Real life MMD: Do I punish the cleaner?

poet123

In my experience many people leave stuff around a hotel room in bags, gifts, paperwork, tickets, etc, I know I do, and I have never had anything binned. So, I am afraid I would be suspicious straight away. I think that in hotel room you should be able to leave out anything and expect it still to be there when you return.

In practice we always put money, cards, tickets, and passports in the safe, but I often leave jewellry ( rarely expensive though, as I use mainly costume jewellry on holiday) on the dressing table and of course, make up etc.

I will easily have £200 in my toiletries bag, the actual bag is a Mulberry one and was a gift for a big birthday. It is also quite usual for me to put that bag in another to hold any overspill and additional items such as straighteners, travel hairdryer etc etc. So I would be livid if this had happened to me. I would go by gut feeling, speak to the maid and ask her to explain what she did and why, but of course the Manager should not have involved the customer in his internal staff management, it is emotional blackmail.

If I felt it had been a genuine mistake, I would ask for partial reimbursement, if I was not convinced I would expect a full refund. However, I would be contacting the HO if it was a chain hotel and making my feelings on how the matter was handled very clear. I would also leave reviews on everY available site about the way the Manager behaved.

MrsE_2

snugglepet20 wrote: »

£200 sounds a lot for toiletries but if you think about it most of us women probably have at least that much and then some if you include make up i.e

Foundation £12 - my cheapest is about this, they go up to about £25
Concealer £6 about right & under eye brightner the same again.
Powder £10 Laura Mercier - about £25
Blusher £6 Laura Geller - about £15
Eye liner £6 about right
Eyeshadows £12 about right
Mascara £8 about £15
Lip liner £5 Don't have
Lipstick £8 about right
Gloss £5 Juicy tubes about £14
Lip Balm £3 don't have
Make up brushes £20 Not far of £20 EACH the bigger ones
Eyelash curlers £5 Shu Uemera expensive about £15
Hairbrush £3 Denman, about £8
Hair products £10 For me this would only be about £6
Face cream £15 about right
Eye cream £10 (no but cleanser oil, toner & hot cloth cleanser about £40)
Sun creams £20 easily & after sun & bio oil another £20
Perfume £40 Channel:D
Shower gel, Shampoo and body lotion £9 I've done that in hair & sun care, so just shower gel & deodorant about £5

Total £200

I only have high street stuff like Rimmel and Body Shop but if you had expensive brands it could be up to a thousand pounds!

Easy to get £200 & the rest in your toiletries & cosmetics:cool:

meher

Why has the hotel told the op that it comes off the employee wages is beyond me. The moment it's been reported and loss accounted for, the cleaner's job prospects and salary has been affected and so the guilt factor played up here actually has no relevance anymore. I'm not saying it shouldn't have been reported but it's only to be expected that once you report, the outcome is not going to be favorable to the cleaner in any sense. I can see that a toiletry bag can be expensive but not so important as it costing a cleaners meger wages or job in my eyes. I'd have accepted the cleaners explanation in good faith and settled with the hotel with a feedback about possibly poor training for their employees. I like the idea of giving opportunity for change and prefer to leave the unkind act of making others pay, rest with others :D If they are dishonest, they would pay at some point anyway. If I can afford £200 worth toiletry bag then I should be able to handle the loss gracefully and not at the expense of another person's job prospects or poor wages.

MothballsWallet

I wouldn't trust anything said by Turkish hotel management - after all, remember the last major earthquake they had in a tourist resort that brought the building down? The investigation showed that it was substandard because the builders bribed the local building inspector to sign off on it when it wasn't up to code.

If that's just one hotel that we know about from the news, imagine how many there are that we don't know about.

The manager could be in on this - let's hope this is a fairly well-known hotel chain and one letter to the right place will have them sorted out.

tryfive

scotsbob wrote: »

£200 is a night out for me, but a month of wages for the girl.

Everyone makes mistakes, I'd forget all about it.

200 quid for a night out?!

If you can afford that, why are you bothering to look at this WWW site!

Wish I had enough cash to fling around like that!

tallgirld

Yeahhhhh take it out her wages!!!

Actually take half if you feel a bit bad about it. I def think you should get something though. My attitude is it wasn't in the bin so why was it thrown away?

The cleaner is probably walking around town wearing your nice clinique foundation and your lip gloss!!! :-)

tryfive

Katie-Kat-Kins wrote: »

I'm really struggling to believe that so many people have toiletry bags that only contain £20 worth of stuff. Seriously add up the costs of all of the stuff you might take (and lots of people take their usual stuff and don't buy separate small holiday size versions) I bet it comes to much more even if you don't buy expensive brands

Shampoo
Conditioner
Shower gel
Soap
Cleanser
Toner
Eye Cream
Day Cream
Night cream
Sun cream
Aftersun
perfume
toothbrush (possibly electric)
Toothpaste
facial wipes
foundation
powder
concealer
eyeshadow
eyeliner
mascara
lipstick (most likely at least two)
Hair serum/mousse/or whatever
Lip balm

Wait! You forgot to include the suitcase for all of the above!

(Yeah, you guessed it; I'm a bloke )

tryfive

MSE_Penelope wrote: »

They said they'd reimburse me but take the cost out her girl's wages. I don't want to pay to replace the toiletries, but feel guilty she'll lose a massive amount of her wages.

PURSUE THE COMPLAINT.

Your complaint is with the HOTEL - not the staff it employs.

This is literally an attempt at emotional blackmail - you're being asked to take responsibility for the hotels actions in taking money out of the girl's wages.

This is NOT your responsibility.

After the hotel compensates you, it is the hotels decision to try to take the money off the girl - NOT YOURS.

charlies-aunt

I would bite the bullet and take the loss. Whether she has accidently disposed of your stuff or stolen it - guess you'll never knowfor sure.

Life is too short to get hung up on stuff like this - forgive her & forget about it.

da2321

Of course you take the refund. At the end of the day they should take more care in their work and if you caused £200 of damage at the hotel they would want their money.
Also when I am away I always reward the low paid workers for their work. If they put in the effort I will pay them generously, if they just do the minimum they get nothing from me. This is clearly another example of the foreign workforce not caring as they should.
If it happended in the UK I doubt that anyone wouldn't complain. It's a simple question of standards, if we expect it in the UK we should expect it anywhere, regardless of the country we are in and their economy. Our money is good enough to take, so our standards are good enough to work towards.