acarney

(sorry it's super long!!!)

I’ve been doing a 3 to 4 night stay at the Universal Hilton near Universal Studios Hollywood for at least the last three years and every time my stay has been awesome. Check in is fast and easy and the rooms are pretty nice with a great view of the theme park, if you pay for that. However, this year things just fell apart with my stay!



I had two stays booked just a couple days apart since I was doing Halloween Horror Nights the first night I arrived, then moving over to Disney for a few days, and then coming back to do Universal in the day and at night again.



First check in was for Oct 19th to Oct 20th.

I had caught a ~5:25am flight that day so I could do some downtown Disney shopping and pick up some tickets there (flew into SNA) and then drove over to the Hilton. My goal was to arrive around 3pm so I could get a little nap before HHN (which I’m usually at until 2am). Instead because of traffic I arrived around 4:10pm, right after “normal” check in opened up. My HHN VIP ticket wasn’t until 6:20pm though so I thought I could get a quick 60 to 70 minute nap and shower and be down at the park in time. At check in I was told my room wasn’t ready yet and all they could do was move me to a non-theme park view. I paid for the theme park view specifically because I wanted that view. I opted to wait thinking it wouldn’t be more than 10 to 15 minutes (I assume they got someone working on the room right away?)

Instead the room wasn’t ready until almost 5pm, about 40 minutes after I tried to check in initially. Of course I had to go back to the front desk to then get my key and parking key before going up to my room. This burned any amount of time I had for a quick nap. I was told they would “make it right” and was offered a free upgrade to full breakfast (I’m a gold via Amex), which I didn’t play to stay to eat the next day anyway.

Upon returning to the hotel at ~2:25am my parking key card didn’t work, so I took a new ticket at the machine and had to go back to the front desk and get my card reprogrammed since I wanted to be able to just hit the road early when I woke up to beat traffic while driving to Disney. After thinking about it I ended up swinging by the front desk and talking to the manager on location. He apologized and waived the one night of parking fee and offered 10k Hilton points, which have not posted yet (8 days later). I let him know I would be checking BACK into the hotel on the 24th for a two night stay and he offered to check for an upgraded room but because I needed two beds (with a friend) and already had a theme park view booked, there was nothing he could offer me.



Second check in from Oct 24th to Oct 26th.

I was coming from a day in Disneyland so I didn’t check in until about 11:45pm, and thankfully the room was ready! :P However, they couldn’t program ANY parking keycard, so after about 5 minutes of them trying both machines and about 20 keys, they told me it they would slide it under the door when they got it working, which made me a little nervous since I needed to be in the theme park at ~8:30am for another very expensive VIP tour. Thankfully when I woke up the parking card had been slipped under my door! The parking card worked fine to exit the garage that morning and return around 4pm. I then needed to exit again a couple hours later because I had a friend meeting me at the hotel and we were going to the Halloween Horror Nights VIP tour. My friends flight was delayed, which of course is totally outside Hilton’s control, but it made me really stressed out because I had only left about a 90 minute window of wiggle room between her landing at BUR and when our tour started. Amazingly working with Universal Studios I was able to line things up so she arrived at the hotel and we had almost exactly 15 minutes to get from my room to the tour check in. Thank goodness I picked this Hilton because it’s specifically across the street from Universal and I can be at the front gate in less than 10 minutes…



