Originally Posted by srk123
Comparing a retail store to a hotel reservation is not a good analogy. At a store, you haven't put up a deposit or relied on that price beyond bringing the item to the checkstand. Whereas with a hotel reservation, there has been an offer and acceptance along with a deposit (or credit card guarantee), so the customer has put up good faith and a contract has been created. If I don't show for a reservation, I lose my deposit, so a hotel that has taken a deposit should similarly be expected to perform.
Agreed: the only comparable retail example would be if the store was happy to sell you the coat at the point of sale, but later called you at home and said "We didn't really mean to sell you that coat for $20. You owe us $80 more."
Slightly off-topic, I am very skeptical that these are truly "errors". If they were errors, somebody in the IT department would be tasked with a critical-priority project to develop a utility to either proactively prohibit certain rates from being loaded into the system or force the user to double-confirm what it determines an "unusual" rate. (e.g., a pop-up saying "The rate you are about to load is unusually low for X property. Are you sure you wish to load it?") It's child's play...something a good developer could build and test in about a week. Since this obviously doesn't happen, and the "errors" keep happening, it makes me think something else is going on.
(Granted, I'm mainly thinking about the airlines here. I've never encountered an error rate on Marriott.com, and it's quite possible that they do have a good error-checking system in place.)