I had a miserable time with phone charges at an Embassy Suites in Atlanta Galleria once. I came in and had a lot of work to do online, so planned on spending several hours on the laptop. I checked the hotel directory to see what the phone charges were -- it said something like 75 cents a local call. So I dialed in, did my work that night, went to bed, woke up early, dialed in again and finished up.

Then when I started out to breakfast I noticed the bill that had been slipped under my door. Room rate looked fine, but I had something like $30 in phone fees!

So I go downstairs to investigate, and I'm informed that there's a per-minute charge on local cards. Buh? I point out that the hotel directory says nothing of the sort, and ask to speak to the manager. He explains that there's a card right there by the phone listing the charges, and that the hotel directory is out of date. I told him I didn't see a card, though admitted I was tired and might have missed it. So we argued for a while, with him offering to take off half the charges, but I argued him down to taking all the charges off.

Now, granted, even if I'd known about the per-minute charge ahead of time I would have made the calls, I had to get the work done. It doesn't annoy me so much getting charged for calls if I know what I'm being charged, but having the directory say one thing and getting billed another drives me up a wall. Sure, my company would reimburse me, but it's the principle.

Incidentally, when I went back upstairs to look at the phone, there was no card by it. But I used the phone in the bedroom. The phone in the living room of the suite did have a card, but it was in a corner nowhere near a table, so I didn't even go near it. Bah. If they can't at least put a little sticker in their directories that says the phone charges have changed, I have no sympathy for them. You can't just advertise one thing and then charge another.