davie355

My hotel room clock just went back 1 hour. It is a Sony brand "Dream Machine" with "Auto Time Set"; I have never touched it. I actually had to google the local time to make sure the problem was the clock and not my brain -- it's the middle of the night and I just happened to wake up, somewhat in a daze.

How could this possibly have happened?! Daylight Saving has never been in June.

I have read some horror stories on FT from people who failed to receive wake up calls. A commonly proposed solution is to set the alarm. Make sure it's not the hotel clock's alarm. ^

chris19992

I never trust hotel alarms, I request a wakeup call and I also set alarms on my phone and tablet because I don't fully trust them to remember to call either.

Tchiowa

Alarm on the phone for me. Power can go out. Some hotels wake up calls aren't automated.

For some reason, where I'm staying right now the maid resets the clock several times a week. She ranges 30 minutes off, either direction.

hco

Have two systems. One time I relied only on mobile phone alarm. Woke up from my colleagues banging on the door and shouting that it is time to go to the client.

Phone had crashed/hanged during the night.

Aventine

Hotel wake-up is pretty much fail safe too.

Gamecock

I have had my phone crash a time or two as well.

If it is really important I use the phone, the tablet AND a wake-up call.

adventuroustraveller

I do all of the above plus a good old-fashioned travel alarm clock.
Problem is I keep knocking the alarm clock to the floor. I reckon it's gonna conk out one day. Murphy's law dictates that this will happen on the morning I have a 4am start after checking in at 1am on an occasion where power cuts mean my phone didn't charge overnight so the phone alarm didn't go off as well.
Any suggestions, apart from carrying 2 travel alarm clocks?

WillCAD

Well, in situations where every conceivable alarm device all fail at once, you could use some sort of mental discipline to will yourself awake at the proper time.

A wise man once said, "The trained mind does not need a watch. Watches are a confidence trick invented by the Swiss."

Personally, I use phone, travel alarm, and hotel alarm clock when I need triple redundancy. Strangely, when things are that important, my undisciplined mind generally seems to wake me thirty minutes before the alarm.

AllanJ

Nothing is completely foolproof but two clocks comes mightily close. After you set them both, if they should become different then you know that something is wrong.

Recently went through a drawer full of random possessions and found a few old wind up travel alarm clocks. Was going to give them to charity but this thread is a heads up to keep them (after verifying that they still keep time).

Some 15 years ago, Walt Disney World made a bad buy of (took the bottommost bid for?) a big batch of bargain? brand alarm clocks for its All Star resort hotels. Reach for the snooze alarm button and accidently hit the hour button right next to it and the time changes. Now the clock won't sound off again anywhere near when it should.

When things are that important, my undisciplined mind usually wakes me two to three hours before the alarm. I could well decide to really get up that early and, perhaps, "waste" some time on Flyertalk or social media or other web sites but then might doze off during the afternoon business meeting from lack of sleep the preceding night.

"maid resets the clock"

I would complain about it, at least the first complaint worded to be about the clock itself and including a request for an on the spot replacement.

adventuroustraveller

Thanks will.
My tastes in travel lead me to venture to areas where hotels don't provide alarm clocks (or hot water, or sometimes, any water at all....) or wakeup calls (i wouldn't necessarily be able to communicate with the staff anyway. I can just about check in with a passport and USD). These types of areas are also susceptible to power cuts, which I why I don't rely on chargeable devices. I might really take 2 alarm clocks with me next time.

Yeah, part of the reason I struggle to wake up is I can't sleep the night before stress in about missing my early morning ride!

east_of_the_sun

So far I’ve been able to “ will myself” to wake up at whatever time I need to wake up, BUT I want a wake-up call as back-up when staying in a hotel and so does my husband.
I don’t think we’ve ever set the alarm on a hotel clock.

At home when we need to be awake at a particularly early time we depend on my “ will to wake” backed up by the alarm on a clock-radio that’s been reliable...to date.

Years ago we owned two digital clock- radios that had a a factory set “Smart” feature which would automatically spring forward or fall back on Daylight Saving Time’s start/ end dates.
They were great clocks with nice sized numbers and duel alarms. One clock lived in the master bedroom and the other was in a guestroom.

The clocks worked like champs; automatically adjusting the time in the appropriate direction and on the appropriate Sunday twice a year. Then the US extended DST by several weeks and our two clocks’ “Smart” factory settings weren’t in sync with the new DST dates.
After the DST extension occurred we had to manually adjust the clocks twice a year. OK, no big deal, or so we thought.

The clocks continued to work like champs for a couple more years until they began to reset themselves by one hour backwards... at whim.
This would happen on random days in random months . The two clocks didn’t even consult each other as to when they would reset backwards by an hour...they acted as independent rogues.


Our latest clock-radio doesn’t have a “Smart” DST feature and the old clock-radios have long since gone to where ever it is that rogue clocks go.

adventuroustraveller

My phone and computer also do the 'jump time zone ' thing.
Sometimes the location updates automatically and the Time zone jumps correspondingly. I wouldn't mind if the devices got the time right but...
Hence why my travel alarm clock is analogue.

Flaneurs

Phone, tablet, wake up call and if I can figure out how to set and use the in-room clock, I use it also. I must be more undisciplined than most.

violist

You're young. There will come a day when your internal clock no
longer reliably adjusts for time zones, daylight savings, and so on.
This will probably happen at the most inconvenient, unpredictable
moment. I'd suggest being prepared for that day with multiple
backups, even if you probably won't need them for years.

By the way, I've had abysmal luck with hotel clocks and both
manual and automated wake-up calls. Bring your own clock,
it's only a couple of ounces.

JDiver

IME, that seems a bit of age stereotyping; that's not really how it works.

But even for those who pretty much "auto-wake", it's always a good idea to have one's own backup. Mine has an alarm and temperature readings, and packs into a small package.