Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
Could the OP have a common last name?
It's fine here for folks to say that OP should refuse to pay and get the local police involved, but this is scary in a foreign country where the opposite side might have ties to the police or at least are from the same culture and speak the same language. Plus, we should assume that OP had a plane or train to catch; missing a flight while one wastes an hour arguing with the police could cost far more than 420 Euros with no hope of getting it back.
Situations like this are reasons why I think hotels should be required to put a hard copy of the bill under the door during the night before checkout.
Huh? OP was in Vienna - that's Austria, as in Europe. It wasn't somewhere in Lagos or Saudi Arabia, but in one of the most civilized spots on earth.
Definitely no "scary" things about calling police, and pretty much everyone does speak English (If OP doesn't speak German) at least to some degree there (at least Police and the hotel employees for sure - we aren't talking about a farmer in Tyrol here..) - yes, missing a flight/train might be an issue, in that case I understand if OP just wanted to settle it later..
But yes, different reservation # indeed sounds like it might have been a mistake by the hotel and putting him with another guest's reservation. Certainly NOT what should happen. I'm really interested to see how the story turns out (if we hear back from OP) but my personal guess is:
OPs reservation indeed got mixxed up with another one, upon checking neither the hotel nor him noticed, probably he even signed the wrong reservation (still imho this doesn't give the hotel the right to eventually overcharge him on checkout) by not checking it careful enough, and upon checkout the hotel insisted on the higher bill, with the original reservation now been "gone" from their system.