Return of lost items
 

This is not a rant, just an observation...

Been on the road pretty solid since early January and when I unpacked I was missing a picture frame with a picture of me and my wife. Started backtracking Marriotts, RIs and Courtyards and finally found it at a Courtyard. I spoke to the Assistant GM and she said "Yes, we have it and a bottle of prescription medicine you left."

I had to ask, so here goes..."If you had the item along with a prescription bottle with my name and phone number on it (both of which matched the info on the room ressie), did it ever occur to you over the past six weeks to call me and say you had it?" She said, "No."

They sent it back and I'm happy to have it. Customer service is better in some places than in others.

I stayed at the FS Marriott Sable Oaks in Portland, ME a few days before Christmas when there were only a handful of people staying there at the time. Accidently left a ballcap behind in my room. Called the front desk when I realized I left it the following week & they transferred me to their "Lost & Found" voicemail line. Left a response with my info/room number...no response.

I returned to this property in Feb and spoke with the front desk. Explained my situation & even gave my business card with my personal cell # written on the back. Still no response.

I do realize that it is my fault for leaving the item behind, but at least a callback would be nice. Especially since I have followed up with the front desk on this. :confused:

Some prescriptions - although not all - are fairly low value and aren't worth the shipping costs to return. The hotel could spend a lot of time and effort where the guest finds little benefit. (I left some stuff behind around Thanksgiving and was happy when the hotel returned my call and promptly forwarded the items by FedEx - charges appearing on an amended folio.)

Likewise, a property in Prague offered to forward my $10 paperback book via $90 in DHL charges. No, thanks - really.

Don't necessarily disagree, but it shouldn't be too much of a hassle to call or email the person (when they have that information) to find out if the left behind items are needed and worth shipping.

I think it should be standard by marriott that if guest leaves something behind and they have an email on file to send them a quick email about it. This is not that hard of a policy to start.

One time, I left my DL at Blockbuster (forgot my card). Anyway, didnt realize it for a while and got a new license-i didnt remember leaving it there.

A few weeks later, i was in Blockbuster and they said-"We have your DL." WHAT??? You didnt look me up and call me? They simply handed it back.

Agree w/ this 100%. I don't often leave items, but when I do I would have appreciated being contacted especially when I've stayed at multiple places and not known which property I left it at w/o doing the homework the OP mentioned. Sometimes I would have told them to toss or donate; other times they were expensive items that I wanted back & I was willing to foot the shipping bill.

Cheers.

Well, I did a rant here about this a few years ago and concluded Marriott will do nothing until you ask. "For your protection" was the excuse many people offered - as in they want no involvement in any clandestine activity you might be engaging in at their hotels.

I had left a cell charger in a room and when I returned 4 weeks later, I innocently asked about it not knowing exactly where it might had fallen away. Well, security marched right up, it was bagged and well documented on a multi part form detailing exactly where, when and who had found it. A show of ID and signature and it was mine again. A lot of work went into NOT returning a $20 charger if I hadn't asked a question.

People mentioned secret job interviews and affairs for not reaching out to the guest in any type of manner which I think is compete BS and an overreaction by corporate legal types. Sounds like criminals have more rights than the victims.

Maybe you use a bit of discretion when "martial aids" are left behind, but a prescription and Driver's License? Come on. Had you left the hotel with an unsettled final bill or monetary issue, do you believe your "anonymity" would be protected and they wouldn't contact you in some manner to pay up?

I don't think it's an excuse at all. As somebody who ran the front desk of a courtyard for 3 years in New Orleans, it's not my business to know what you are doing in your room and who/what knows about it. You could have left a book behind because you were done with it, or a phone charger because it didn't work anymore. It's my job to give you a clean, working room and attentive service. I've seen it all from "college friends" saying goodbye at 3am in the lobby, to helping guests find a jeweler to get a new wedding band before they have to fly back home. Like most rules, this one is not for the 99% of people, it's at the 1% and I'm sure that Mr. Jones wouldn't want a message on his home answering machine that so and so from the hotel in San Francisco was returning his item, when he was supposed to be in Duluth.

