Really Bad Hotel - Can My Credit Card Company Help Me

oyners

Hi
This is my first post so please excuse any mistakes.

I have just stayed in a hotel in Dubai where i was treated horribly!!! I had to pay the bill as they had our passports and refused to give them back untill i signed.

Is there anything i can do now maybe through my credit card company which is Barclaycard which is how i paid?

Thank you for any comments that coupld help.

rightz

My initial reaction says you have no chance but you never know! how long did you stay at the hotel - you can't really complain if it was all week.

Give barclay card a ring. always a chance.

Fortyfoot

Make your views known HERE

Write to the embassy or Sunday papers, get some revenge! What was the name of the hotel, who did you book it through?

Fortyfoot

oyners

Thanks so much for your views, we stayed for two nights and hardly slept at all in that time - I complained a lot but the manager couldn't careless - I'm 19 and I think he just didn't take me seriously at all - if I had been a 40-50 year old man in a suit there is no chance he would have spoken to us or treated us the way he did.

We were woken up 5 times during the first night by wake up calls from the front desk that were meant for other rooms but kept coming to ours.

On the second night we were woken my Russian hookers entertaining and cleaners who started hoovering at 4:30 in the morning - I honestly thought it was a joke - some kind of TV wind up thing.

Then when we came to leave I refused to pay the full bill asking for some kind of reduction in a very polite way, I was treated with hostility and told bluntly "you will pay or you won't get your passports back" they continued by suggesting it was my fault and that I hadn't told them I was in that room so they didn't know to not clean the rooms around mine - THEY GAVE ME THE KEY for the room I didn't choose it they issued the room they knew I was in it - worse place I have ever stayed.

I may only be 19 but I work very hard and saved well and have been luck enough to travel around the world and stayed in countless hotels, guest houses, youth hostels, camps - you name it - but I have never been treated like this before!!

Thank you - my rant is over, I just wish there was something I could do about it - why are hotels so different, you agree a price before you have had the service and when the service is not up to the level it should be there is nothing you can do (especially if they have your passport) unless they are nice people and willing to admit they were in the wrong - which I have found does not happen that often with huge money grabbing companies.

By the way all who read this it was the ADMIRAL PLAZA HOTEL in Dubai - don't stay there ever!!


And if anyone has any suggestions on how I can warn as many people as poss and hit the hotels bottom line please feel free to reply and tell me or anyways of getting my money back.

Thank you.

oyners

P.s. we booked the hotel through https://www.booking.com I will look into their complaints as well.

SwissLe

I do not think your credit card company will help you.

If you look at it from the outside - you booked the hotel, it was up to you to do research on the property if you were looking for a particular standard. A quick look on TripAdvisor shows reviews with all the points you have brought up. This is clearly one of the budget hotels in Dubai, I think it would be unreasonable to head there with aspirations of the marketed arab luxury.

The Bur Dubai area is known for the prostitutes, some people even stay in the area just for that reason.

The hotel provided you with a room, in the area you requested, for the length of time you requested - that is all the credit card company will see.

Fen1

Having had a bad experience ourselves - the hotel was fine, but they somehow managed to lose my husband's passport overnight - I always hand in one set of the photocopies of our passports. I then keep the passports in the room safe, and extra photocopies of passports, visas, insurance docs etc in my luggage and handbag.

I would definitely do the above suggestions: write to newspapers, their embassy, their tourist board, plant your story on every website you can find. Also, try finding out who actually owns the hotel and write to them - the manager may well have been a different person. I would also state that what you experienced was extortion.

oyners

Hi

Thank you for all your feedback, I will use photocopies in the future and make sure i read up on more reviews before I book, I will also look into who owns the hotel and writing to them asap and slating the hotel on every possible website and newspaper i can think of.

Thank you again

budgetflyer

How much was it ? In FEB its under £70 per night for a double which puts it in the "budget" class for Dubai really, compared to over £210 starting price along Jumeirah beach, so I wouldn't let it take up too much time - its done now, disappointing as it was, life is too short to let these things eat away.
Post a couple of bad reviews on trip advisor, holidays uncovered, Holiday Truths etc.then forget it.
The good news is, you have learned from it, you are 19, this experience puts you ahead of the pack of most 19 yr olds.
Your research next time will ensure most of your future holidays are more successful although sometimes even then they can go wrong.
A few years back we paid £250 per night for the Sheraton Jumeirah, for a "balcony sea view" our first night was in a "non balcony land view"- not a happy chappy, was I .
Dubai has ave 95% occupancy year round and I think sometimes in all but the very best hotels,they dont quite always live up to their stars.

rainee

Also to vent your feelings put a report on tripadvisor.com which covers everywhere in the world