?
When I went to Sydney I looked and read all the phone rules in the room and made what I thought was a local call. Little did I know that in Australia calling a mobile phone is like calling international or something. My friends who lived in Sydney at the time gave me their mobile number and so I called it from the room. I ended up with about 100 dollars in phone charges in aout 2 days when I figured out something was wrong. Luckily the desk was really nice and agreed they should put some wording on the phone information about mobile calls, and agreed to go halfies with me. It was a costly educational experience.

[BRUGUY]

I cant remember having ever used a hotel room phone for intl calls before, that's why the price came as such a shock to me. Thanks for sharing some of your experiences, it makes me feel less ripped off, but more silly for my ignorance on this ...

[VA1379]

I made a call from the Renaissance MCO about 18 months ago to my parents in Chicago. I had bought the Wired for Business package (no free Boingo roaming at this property), and I decided to use the phone (since I had paid for it already). At checkout, I see a charge for about $5.63 for a 3-5 minute call. I told the front desk that I had purchased the WFB package, and they took the charge off after verifying that my call occurred before noon (since the package runs from noon to noon and I showed up after 12:30 pm with a late checkout).

20 euros for a 4 minute call is fairly expensive (although it sounds about right for a hotel), but at least the OP called a distant country. I realize that the marginal costs for a call 5-8,000 miles away isn't that much more than a call 700 miles away, but long distance companies charge based on where you call, not how much it costs them.

[bhatnasx]

The problem that hotels have is that PBX systems are expensive as hell to operate. Back in the day (and by that, I mean before cell phones were everywhere), operating an PBX system was a cost-neutral (and sometimes profitable) because the amount spent on outfitting every single hotel room with an extension & maintaining it & the ability to make outbound calls was off-set by people actually using the phones.

Nowadays, you can't get rid of the in-room phone (because some people still use it - at least to recieve calls & to call room service, etc), but the operating costs have gone up significantly.

So, even though it's 2009, hotel room calls just aren't cheap & I seriously doubt they ever will be. I know that Marriott's got the Wired for Business option at full service hotels where they give you internet, local, and domestic long distance in the US on a daily basis charge, but I don't know if such packages are available internationally.

[HIDDY]

Originally Posted by wxguy

One word: SKYPE

Yes it is wonderful.

Some hotels on our RTW trip we stayed at were wanting anything between £8-£11 a minute to call Argentina. So whenever we could get connected we just used Skype. Call quality is always very good and for a couple of pence a minute saved us a small fortune.

[DCBob]

Originally Posted by bhatnasx

The problem that hotels have is that PBX systems are expensive as hell to operate. Back in the day (and by that, I mean before cell phones were everywhere), operating an PBX system was a cost-neutral (and sometimes profitable) because the amount spent on outfitting every single hotel room with an extension & maintaining it & the ability to make outbound calls was off-set by people actually using the phones.

Nowadays, you can't get rid of the in-room phone (because some people still use it - at least to recieve calls & to call room service, etc), but the operating costs have gone up significantly.

So, even though it's 2009, hotel room calls just aren't cheap & I seriously doubt they ever will be. I know that Marriott's got the Wired for Business option at full service hotels where they give you internet, local, and domestic long distance in the US on a daily basis charge, but I don't know if such packages are available internationally.

Well, then how can the Hoxton Hotel in London charge only 5 pence per minute from the UK to the USA? I actually use the phone at that hotel to call the USA and I bet a lot of others would be willing to do so if the prices were reasonable. In most hotels, the phones are used only to call the front desk and from room to room because of the greediness of the hotel owners.

[sobore]

Post check-in list:

1) Put down luggage
2) Unplug phone from the wall

This game of legalized robbery needs to stop.
The hotels are entitles to make money, however ripping people off is another story.
If they want to charge these outrageous long distance rates maybe they should be required to place a special warning wrapper on the phone
Alerting the guest to the fact they will be paying upwards of $10 a minute for the privilege.