I was seriously ripped off by the Hilton Sandestin in Florida. I had reserved a premium room, requesting king & non-smoking. We arrived at the hotel at the specified check-in time (4pm). The check-in agent told us he had a great upgrade for us. While I certainly wasn't expecting that, I thought it was a nice touch given it was our 10th wedding anniversary.

We head to our room and when we arrive on our floor immediately notice the smell of smoke. That was the first strike. We got to the room and noticed not only was it not a "great upgrade", it was a downgrade. Strike two.

I phone the front desk and am told that they had no record of our request for a non-smoking room. They say the only room they can move us to is also smoking.

By this time my husband is noticing everything wrong with the room. Aside from the fact that the people in the room are smoking like chimneys (and their fumes are seeping in through the connecting door), the paint is peeling throughout our room. It was a real nose/eyesore.

I call Hhonors customer service and they read my reservation back to me (it had everything I specified). They promise to investigate and get back to me.

I get a call back telling me the best the hotel can do is move me to my reserved room type the next morning. I would also receive a written response from the hotel management within a week, explaining & remedying the situation.

Here's the third strike and the real punch in the gut: The next morning we get up early and call to see when our room will be ready. "It's ready now!" It was 7am. I call housekeeping and discover housekeeping doesn't start cleaning rooms until after 9am. Our reserved room had been sitting waiting for us all night. When we got into it, the lights were still on from the night before, as the staff had set it to greet the new guest. Presumably the front desk folks were hoping to sell that room to someone else, but that fell through and the room sat empty while we suffered in our crappy room.

I was so livid that it was actually easy to get the hotel manager to waive the first night's charge. While the rest of our stay was adequate, the whole experience really tarnished our 10th wedding anniversary.

Oh guess what, that letter from the hotel management never showed up.

I worked various retail jobs as a kid and quickly learned the trick to doing this in your head is to move the money over. i.e. in the example above, I'd move the $0.02 from the customer to the register, so $13.75 from $14 is obviously a quarter back in change. *shrug* Most people try and do the arithmetic in their head, but it's much easier if you "simplify" things a bit by applying a partial payment to the balance first.

I'm still surprised more people don't know how to count back change. What do they do when the power goes out or their register crashes? :-)

In France, they already do!