Money Moral Dilemma: Should I 'fess up about my hotel payment?

crmism

Are you doubly-sure you didn't pay (a deposit at least) at the time you booked?

If so, then I'd subscribe to the notion of coughing up if the hotel was an independent one, and not part of a large nationwide chain. On balance, the former would be likely to waive a deposit to encourage trade, and ask you to settle your bill on checking out - the latter would probably want something up front and have a decent IT system to handle bookings and ensure people don't vacate their rooms without settling up. They are serial over-chargers anyway.

So, if it was one of a chain of hotels, forget it until and unless they send you a bill. Inefficiency on their part merits a similar kind of attitude on yours.:)

jeallen01

From what I have read "here and there" the shoe is "often on the other foot" with the hotel/car hire company (etc.) taking monies to which it was not, or only "marginally", entitled - and then the process of getting that back can be long and frustrating, and sometimes not even successful.


Therefore I would probably take the same approach as Eric D earlier in this thread - small businesses can more easily make errors but are less capable of absorbing unpaid bills than large global chains which "should know better" and should know what to do to make sure that all the relevant checks are solidly in-place, as bedi25 said earlier.

terill

Agreed. People are so pompous. If you paid online by credit card then it will take a few days to show up. They have told you that there was no money to pay so that's that

Stevie_Palimo

Bedi25 wrote: »

If you just call up and pay it then no lessons are going to be learned. Basic professional service is fading fast in the UK and people run companies like morons. The larger the company, the worse this can be, in my experience. We've lost the ability to communicate properly and when different departments should be talking to each other to make sure the customer gets a smooth experience it often simply does not happen. It's the same here. If the website doesn't take initial payment, then reception staff at the hotel should be properly trained to ensure that they must take payment before customers depart. I mean, how hard can it be?

Businesses learn lessons the hard way and losing money is probably one of the best. Hotels make a killing out of every booking they take anyway - and that's before you add on extra like drinks and food so I wouldn't lose any sleep over it whatsoever.

What a load of old tosh !!!!!!!!!!!

One simply cannot say that UK business is going to pot and being a large firm is worse still, Also as for non payment if reception staff see the system showing paid which would have been the most likely scenario here then little can be done to think otherwise.

Hotels are making a killing are they have you seen all the bookwork from every hotel ? , Nope thought not so while some will be lucrative others will be doing okay.

This as stated is not a money moral dilemma at all and these posts are so ludicrous now it beggars belief that a person would get in touch and ask such stupid things.

gaving7095

Really there is no moral dilemma, as others have said.
Personally I would assume that, as you've already given payment details, the payment will be collected at some point.
To hopefully prevent a nasty, unexpected surprise you should contact whoever should be collecting payment & let them know / ask them.

bods

Ring up, talk to someone, explain, see what they say when you speak to them.

If they still say there's nothing to pay, that's fine. You tried.

fudge7000

I stayed in a hotel a couple of years ago and had paid in advance, went to check out and pay (we'd eaten in the restaurant, dinner and wine), and they said there was no bill. I tried to explain that we'd eaten and needed to pay for that, but just got blank looks and "there's nothing on this account to pay", so we gave up and left! Assumed someone would notice eventually and take it off the credit card but they never did.

I'd probably not say anything, they'll more than likely send you a bill at some point...

sideways-sid

First Reply:
"I don't really see the dilemma here. Morally you're bound to pay. You used a service which you should pay for"

^^^^ This.

Also, if you found out that you had paid twice (i.e. in advance AND at the hotel) by mistake, you would rightly expect the hotelier to refund you to pay what was correctly due. Pay up!

novelty-socks

Bedi25 wrote: »

If you just call up and pay it then no lessons are going to be learned. Basic professional service is fading fast in the UK and people run companies like morons.

You heard it here first folks … there's no such thing as a business making an odd mistake. It's all down to the 'morons' in charge of companies these days.

(Have you ever tried running a hotel or hospitality business, by the way?)

thorne101

This happened to us. We booked a hotel in France via booking.com
When we arrived we asked if we needed to pay, they said it'd been paid already (it hadnt), We asked again on check out and got the same response.
5 days later, the amount was taken from our account.

I think sometimes there's just a delay