Originally Posted by
sdsearch
Legal in what sense?
People get different rooms than they booked all the time. Gosh, sometimes people even get "walked" to a different hotel than they booked. So that in itself doesn't seem illegal at all. Ie, if they had told you "sorry, we know you booked the king, but the queen is all that's available for the whole length of your stay, but you can check back next Someday to see if we can move you back into a king at that point" wouldn't that be legal? (A hotel may have had a guest extend a stay and now your reserved room is not available.)
You seem to have a lot more experience staying with choice than I do but if this sort of thing happens at choice regularly, that doesn't sound right. What if you had booked a non-smoking and the room they make you stay in is smoking, would that be legal? Would I then be able to sue the hotel for aggravating my asthma?
Originally Posted by
sdsearch
So it is exact details of how they did it (them chanigng your actual reservation, rather than just putting you in a different room when you arrived) which is fishy.
This is what seems illegal to me - the fact that the hotel switched the room on the reservation to an inferior room that costs less and tried to pass it off as the original reservation.
I would think that choice would have a case to go after the hotel for hacking their resv. system or some such depending on the agreement between them and the hotel but since it was my room and I am affected by their switcheroo, could I have a case to go after them legally too? This is what I wanted clarification about.
As you say, it's a contract and If a merchant switches a product that one has paid for (king bed) with an inferior product (queen bed) which costs less, isn't it bait and switch?
I bet the contract between you and Choice (regarding this stay) has precious few specifics about what your reservation really means. (I have a printout of a Chioce reservation from this week, and it says nothing about guaranteeiing a room type, just guarnateeing "my room" until 7 am with the credit card. But again, "my room" can include being "walked" to another hotel, so it's nowhere near as specific as the exact room that's listed on the reservation.)
On my reservation the room type and rate are listed and below that is the guarantee policy which states:
"Guarantee Policy
Your room will be held until 7:00 AM the morning following your scheduled arrival date"
This to me clearly means that the particular room type and rate listed is what is guaranteed.
The guarantee policy goes on to say:
"If you do not arrive and do not cancel your reservation by the cancellation deadline, your credit card will be charged 1 night's stay plus tax. "
The 1 night's stay penalty in this case would be charged at the rate listed in the reservation, not at any
other rate.
This to me again serves to bolster the idea that the room type and rate listed is indeed guaranteed.
The walk policy serves to get choice out of bind in instances where a hotel is overbooked etc but if the customer doesn't agree to walk, do they have any legal recourse? Would love to know the answer to that.