Unfiltered Story #142201

(I work at a hotel were recently if a reservation is made online for same day check in, the online site won’t take a card to guarantee it since we have a 24 hour cancelation policy. This protects the guests from getting charged since obviously they’re outside the time frame to cancel without charge.)

I had a reservation come in after my shift started and it came in as a 4pm hold. A couple came in, stated the name (our only reservation at that time) and per procedure, asked for ID and form of payment. 

The woman told me that they paid online already. I explained that we don’t charge online and even if they guaranteed it with a card online, we’d still have to see the card at check in to match to their ID to make sure it’s a vaild transaction and the account is in their name, otherwise we have to consider it as fraud. (This is highly important as our card terminals will record if a transaction that has been processed was with a card that was swiped or if the numbers were just typed in. If a card isn’t swiped it can give the card holder room to argue that they weren’t there and the transaction was fraudulant.) 

After arguing about it for a few minutes I finally got them to give me a card. [And it was a major card company that you can load money onto or just link it to a bank account.] I went about explaining that that card is considered prepaid so we’d have to take a cash deposit to secure the room for incidentals which is returned at check out depending on the conditions of the room when they leave. 

The couple went about screaming that it’s not prepaid and they have it linked to a bank account so it will always process.  I tried explaining that they could unlink it at anytime and if no money was preloaded then the hotel would lose out on funds if anything happened to the room. They continued to argue about it for about five more minutes, stating that even with a bank account or credit card that if they only have so much available then it won’t process. I informed them that the majority of the time that those institutions usually cover funds past what’s available so it’s not really necesarry for a deposit. They didn’t understand and continued to argue.

I finally just said, regardless of what makes sense to them, it’s hotel policy and if they didn’t pay the deposit, they wouldn’t be staying here. So the girl keeps arguing but the guy whose name is on the reservation handed over the cash deposit. Then the card declined. She proceeded to scream at me that it declined because they already paid online and that was all the funds they have and that they only loaded enough on the card to pay for the room. And that it’s ridiculous that they have to pay a deposit because the card is linked to a bank account so it won’t decline. I informed them again that their reservation wasn’t even made with a card to guarantee it, we don’t charge online for legal reasons, and take the deposit for such situations like this.

So they started looking at his transactions on his phone to try and prove that they already paid. Then, without showing me the transaction logs, said “See, right there, there’s a charge for $102! It’s already paid for!” Meanwhile, I’ve already told them plenty of times that the room was only $70, so I asked them if it said it was from the [major chain hotel] and to show me that it was actually charged, they re-looked at it, huffed, then ran out the door….