Good points on both sides of the discussion. I, too, worked at the FD of a Courtyard for a little over a year about 8 years ago. We didn't bother to contact anyone about phone chargers or books, but if it was a personal item like a prescrip or a picture frame with a personal picture in it, we called the number on the ressie. If we busted anyone, oh well...should have foregone the points and used a fake address. :D

I think that hotels don't contact guests about left items because they could well belong to a previous guest. If someone rang to ask if you had left a valuable item, some people would probably just say yes and take something that wasn't theirs.

I once left a jacket at Portsmouth (UK) Marriott. I called immediately when I realised I had left it and an on the ball housekeeper found it within 10 minutes and posted it to me at no charge. I had it back in two days. Excellent customer service. If the hotel had identified the next guest as the owner, they could have accepted an expensive item of clothing as their own only to have me call a week later to find that had happened ....

I can't speak for other properties, but at the CY where I worked we logged the item and the date it was found in a log book. That way we could match the name of the person checking out that day to the item.

BTW, I paid the shipping to get my picture frame and prescrip back.

Hence my point. I think most Marriott's (at least from the REN I stayed at when I got my charger back) go way out of their way to clean rooms completely and then store/catalog lost items in great detail. This is not a pay-by-the-hour motels us business travelers are staying at. A simple cell call, email, etc, "did you possibly leave anything behind?" without identify the item is simple common business courtesy no mattter who pays for the return shipping.

Yes, I'm sure hotels and FD clerks have seen it all. But to protect 1% and ignore the other 99% of mundane business travelers who have a "senior moment" due to the stress and bustle of business travel is absurd. If I decide to cheat on my wife and leave a home number or common email address in my profile (or use a common credit card), perhaps I'm the stupid one?

Again, I blame litigation fearful corporate policy!

If it's important enough, the guest will contact the hotel. It's great when the hotel has taken care of the item. The hotel should NEVER contact the guest, rather, the hotel should err on the side of caution.

Perhaps the guest was having an illicit encounter. Perhaps the guest was on a job interview and the email account is the guest's work email. Perhaps the item was left on purpose, but why should the hotel have to take the time and effort to track the guest down.

I left something very recently at a hotel. It took me two weeks to remember which hotel. The hotel had the item. I sent the hotel a prepaid FedEx label (via email) for the item to be returned. I don't feel slighted that the hotel did not contact me, nor do I expect the hotel to foot the cost of my scatter-brain mistake. I am grateful the hotel kept the item.

When I was in school, I waited tables. Mr. and Mrs. X were regulars, coming in about once a week with their daughter, who was around eighteen. One day, Mr. X left his credit card. He had put his phone number on the receipt, so I called and left him a message that it was at the host stand and either he or Mrs. X could stop by and pick it up. Mrs. X came in to pick it up. Only Mrs. X was NOT the woman we were used to seeing with Mr. X and had assumed was Mrs. X. The woman we assumed was Mrs. X was the mother of Mr. X's daughter, who the real Mrs. X was told had been out of the picture for years. I felt horrible. Mr. X felt it important to be part of his daughter's life. (The daughter was a developmentally disabled adult) and had managed to do this without Mrs. X knowing, as she did not want him involved with the ex-mistress, we later found out. Mrs. X told me in no uncertain terms that she was the real Mrs. X and the other woman was "some tramp" in her words. Mr. X never came back to the restaurant. I felt horrible. Still do to this day.

There are bound to be differing opinions on this subject. I got my stuff back and I'm good. I would have been good if they had contacted me first. I'm good with the fact that I had to track it down.

And I disagree. I do think the hotel should make an effort to contact the guest. This is definitely a case of 'others views may vary'/differing opinions. Both sides have merit.

BTW - it goes w/o saying that a hotel, restaurant, car rental, department store, can't be held responsible for what someone does in their personal life.

Glad the OP managed to get his stuff back.

Cheers.

When I worked desk at Marriott, we were told we could not call guests or contact them about lost items, for privacy reasons.