And then my parking key didn’t work to get out of the garage, and another car pulled up next to me and their key didn’t work at that gate, and then a 3rd car pulled up behind them and their key didn’t work at either gate. Pushing the call button for help and waiting for about 30 seconds didn’t work since no one answered right away. I didn’t want to get blocked in, and I was in a MASSIVE rush (had less than 15 minutes to make my tour) that I backed down the ramp to run back in and speak with someone. The check in counter was packed so I went to the concierge. This was on October 24th at about 7:40pm. I’m not sure what her name was, and I found out she was fairly new, but she was very pleasant and acted with a purpose and speed to try to get things working, but she didn’t have much she could do. I believe she called “operations” which either didn’t answer right away or told her to go talk to the valet desk. She briskly walked me over to the valet desk and explain the issue to the valet who looked as un-interested in our problem as he could be. He told the concierge he was pretty sure “there is nothing we can do about that, we can’t open the gates.” She looked shocked and explained again to him that I was a guest, and there were two other guest cars down there and there MUST be a way to open the gate and he just said “well you’ll have to call someone, we can’t just open them, I don’t think anyone here can do that, someone would have to come fix them.” Then he PICKED UP A KEY and walked away from the desk to go valet a car. The concierge looked completed shocked and embarrassed and reached over his desk in a rush to call someone again, I’m not sure who she got a hold of but they told her someone was going down to take care of it. By the time I got back down there another two cars had joined the group and no one’s key was working and we saw two guys walking towards the gate. They then proceeded to scanned each customers card and override it or something so the gate opened, but only with ONE gate, so a couple cars had to back up to get in line. This whole thing took about 20 minutes from start to finish, completely making me late for the last VIP departure from Universal. Because of how the VIP tour works, Universal couldn’t get us to rejoin our group for about 2 hours or so, and when we did it turned out that the guide had already completed most the stuff so we were only with him for about another hour before he “set us free” to go back and do whatever we wanted again on our own. These VIP tickets were $379 each.



I know it wasn’t Hilton’s fault the flight was delayed, or that I made plans fairly tight between when a flight was coming in and when a tour started, but it WAS Hilton’s fault that their gate didn’t work and no one could answer that call box within a minute to open the gate. BECAUSE of the Hilton issue, ~$760 of VIP tickets felt largely wasted since we were with a guide for just about an hour out of the 5 or 6 hour night. We certainly would have made it just in time if we could have got out of the garage, this is literally the only reason I stay at this Hilton; KNOWING I’m across the street from the park and if things go wrong I don’t have to worry about travel or traffic time.

I spoke with someone at the gold/diamond check in desk the next morning and explained everything and the first thing she said (after saying sorry!) was that this parking issue was happening A LOT recently. Key cards either couldn’t be programmed often, the gates wouldn’t read them, or the machines up stairs weren’t working with the key cards. Then she walked me over to the valet desk to speak with the main valet guy (day guy I guess?) and he said the call button goes right to his desk and after they ask your room number they punch a button into the phone or keypad on the desk or something and it will open the gate. NO ONE needs to go down there. He said the night guy should have known that since he’s been there for years and was really surprised the night guy couldn’t do anything. The gold/diamond agent then waived the parking fee for the two nights and offered 10k Hilton points. I spent about 20 minutes with her and the valet guy talking everything over and then she went back to her check in desk. As I was about to return to my room to finish packing to check out I noticed she was talking to someone else and walked over, it turned out to be another manager. I introduced myself and explain everything again and the manager looked really sorry for what happened and then took my cell phone number and said she would change the recovery credit to 20k points. She said she would follow up with the manager from a few days before when I had issues and would talk to her valet guy and concierge to make sure they knew how to handle the issue.



Now this huge long winded story is all to ask, am I getting an appropriate solution to the issue? I hate confrontation with issues like this, because it was certainly not the check in person’s fault when I talked to them the next day and while the manager oversees the whole hotel, she might not be able to change the timeline of upgrades or repairs to equipment. I don’t place the blame on any single person, expect for the valet guy just not giving a crap! At the time them saying sorry and offering some points felt like they we’re doing all they could for me. Now a couple days later though and I’m still really mad that because of a huge delay at the Hilton parking garage the main benefit, the guided tour, of almost $800 in tickets was completely missed. While it’s nice the parking fee was waived, the points don’t seem appropriate. I’m ok with paying the charge for the stay, they provided a room for me and a place to sleep. BUT, a single night reward at that hotel is ~60k points, and they’ve given me 20k (because 10k still hasn’t posted?!) as a sorry we royally messed your night up. Would it be out of place to ask for a comped night’s worth of points for a future return (60 to 70k points). There is a Sheraton less than a hundred feet away and right now I’m not sure what will actually make me return to this Hilton… Is there a corporate email I can get in contact with to see if the local managers have handled the situation well? I was very polite at every stage and never raised my voice or demanded anything (not sure what to ask for?) but I just don’t feel like what they offered really went out of their way to make it right. Short of having the cost difference of the VIP tickets and a standard ticket reimbursed I’m not sure I would feel it “made right”, but surely they must be able to do more than 30k points, right?



