<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by RichardInSF:
The best crooked gimmick I've seen was at the Country Inn in Calabasas, California, which notified me about a phony "energy surcharge" at check-in, and made me sign something accepting it, before they let me into the room. Was I going to fight it, arriving tired at midnight with no other place to go?</font>
In all fairness, although I disagree with the surcharge (why not just roll it into the quoted rate?), during the summer of 2001 many hotel properties in the western U.S. (at least California and Nevada, in my experience) were charging this "energy surcharge."