fotographer

I think anytime you are seeking any type of comp. its important to start with the least you would expect. Like with any dealings in life.. the business will always start with
what they think you will be happy with.
In the OP case.. its hard for me to judge.. mostly because I dont own a $700 pair of pants.....but I would have probably been happy with enough points for a couple nights of hotel.

IluvSQ

How can something like that happen in these COVID days? Does the staff not have to ensure that the chair and table are sanitized after prior use?

cmd320

On a padded fabric covered chair, I don't really see how much sanitization could be done beyond spraying it down with Lysol, nor do I really see the point as all that's going to touch the seat of the chair is ones hopefully clothed bottom.

Now, with that said I'm sure the restaurant was not at capacity and they could have easily rotated the soy sauce chair out for a different one.

vishalgupta22

I have seen a lot of posts for comping 2 nights. OP mentioned the stay was 850/night

Wouldn't 2 nights be too much comp in that case?

Also going by the rate + dinner cost, it shouldn't be that difficult for RC to comp a reasonable% (say 50%) of a 700$ pants

PTahCha

The typical resolution would be for the hotel to reimburse you for the dry cleaning. However, since the pants have been declared beyond repairable (must be some fancy linen/silk blend), negotiate with the hotel to see if they would willing to compensate you with points that's equivalent of 1 night stay there. This would be more than equitable, since the room rate is more than the value of the pants.

Although this being the Ritz, they may go above and beyond and buy you a new pair of pants and also pay for the alteration.

If that's the case, they a) move you to another table because of the glass shards; b) bring another bottle of wine, probably on the house; and c) collect information for a damage report in order to file an insurance claim on your behalf to settle the loss. At that point, the customer would be dealing with the insurance company for settlement, which is typically the replacement value of the phone.

Sanitation uses the antibacterial spray, which kills all bacteria and virus on the surface, but it does not remove the residual soy sauce on the cushion.

bitterproffit

It sucks that your pants got ruined. Sorry that this happened to you. As for what your expectations from the manager, it will be interesting to see what he comes up with. You state your weren't really expecting any compensation, so I suppose any goodwill gesture is possible, up to, and including the amount of points required for a stay in the hotel.

I guess only you can decide what the appropriate points you would find acceptable. I guess if I owned any slacks that expensive, I would want at least 50K-60K points. But I don't think that is what you will be offered. I'd be interested in hearing what they do offer you.

writerguyfl

This thread is a perfect example of why there's no such thing as "appropriate compensation" in these types of situations.

I've told this story a bunch of times, so forgive me if you've read it before.

One of my past jobs was Night Manager during the soft opening of a hotel. The building was closed, gutted down to the structural walls, and rebuilt. We opened weeks too early. That fact meant our first guests experienced a huge number of inconveniences that never should have happened in a fully operational hotel.

During that period, my nights consisted of taking complaints and offering compensation. (I'd sometimes have a line!) I quickly learned that different guests reacted quite differently to the same offer of compensation to fix the same problem.

In fact, a small number some of guests viewed any offer of compensation to be offensive. Those people usually wanted a sincere apology and an explanation of how the stuff will be doing things differently to try to stop the issue from every happening again.

Once I shifted to a "What can we do for you to make up for the problem?" approach, that job got much easier. If guests were unsure, I'd respond with a "other guests have asked for X", with X being a relatively low-value item. I started low because I didn't want to give away the farm, so to speak. (It was a for-profit business, after all.)

My point behind this isn't that I don't think the OP should ask for opinions. There's nothing wrong with that. But, you're not going to find a consensus. Ask for what you want to make you whole...not what other FlyerTalkers say you should get.

Additionally, different hotels or even different managers within the same hotel will have different approaches to compensation. As such, if the OP provides the negotiated resolution, anyone reading this in the future when faced with a similar damaged item of clothing shouldn't view that resolution as what should happen for them.

TL;DR: Compensation is personal. There will be no consensus. What one guest expects might be very different for another.

SummitBars

Advice #'s 1-20:

Don't ask the people on here for advice on anything to do with "compensation". i am an Ambassador for Marriott and the majority of posters here have little if any empathy or sympathy for the OP's in regards to hotel screw ups and compensation. I rarely post but lurk a lot and read lots of these threads.

My advice as an Ambassador employee(even though you are Platinum) is to arrange a call to the GM. The Ritz is a high end Marriott property and they should bend over backwards to give you fair and lots of times above and beyond compensation resolution.

Hope this helps.

My manager read this and he thinks you should be compensated for the cost of the pants obv, 1-2 free nights at the hotel and 75,000 points.

craz

If your mgr worked for me and gave this away, he wouldnt be working for me any longer. I could see todays value of the pants (used no longer new) and either 2 nights or 75K but not both.the exception being if the OP was a reg with us at The Hotel and dropped a nice amount of $$s with us every year, then Id see it as a cost of doing biz

SacTownGuy

I agree. All of that seems like way too much compensation to me.

mikebor

i disagree completely. Number 1 the op was paying close to $900+ a night there which is very very high. Secondly there is a pandemic and the cleaning practices were obviously not taken seriously at all, especially at a luxury brand like the Ritz.

I agree with this ambassador, this guest should be OVERCOMPENSATED imo because of those factors.

Podcat

“Stuff happens”

And it happens a lot more when there is no accountability, particularly amongst those who like to say this.
Ask yourself how this particular “stuff” happened?
Whose job was it to clean up the mess before another guest sat down?
And why didn’t he/she do it?

Whatever excuse that person made at the time, it likely involved shifting consequences to someone else.
Putting myself in that person’s shoes, I’m not coming up with any way this goes well for the restaurant or the hotel.
That’s what managers are for — to take responsibility when others won’t.
Even if the pants weren’t so expensive, no one wants an experience like that anywhere, let alone an $850/night luxury hotel.

Dismal failure at all levels.
Period.

He should be cheerfully compensated for the pants AND compensated for his bad experience — not just sitting in wet soy sauce but the failure to provide recovery.

AAir_head

Nothing. Like some others, I think this just falls into the category of "stuff happens".

That they offered you a drink was nice enough. That the manager offered you points after the fact (and in response to a review rather than formal complaint) was far more than you might reasonably expect--and I infer more than you did expect based on your posts. I wouldn't demand free night(s) or any set amount of points. But that's me.

As someone else also said, I'd have gone and changed into dry pants immediately as well as asking the hotel to have the ones I was wearing cleaned--it's not as though you needed to go very far to change clothes.

Chalk it up to life experience and move on.

However it works out, I wish you happy (and dry) future travels!

cheers!

lyst

That's what I'm wondering. To me, that makes it much worse!

LondonElite

I don't know about this. I generally don't sit down somewhere before looking at where I'm sitting. Unless it was a dark cloth seat I would have noticed soya sauce wetness. And as soon as my bottom was wet, I would have gotten up and check out what exactly was making it wet.

Anyway...

I am with the crowd that says, 'if you buy unusually expensive items, you accept the fact that things happen.' To someone living in a trailer, a $50 pair of jeans are probably as 'expensive' as $700 trousers are to someone who lives in a penthouse on the Upper East Side. We had a thread some time ago from someone whose LV bags was slightly scuffed by cabin crew (on BA I think?) and who was asking for a new bag (I think, maybe I recall poorly). That sort of thinking doesn't really work, IMO (not to mention that a little scuffing on luggage makes it look better, not worse.) A fair effort would be some compensation, a dry cleaning, but that's about it. What would you do if a car splashes you from a puddle?