(First stay was $414.96 room rate and second stay was $514.25 room rate)

flyerCO

I would've asked for a bit more. However I feel that the time to ask has passed. The time was when you registered complaint and points were offered. AFA the hotel they took your complaint seriously, apologized, and made an offer of compensation that you accepted. There's no reason to offer more now, plus IMO I as a manager, would view it as tacky to be asked for more now. When one complains, one must be ready to ask for what one wants.

Often1

This.

Sometimes there is a minor screw up where some small customer service gesture may or may not be in order. That is not the case here.

If you had a specific request, you should have made it in a short and to the point email which sets forth exactly what you believe makes this right. The property is free to disregard your request, but at least you have done some level setting.

If you had rejected the offer and responded, you might be in a position to ask to have this reassessed. But, this is all in the past, you have your customer service gesture, and it may be lower than you expected, but it it is not off the charts.

As an aside, there is no word limit here on FT. But, successful advocacy, including customer complaints, is written in short declarative sentences and ends with an "ask". Hopefully this never happens again. But, if it does, make it 2-3 short declarative sentences followed by an equally short sentence saying, "and that is why you should comp my stay, send me $1,000, or whatever."

acarney

I should also note that I just returned home last night at about 11:50pm from my trip. So while a number of days has past since these issues, it's because I've been busy with a FULLY packed vacation schedule and didn't want to spend more of that vacation time trying to address these issues...

Right, I certainly would compress the request if I spoke with anyone. I just have no idea what to ask for stuff like this. It's not the managers fault Hilton won't invest in getting her new equipment or replacing the gates, so when I'm directly speaking with her saying my delay at the parking garage should be worth a night, I feel ridiculous and entitled that 20 minutes should be worth $250+. But the fact is that 20 minutes did really screw up the night and ruined the key benefit of why I purchased very expensive theme park tickets, and the theme park was the driver for why I picked this hotel. I just don't like being that person that is asking for everything to be free when something goes wrong, BUT, at the same time I honestly don't know if the points they gave me are enough to make me think about staying there for a fourth year in a row when the Sheraton is cheaper.

I guess the best thing that can come out of this is what should I ask for if another event like this happens. Something kind of out of their control (equipment issue, not like a staff member just forgot to do something) but with a pretty large affect when it came to enjoyment of a vacation. Would asking for whatever one nights redemption would be at the property be appropriate, or wildly entitled?

Also, this was in the middle of my trip, so finding an email address and taking time to write even a quick little email would have eaten into MORE of my time, especially if they wanted to follow up with more details in a call or something. I was checking out of the Hilton to drive over to Disney to do another two days there and literally every minute of this trip was accounted for with something going on... in fact I have an Amex/Disney issue that took place right after this that I'm going to post about :P

Also, how long do I wait for the initial 10k service credit for the first stay? I see that 20k points have been added to my account as a service recovery. I assume that is for the 20k for the second stay with the parking garage issue. (Desk rep's original 10k and then the manager upping that by another 10k). But what about the 10k I was given for my first stay at this property when my room wasn't ready? It's been 7+ days since speaking with the manager about that...

flyerCO

One nights stay would have been an appropriate place to start. I'm not saying you'd have gotten it, but would be a decent start.

Bonus points I've found usually post when stay post. However I've had them take 4 weeks.

Geoggy

Can this type of complaint still be done on hilton.com via live chat or is live chat dead now?

Can't see it anywhere on the website?

writerguyfl

The web form for complaints is here. To get there, click on "Customer Support" on the bottom of the Hilton website. Then, click on "Customer Support" on that page. (It's stupid having to click on the same named link twice, but that's how it is.)

https://help.hilton.com/s/contactsupport

On that page, there's small "Chat Now" icon on the right side of the screen. (This is on the regular site, not the mobile version.) Clicking that opens the chat window. When I do that, I'm seeing the Hilton Virtual Assistant. I don't know if that's because live chat isn't available at 6:20am (Eastern Time), because I need to ask for a live agent, or because live human chat is no longer available.

TomMM

I would cut/paste your OP into Hilton's chat window and see how the chatbot responds.