Hotel charged debit card without authorisation

APV1

I've started a new thread (by copying what I wrote above). Hope it helps...

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1555175

Blue264

DebsDD wrote: »

Thanks a lot, I realise why hotels do it but thought they had to tell you in advance. I didn't put my pin number in. My company had probably over 100 rooms at the hotel and these were all pre-paid weeks ago. When we cancelled a room several weeks ago we were told we couldn't have a refund on the room.

For this very reason, I always pay cash. This does mean that I can't use the phone in the room and the minibar is locked, but who really needs that?

Only the person authorised to make the group booking for you company in the first place would have known the full terms and conditions of the group booking and these terms can vary wildly between different hotels and hotel chains.
What I have noticed lately (and I guess this is due the credit crunch) is that major chains are imposing longer cancellation policies on group bookings.
Most hotels class 10 or more rooms as a group booking and it then becomes subject to contract and the refund level of cancellations is usually staggered depending on when cancellations are made, e.g. within 28days of arrival, 50% of the room total will be charged, etc...

Just as an example, I made a group booking the other day for a major, Worldwide hotel chain and they imposed a cancellation policy of 3 months but would allow 1 room to be cancelled up until 72hours prior to arrival without charge. This time last year that policy would have been 28 days with 3 rooms allowed to be cancelled without charge.

APV1

I'm sorry to say but this is absolutely true.

We are having to extend out Cancellation Policies for group bookings (and we count 10 or more rooms as a group). Depending on the size of the booking and the nature of the event, there is a sliding scale and, as with most things, you can always negotiate...