Is this another "trick" of at least one IC in Japan to avoid the lowest rate guarantee?

The IC Tokyo Bay is selling their Superior Rooms (i.e. their lowest category) for 18000 JPY + 10% + 5% (approx 21000 JPY) even though this kind of non-inclusive pricing is no longer allowed in Japan). check-in Time is noon, check-out time is 11 am.

On travel.rakuten.co.jp they sell the same room for 14300 JPY (check-in is 6 pm, check-out is 10 am) and 16300 JPY (check-in is 3 pm, check-out is 11 am).

I wonder if I can claim the lowest rate guarantee if my check-in time is after the stated times of the special prices...

I kind of lost my faith in calling the Japanese service center for lowest rate guarantees since about 2 weeks ago, when I found a lower rate but was initially declined with the argument that "the same rate that I found should have been available and was not available because of a computer error, so they cannot force the hotel to honor the lowest rate guarantee". It took at least a 20 minute discussion on the phone to convince the otherwise very nice customer service representative to reconsider, and a long mail to the Ambassador Service to back me up. Even then I was left with the impression that computer errors are my problem, and that I should check various language versions of the ICH webpage because apparantly the Japanese version was not affected by this error.

What are your thoughs?

Cheers,


HTB.