I mean you're right, it's not over till the fat lady sings. But I have stayed at this very hotel 3 times in the last 3 months and this is definitely an outlier experience. And I never said that I wanted it to balance to the penny -- I know the fhr wifi credits happen later -- but it should largely agree within some reasonable margin.

Hotels do not just randomly pick some number to pre auth at check in. That's not how any of this works. They have policies that are explainable and repeatable. Certainly different hotels have different policies so your auth is gonna be different between all of them. And even at a hotel, their policies can change over time but there is a policy.

​​​​​ My experience is that *large* discrepancies are important to pay attention to because they can indicate problems with the booking that can take hours to resolve at checkout. I've had travel agencies not *fax* credit notes to hotels, I've had booking engines show one room rate and book another and I've had check in clerks charge for upgrades. All caught at check in.

So when something seems off, I'm certainly going to ask for an explanation. I'd rather know that I have time to get something fixed rather than spend hours on checkout or months in credit dispute resolution.

And in this the explanation was resort fees increasing.


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