Valet crashed my car - then charged me $38
 

I stayed at the Franklin Hotel (a Renaissance Hotel) in Philly earlier this month on a free night for 40K points. When checking out, the valet - who is a full time employee of the hotel - informed me that he had accidentally driven the car into a pillar in the parking garage.

He did about $2K of damage to the car. I got a police report and the hotel accepted liability. But they still charged me $38 for valet parking and took all the points.

Beyond reimbursing me for my insurance deductible, what else should I seek in compensation from the hotel or from Marriott? I've spent dozens of hours dealing with police, the body shop, getting a rental car, insurance companies, etc. Plus this will count as a collision on my insurance policy - which will drive up my rates when the policy renews.

Suggestions?

If the hotel accepted financial responsibility, why was an insurance claim filed? If the hotel had paid the body shop, or reimbursed you for your payment to the body shop, then the insurance company would not have known about this and it would not count as a collision on your policy.

It appears you let the hotel off with only reimbursing your deductible. Bad choice IMO.

Your insurance company may be able to go through subrogation. If successful, it should not count against you as an accident.

This is one of those great teaching moments in life. You let empowerment slip out of your hands when you paid the $38. Who would even think of charging that?

If it were me, I'd ask to speak to the MOD. If he or she refused to waive the charge, I'd put my iPhone on record and start my soon-to-be-viral video then and there.

Were you explicitly charged (told you were) or was it automatically coded at check in and nobody thought to adjust?

Regardless, a phone call or a letter to the GM is warranted asking for the $38 removal and your points back for the "ruined" trip is very likely to be granted if asked for nicely. Mention the troubles and your time/effort and added expenses too.

This.

If a police report was obtained showing clear liability to someone other than yourself - such as a hotel with big pockets - your insurance company should absolutely purse subrogation, and probably should have already notified you of such action.

First of all, why would you even report this to your insurance company? If the hotel has accepted liability, you should be dealing with their insurance company directly. Any charges from the body shop or car rentals should be billed directly to them. You should not have to pay a deductible if you are dealing with their insurance company. If the hotel subsequently refuses to fix you car, instructs you where to take the car for repairs, or other shady things, then it is time to get your insurance company involved. Once you report the accident to your insurance company, it still counts as a claim, and while it may not immediately raise your rates because you weren't at fault, it can be used in other decisions such as renewing your policy in the future!

As far as the hotel goes, did you speak with anyone about the $38 charge after learning of the accident and did they refuse to take it off? I would definitely speak to the GM and ask not only for the $38 to be refunded, but also request to have the 40,000 points refunded as well. The damage to your car was the fault of one of their employees, ruined your whole stay, and it will be a pain in the butt for you dealing with everything that comes with it. The least the GM could do is refund the $38 and the points.

Let us know what happens!

Regards,

RIP...

Not reporting any accident to your insurance company prevents you from being protected from liability and you risk discovering down the line that the repair wasn't done properly.

If the accident wasn't your fault then you won't be charged higher premiums. At least in the states I've been insured in.

I would definitely want the hotel to provide a police report or a letter or email stating the damaged was caused by a valet.

Surely they didn't refuse to waive your parking fee when asked? I'd hope they just didn't think to ask the front desk to remove it?

I'd ask for a rental car reimbursement during the repairs if your insurance doesn't cover that.

Regardless of if you're at fault an accident can be used to justify not renewing a policy if the accident exceeded a threshold for dollar loss (currently $1770 in PA). So the advice to work directly with the hotel's insurance company and not make a claim with yours is %100 on target.

--Jon

That is good advice in only 12 states. Your state is one of them.



^

"A car that has never been in a crash may be worth $15,000 at resale but thousands less if it has been in an accident and repaired. There's a way to make up the difference: a diminished value claim."

How to make a diminished value claim

And even in a state where that is technically true, would you prefer to have one claim or zero claims on your record?

Do you really trust that an insurance company won't raise your rates if they want to?

I'm on board with those here who say to go after the hotel directly, make sure they pay for your rental car, make sure you get DV, and do not bother involving your own insurance company unless the hotel doesn't play ball.

Well, it's been three days since OP asked for suggestions yet no further info or acknowledgement.

In fairness people travel, have personal situations at home, etc, etc, where coming back onto FT is not their first thought. I'm willing to give the OP a break. Now, if it's 6 months from now w/ no response, not so much.

* On a dif bulletin board I frequent (not travel related) someone offered some tickets free to a very popular venue & people were posting that they were po'd he didn't get back to them. He did eventually respond back & apologized, but his mother went into intensive care & then died (so obviously checking email and/or the bulletin board was not his top priority).

