Originally Posted by
DaveMidknight
Unfortunately, this is a sign of things to come. There are whole threads over this tax problem in the Marriott forum and Marriott sticks to their view regarding taxes.
Your quote from Marriott is just a copy-paste text, were they change the hotel name. As I got the same exact text for at least a year, if not longer.
I just got two rejections for this reason. This is ridiculous! So their assertion is that a "total" price listed by a competing site isn't really total unless it specifically spells out that taxes/service charge are included? If you book an all-in rate with an OTA, there's no way the hotel would collect an extra 10% service charge upon arrival. In many cases, they don't even know how much you paid. Imagine what Tripadvisor would look like if this was an actual hotel practice ... "They asked me to pay an extra $200 in phony 'service charge' even though I already prepaid my TA. DON'T STAY HERE."
Most sites will have something generic in their terms that "additional fees/taxes may be collected by the hotel," but of course this refers to resort fees/city taxes (Kurtaxe, etc). Rejecting claims for this phony reason (or reducing the BRG discount by the phony additional taxes) turns the BRG into a scam!