There have been instances where long ago calls were made to the number on reservation and a wife answered and had no clue the husband had stayed in a hotel that night for example so turn up the marital turbulence and the hotel staff gets caught in the middle of the proceedings.

So we were told to stay out of it, just turn into lost and found log the item and if guest called then we coudl deal with it. We wera always really good about logging and safekeeping the lost items.

We kept lost items for 3 months I think then donated to local shelters of the housekeeper who located the item if they requested. Valuable items were kept in a safe.

Slightly off topic, but it's a good story:

Many years ago I arrived in Fargo ND on Braniff FC to visit a girlfriend and dropped my passport wallet beside a car in the parking lot. It had US$5000 in cash, my passport, several credit cards and about Bahraini Dinars 1000 and some other money. It had my address book also.

A few hours after I arrived at my friend's house her telephone rang. "Is somebody named jbcarioca there?" She said yes, and the airport manager told me a typical North Dakotan had seen the wallet and turned it in. The airport manager went through the address book until he found a Fargo name and number and called.

Every single thing was intact.

Nobody ever can say a bad thing about Fargo to me. I will not hear it!!

As for protecting people doing things illegal/immoral/shady, too bad for them. They shouldn't be leading double lives or whatever, and if it wasn't a forgotten item at a hotel that tripped them up it would be something else equally silly. I hate the fact that 99% of us have to be inconvenienced to protect the 1% of people doing stuff they're not supposed to be doing anyway.

But what really burns me up is when I do call a hotel where I know I've left an item and I get the lost-and-found runaround like a previous poster said. I've never left anything irreplaceable or hugely valuable (thank goodness), but just stuff like a book I was in the middle of or a set of pajamas. I can't imagine housekeepers stealing that kind of stuff, so they must just be throwing it away, then counting on the piss-poor lost-and-found process to discourage guests from pursuing it too far.

With over 200 nights in Marriotts least year, I have five times left something in my hotel room: 1) a phone charger at a Fairfield Inn in Denver, 2) another phone charger in ???, 3) a set of very nice headphones in a Full-Service in Pueblo, CO, 4) a set of push-up bars in a Courtyard in Ft. Meyers, and 5) some nutritional supplements in a Full-Service in Albuquerque.

Resolutions for each: 1) I checked back in to the hotel the following week and they didn't have my charger, but a very similar one that someone else had left behind and they gave that one to me; 2)Never bothered; 3) I called back less than a week after departure and they didn't have them - I pleaded my case that I know I left them there and that the housekeeper must have taken them (they were sitting out in plain site - the housekeeper surely couldn't have overlooked them, even though I did at 4a trying to catch a plane out of DEN). Of the numerous times I called, I had one front-desk agent let me know that the hotel could file an insurance claim and then they could reimburse me, but that turned out to not be true. I was upset with both the hotel housekeeper for stealing my property, and with myself for leaving it behind.; 4) I contacted the hotel a couple weeks after departure and they FedEx'd my push-ups bars back to me next day at their own cost - I thought that very kind. (It's a corporate property - I wonder if that has anything to do with it). 5) I do want my supplements back, but I've never taken the time to call and request them - I don't want them back enough, I suppose. (And in the time it took me to write this, I probably could have called them - hmmm...)

I'd like it if they called me to ask about property I left behind, but where would they draw the line as to what they'll call you about? What if I left an address I wrote on a napkin? Or a folder filled with scribblings? Or some $10 sunglasses that I bought because I left my good ones at home? Or... You know what I mean? I think it's less about protecting sneaky behavior and more about avoiding the dilemma of having to decide what is valuable and what isn't. What if they did have a policy of contacting customers for abandoned property, and you left something behind, the housekeeper thought it wasn't valuable and then threw it away. There might be legal precedence for action against the hotel, right?

I wish they'd contact me, but I wouldn't expect them to.

What if they had a simple policy of contacting the customer if possible in these situations and left it up to the customer to decide if the property was valuable or not? Personally, I see a difference between something scribbled on a napkin and a set of headphones.