Cheers.

I would ask for one meeeeeeeelion points.

I would check your policy. Most have a requirement to report any accident. If you do not you are violating the terms of your policy and that can cause issues in the future. There is a police report so the insurance company is going to find out regardless.

And you did the right thing by going through your insurance company. The last thing you need to do is waste more time dealing with their insurance and their lawyers. You pay your premiums so you don't have to mess with that - something happens and your car gets fixed. Your insurance company has an incentive (and the time and lawyers) to go after them to get repaid.

If you have to play games to keep your insurance rates low, it is time to find a new insurance company.

As to the other issues, write to the GM and also Marriott Customer Care.

I believe most insurers follow regulations most of the time. I wouldn't waive the protection provided by my insurer...otherwise why pay for it?

You can easily quote out a policy online with 0 accidents and then with 1 non-fault claim to see if there's a difference.

This.

I find that my local real live human insurance agent is good at handling questions about whether to report a minor accident, what my state's laws say, etc. I've also gotten good advice from some long term service advisors at my dealership and from my local AAA office or even their emergency road service phone agents (which was able to tell me instantly the threshold for reporting accidents to the police in the given state).

You might also be able to find a comprehensible summary of your state's laws on some state consumer protection or insurance website. There might be a phone number for questions of this nature.

Since the hotel accepted responsibility, your insurance company should be going after them, the at-fault party (Marriott) for reimbursement of their cost... ie what they pay your repair shop to get the car fixed. They shouldn't be dinging your rates because of an accident that was not your fault.

At a minimum, I would ask for the 40,000 points spent at the hotel returned, $38 refunded, and covering the damaged vehicle resale difference.

This sounds like the best course of action. :)

Current status is that my insurance company is fighting the claims agency of the hotel. Exactly what you all said would happen. Good news is that the hotel accepted responsibility for the accident in the police report.

In hindsight, your advice to not go to my own agency probably would have been the smartest move. On the other hand, I didn't want to drive a damaged car around for a week or two until it got resolved. But vanity probably wasn't worth the scar on my insurance record.

I did ask the MOD for the valet charge to be removed, but he refused stating that he was a junior weekend manager and couldn't do anything. He gave me the GMs phone number who, naturally, never returned my phone calls.

Time to tweet at them - make it public

I'm not understanding their meaning of the word "manager".

I'm wondering, have you contacted Marriott corporate regarding the incident?

"Either you can remove the charge now, or I'll dispute it with my credit card company and you can explain to your GM why you didn't."

OP, any update?

Technically its a valid charge. Also I would under no circumstances be talking with hotel about refunding the charge or giving points back. OP runs the risk of causing a nightmare if claim has to goto court. Let insurance company handle it, and once done then ask for points back.

As for insurance rates, OP wasn't driving thus even in no-fault states this can't be used to raise rates.

Check out some of the TA reviews of this place, someone had their car broken into while it was valet parked. Several mentions of mice. Can't believe that the GM of this property didn't return your phone call. But this is Philly after all, where service levels are low. Also, can't believe the manager on duty was not empowered to remove charges. You need to get someone at Marriott involved and let them know how you have been treated.

Similar thing happened to me at the Fairfield Inn & Suites Baltimore Downtown/Inner Harbor. Stay was on points.

The hotel didn't own / operate the garage and the valet was not a Marriott employee. Marriott essentially pointed me to the individual in charge of the garage and the garage management company handled everything. The hotel should be covering ALL YOUR DAMAGE ... not your deductible for collision that wasn't your fault.

The Marriott front desk manager was very kind and apologetic, but the Marriott GM was unapologetic. No vouchers or anything were offered, nor did I ask. We'll never stay there again.

As for the young valet that banged up my new van, totaling $6.5k in damage, well my wife had him in tears when pointing out how reckless he was with someone else's property.

You can report it to your insurance company, but tell them you don't want to pursue it through them at the present time because the hotel has accepted responsibility. The insurance company shouldn't hold that against you because they like that, and in any case it doesn't imply you are a worse risk - they are looking for predictive value. It is a lot like the situation with the uninsured motorist coverage - someone hits you, their insurance should cover it, but you report to your insurance just in case there is an issue and you have to use your uninsured motorist coverage.

OP insurance should still handle the claim. It's part of what they're paid for. However OP can refuse to have them pay out the claim and instead let the other insurance payout directly. Never deal with someone else's insurance directly. You are not their client. Their job is to save their client and theirself money. Your insurance is there to assist you, even if you don't let them payout on a claim.

