Originally Posted by
CJKatl
Now you need to either pay the fee for the hotel ATM or find your bank's ATM nearby if you don't have a bank that reimburses.
Or, have an ATM card that eats up all ATM fees (refunding those from the ATM itself), e.g. a card
from Charles Schwab Bank.
Originally Posted by
SkiAdcock
So basically we have a one-off problem but the OP says the rest of us shouldn't put tips on the free brekkie on our room charge, even though many of us have been doing it for years & haven't had a problem doing so. This is definitely a YMMV.
Cheers.
Erroneous charges from the bar/restaurant added to the room bill is a frequent error (in most cases unintentional, but on some occasions - malicious - by some free-riders). Over the years, I've had some restaurant/bar charges added to my room on more than one occasion (some 3-5 times over ~20 years of business travel). Yes, all those could be (and were) corrected, but each case wasted my time at the checkout.
If you don't charge anything to the room, you are more likely to avoid potential mistakes. And in case someone else's charge ends up on your bill, it is much easier to spot and much easier to prove that it wasn't yours.
I can see the rational for doing that based on getting extra points (if and when that happens). But for those employed by state and federal agencies, restaurant charges on the hotel bill complicates the accounting for the business department (they must go into separate categories). Not to mention that the alcohol charges are not reimbursed, and such employers strongly encourage to have a separate bill for the alcohol even at a restaurant. And if your employer is using Concur, - you cannot link one receipt to two different charges, so you have to upload to different copies of that receipt. (At least that was still the case 2-3 years ago.) It's much easier to have a separate restaurant receipt for the food.