My guess is that the issue is less one of legality and one of effort. I don't know how often customers leave items behind, but I would suspect that it may tend to happen more than we think. As such, at a large hotel it could end up being someone full time job to do nothing but look up customer contact info and try to contact them when something is found. It is just easier and less costly to wait and let the customer contact the hotel should the item(s) be valuable enough.

True. I initially thought they could set up some kind of Macro or Script to automatically send an email out to a customer who may have left something in a room - all it would take would be the touch of a button from a housekeeper or front-desk agent. And it could be that easy. But then how do you decide what is valuable? That requires judgment calls, and my guess is that a large corporation like Marriott wants to avoid having their housekeepers make those calls.

I agree with you - it ultimately boils down to not wanting to exert more effort, which is a shame.

I left some sunglasses at a Seattle area CY once (I don't recall the name right now). I realized it after I passed security at SEA, where I was dropped off by the hotel shuttle. The property mailed me my sunglasses at their cost. I was impressed with that, although I haven't stayed with them since I have rented a car with recent stays. FWIW, this property runs a shuttle for about 3 miles around the property. They don't have free breakfast, but it is a good property for a short stay when you don't want to rent a car (since the hotel shuttle lets you reach a nearby mall that has a movie theatre and multiple restaurants). A B&N is within walking distance.

I cleaned out my purse at a hotel and left a bunch of garbage receipts on the desk when i checked out. The hotel mailed them to me, unrequested... I thought it was funny... Now I put any garbage in the trash can.

Perhaps it was a not so subtle hint...

+1 here with a twist. I am not the morals police nor pretend to know or tell anyone else what is right and wrong. But if YOUR stay at a hotel could potentially cause YOU grief or embarrassment, YOU should take precautions so MARRIOTT and I are not caught in the middle. Again, it seems that a lot of work go into documenting and saving lost property without the proper resolution. Sort of like a pilot flying 5 hours across the USA then refusing to land the plane.

FWIW, I stayed a week at a high-end non-Marriott in downtown Boston about 10 years ago paying $250+ nightly for a closet of a room. I was deep into studying for a pilot's license (as a hobby) at the time and left behind a huge, thick paperback text book with years of notes, highlighting and other notations contained within.

I realized I left it behind by 11 am and still being in town working, called to see if I could pick it up on my way to the airport in the afternoon. I did reach a very sympathetic Director of Housekeeper who investigated but told me the cleaner had already tossed it into the incinerator! She sent me a check for $50 to replace it but damage was far greater...

I once left a ring (a cheap one at that) at the Waikiki Marriott. They called me and asked if they could mail it back to me. My flight got delayed and I was being put up in the Hilton Hawaiian Village and they brought it to me. I sent the manager a nice thank you letter. This was above and beyond.

Another post prompted me to this thought.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marri...fore-stay.html

Its very common to send notices (some times multiple reminders) in advance of an upcoming visit / reservation yet no one is screaming "my privacy is being compromised" in case the stay is "clandestine".

So what is the difference? Why can't the same system be used to discreetly ask if perhaps "something" has been left behind?

Ten years ago, I lost a pilot's flight logbook after a trip to renew my pilot's license. Real important legal stuff and memories that took years to re-create. I ripped my house apart looking for it and assumed it was in a pocket of luggage which my wife threw out shortly afterward, which she vehemently denies. I stayed at this hotel frequently and it never occurred to me then to call and ask if they had found it, before this thread appeared.

In this case, somewhere one has put their email address into the reservation, profile etc. and by doing so accepted the leagalese that allows them to contact via email. probably no one ever reads the terms and conditions, but did allow email communications.

I disagree with you CJ. If I leave something somewhere, I often don't know where I left it (not something I would have done on purpose), and furthermore, there may be some elapsed time before I realize I'm missing the item. It's not possible for me to contact the hotel until I realize the item is missing and figure out I may have left it there. Once I left a phone in my room, but I thought at first it must have been somewhere else, when I called the hotel I was thinking it was a long shot to do so (I thought surely they would have notified me of something that important - or at least asked if I was missing something), fortunately they had indeed found it.

Maybe a safe policy is, if something is found in the room, to notify one by their email on record - after all, as mentioned above, one gets messages about their upcoming stay to the same email.