It's the paying out of a claim that causes it to count against you. This assumes, claim can be held against you by law to begin with.

On-topic: If the OP didn't want use what he already paid for AND pay extra for the benefit of his insurance company working with Marriott's company then they should have not filed the claim with his company until he did not receive satisfaction working with Marriott's company.

Best bet which doesn't happen often, cash settlement from Marriott with no claim or none of the OP's info included in the claim(Marriot files direct). Then OP can take the money to the body shop of OP's choice for repairs and claims process and its impacts to deal with.

Background:

Insurance companies can not exclude coverage if OP comes to them later and says "I tried to work it out with them and was not satisfied". Now if you don't know what you are doing or what you should receive for settlement and admit fault or sign something that reduces others liabilities during the process you could limit what your company can do.

As has been said before, Not at-fault claims can and do impact your rates(could be a couple of dollars to hundreds depending a large number of factors) and can be considered for underwriting action by insurance companies which could include non-renewal.

In any state where a "Insurance score" is a part of the calculation of your rates then that score considers all claims listed on your CLUE report. Interesting note from the"how to read the report" is that not all companies report the fault indicator. Regardless, each company can decide how to rate you based on the information in the report and what you tell them on your application so YMMV. Your next rate change could be based on your insurance score moving in the negative direction which in part could be based on claims you consider not your fault.

You can tell if you company uses the "insurance score" by looking at the fine print on your policy or bill(sometimes needs to be the printed copy since it is boiler plate language, possibility on the back of a page and not all companies put images of all parts of the bill online) . It will mention something about using your credit(another part of the "Insurance score" but not all states) and other reports in determining your rates.

If your state doesn't use the insurance score your insurance company most likely relies more heavily on the CLUE report. Which you can get changed if inaccurate and you can even add a statement too if you want. But the statement will not change the automated calculation of your rate, only your company or state regulator can change how your company chooses to rate for Not At-fault claims.

I'm surprised no one mentioned the fact that the hotel may not be owned or run by Marriott. Who the right party is to deal with depends on the hotel, as does the likelihood of "bennies" from Marriott.

The OP should also watch out for "loss of use" fees which his insurance may not cover. He needs to check his policy and perhaps state insurance law.

OP should be careful, especially WRT the advice on this board because state law with regard to auto insurance as well as state (and local) law regarding inn-keepers varies widely.

Finally, a hotel should have a difficult time ducking responsibility for a person acting on their behalf, legally an agent, even if they're not employed by the hotel. Unfortunately, asserting rights like this often involves an attorney, and the damages here may be too small. $6000 in damages like to the van is probably not too small, since your counsel would be negotiating to get his bill payed by the other party. Note too that things like this are almost always settled out of court.

So, when things like this go sour, a letter from your counsel will almost always move the other party to action.

While it may be best to refund as a matter of customer service, they are not legally obligated to do anything.

At the minimum, you have utilized the room and the parking.

I would say the correct way to say this is an insurer can't increase your premium simply because you have a no-fault incident. However, the insurer can still raise your premium for all other reasons (such as increased cost of insurance).

+1 You paid the premium. Let your insurance works for you.

Exceptionally true.

In fact - it is almost certain that the valet is run by another vendor.

Marriott may not be liable as much as you think.

Not accurate for most states. Substitute "may not" for "can't" and it would be accurate.

Laws and other restrictions on how rates are determined are passed at the state level by legislatures and regulators.

If there are no specific laws or restrictions then each company decides how to do it.

Recent article on this

There is a good chance that if the property's insurer is one of the "bigs" that it has contracts with a series of preferred collision repair places in NYC which are often the same across a lot of companies including perhaps OP's.

With a property-only claim on the smallish side, the easiest resolution is to pick one of those repair places presuming that it is decent and you aren't driving anything particularly special. The whole thing is then taken care of by the property's insurance company and many places even arrange for Enterprise or somesuch to drop off a rental (or have an Enterprise agent on site).

No cash changes hands, you have not reported anything and as many folks here point out, it isn't certain that reporting to your carrier won't have adverse consequences. Even if the carrier is violating local law, it can take forever and a lot of your personal time to get it fixed.

As to the $38, as with all things such as this, why not simply ask to have the charge removed on the spot or at least when dealing with the property at the time it accepted responsibility. E.g., "thanks for making this liability issue simple, however I noticed that one of your folks left the parking charge on. Will you handle the $38 refund for me?"