Originally Posted by unseasoned

I am a Titanium elite staying in a 2BR suite in a new-ish RI property in the L.A. area. It has been a good experience (and a good opportunity to burn some points/SNAs) so far, until tonight when the central AC in one of the two BRs stopped working.

I was on my bed for a few hours until I realized the room was extremely warm. After fiddling with the thermostat and climbing up to check the vents, it was clear to me that the AC just isn’t working. The fan was on but it was just blowing warm air.

According to the weather app, it’s not supposed to be *that* hot outside (high 50s to low 60s), so I tried opening the window and letting in some air, but no dice, it genuinely still felt way too warm (and noisy) to sleep in. I am not entirely sure why, since I am not usually that sensitive to heat and normally set my thermostat around 70. I suspect the AC in its current state is actually dumping waste (or actual?) heat into the room, since it felt well above what I am used to.

Seeing that it’s getting close to midnight and I anticipate the issue taking a while to resolve, I started calling the front desk to ask for someone to come take a look.

First call, the staff told me their thermostats are energy-efficient, motion sensors, blah blah blah, and told me to give it five minutes. Having been in the room for a few hours and having checked the vents personally, that was clearly a wrong diagnosis but I figured I’d be nice about it and it’d probably be easier if I just call again in a bit.

Five minutes later, of course it didn’t get better so I called again. A different staff picked up so I explained the situation again and she said she would set the temperature for me on her system.

Another five minutes, nothing changed and so I called again. She said she set it and asked me to give it 10 minutes. She also told me that the engineering won’t be there until the morning so my only options are to wait for it to work or swap for a different room.

I waited as long as I could, and at this point it’s really eating into bedtime and I am literally sweating. I called back and told them I am done waiting and it’s getting late so let’s find a different resolution. At this point she finally revealed to me that she has since learned that actually the AC really is broken (how convenient, and she didn’t think to call proactively?). However because the engineering aren’t there and because they are sold out, there is nothing she could do about it until tomorrow.

I clarified what she meant by sold out, and turns out she only meant that they are out of the 2BR, so I offered a solution: we will keep our 2BR (my partner is already asleep in the other room), they will put me in any other room that’s available for the night, and tomorrow they can come fix the AC during the day and I can go back for there for the rest of the stay.

At first she rejected that as a possibility and insisted that if we want to move we will both have to move and downsize to whatever studio room they have left. This doesn’t work for us since we booked a 2BR for a reason and counted on having different rooms to sleep in (if the SNA didn’t clear we would have cancelled and went for our backup option elsewhere).

At this point I felt like it’s getting ridiculous (and late). I pointed out to her that we paid (well, not with cash, but still) for a 2BR, and now one of the two bedrooms isn’t working out so it’s their responsibility to reaccomodate me. If they had another 2BR available, it would have been a simple (though still inconvenient) fix.

But since they don’t, they would have to find an alternative that works, and I already threw out what seems to be a workable and fair (if anything it’s still an inconvenience to me) solution, and that it doesn’t cost them anything since whatever room that still isn’t sold at this time isn’t likely to be magically sold in the next few hours. I made it clear that I wasn’t trying to take advantage of the situation, didn’t ask for compensation or anything, just a very humble request for a bed to sleep in for the night.

At this point, she had the audacity to come back at me with “well actually we are 96% sold and so it might…”, so I asked to speak with the GM. She told me she *is* the GM so I finally pulled the Titanium elite card and eventually she reluctantly offered me a room.

This all felt pretty ridiculous to me, as I just assumed that it’s the hotel’s responsibility to accommodate the guests, and if a room isn’t up to the usual standard, it’s their job to reaccomodate - in the extreme case shelling out the cash to put guests in another nearby hotel.

But I realized that’s just my potentially unfounded assumption. Am I the a** here? Am I being a snowflake? What are the rights/responsibilities in this kind of situation? Would I be SOL here if I didn’t have status? Does this being an award/SNA stay make any difference in terms of what I am entitled to?