Honeymoon Travel Troubles

[foppa21 0]

For the rest of the married guys out there, I was wondering if you have any stories similar to mine about your honeymoon.

I booked a travel package through Orbitz back in June for a flight to Jamaica and seven nights stay in one of the Sandals Resorts on the island. Two days before our flight, I checked online to see what seats we had, and found that on the Atlanta to Jamaica flight, I had a seat, but my wife didn't. I proceed to call Delta and Orbitz, and get the run-around from both. Delta tells me that there is still a block of seats open, but that the seats are currently blocked out to the airport and we'll have to wait till we get to the departure gate to get my wife a seat. After hours spent dicking around with various supervisors, my parents stepped in and just got us both upgraded to first class in seats next to each other.

Come to find out later that the flight was overbooked by ten people and we would have had no guarentee Amy would have been assigned a seat if we hadn't upgraded. Furthermore, the best we can figure from everything, Orbitz majorly f'ed up and canceled Amy's seat on that flight to give it to someone else. I will NEVER book a trip through their company again.

So Wednesday afternoon, the 26th, we get to our resort and check out our room and find everything to our satisfaction. Later that evening we find out the toilet won't flush. I call the front desk and they say they send someone...nobody comes. Thursday morning I call again and they send someone promptly. Guy plunges the toilet, declares it fixed, and leaves. We don't use that toilet again until Friday, at which point it doesn't flush again. I call again, Mr. Plumber from Thursday comes back with his plunger, plunges a bit, declares it fixed, and leaves. We next use the toilet Saturday afternoon, at which point it doesn't flush, yet again. Anyone seeing a pattern here? I go to the front desk, tell them of the problem, and they tell me they'll send the plumber and ask me to wait back in the room for him.

Three hours later the plumber still hasn't come and I march back up to the front desk and repeat our litany of problems with the toilet, tell them we've been waiting and ask if someone can come. They tell me they will try and "locate" the plumber. The guest services manager happened to be there, and said that what was happening to us wasn't acceptable and left a message for the night manager that we needed to be moved to a different room. The night manager meets with us a little later and proceeds to tell us everything he can't do. The resort is full, yada yada. He says the problem is actually with a pump further back towards the septic tank, and that it'll be fixed in the morning.

Sunday at 12:30, the toilet still isn't flushing and I go back to the front desk to ask what the progress is. Finally, after my fifth time of speaking with the front desk and management, they agree to move us. We pack our bags and leave them outside the room for the bellman and vacate the room. Finally, after 5+ hours without a room, they give us the all clear to go into our new room. Thankfully the toilet flushes.

Tuesday afternoon Amy and I meet with the guest services guy and tell him that we don't believe we should be charged the full rate for the those four nights we were without a working toilet and ask what they can do for us. Mr. Guest Services says he could definitely offer us a reimbursement package but would just have to get the green light from Mr. General Manager, and asked us to meet with him again in the morning at 9:30 before our 10:30 shuttle that we had to make to get to the airport for our flight back to the states.

At 10:20, after waiting 50 minutes and having the desk call him twice, Mr. Guest Services emerges from his morning meeting to talk to us. I, like a dumbass, and ever cognizant of clock, was only able to haggle for a minute or two and then accepted a lowball compensation offer two minutes before the shuttle was to leave.

Remarkably, even through all that crap, my wife and I still had a great honeymoon. As I look back, however, I still can't help but think that I got bent over the kitchen table by Orbitz and Sandals based on the amount of money I put down on this trip. Anybody else have any stories?

[hellkitty 0]

I've gone through Orbitz a bunch of times for flights and i never had a problem. I never got a vacation package though. Just write a review on the site and let people know what you thought of the trip.

[Fire0nIce228 1]

I'm an assistant manager at a hotel (just a Red Roof Inn) in a moderate sized kinda tourist town near the beach. Heres what I would do.

Definitely contact Sandals, or the specific name of your hotel, however its setup. Either phone in, or since it is in Jamaica get online. Most hotels have a feedback thing on the website. For our brand, it automatically sends an e-mail to the GM with the comments and ratings etc. left by the guest. GM has the discretion to offer refunds/free nights stays etc. I am inclined to say give poor or moderate ratings for everything and really show how unhappy you are, but you may be able to rate certain aspects individually and you could rate everything for the room itself below expectations but still give good ratings to other things.

My GM and sometimes myself are more inclined to give partial refunds,free nights, etc. to guests that are cordial and civil with their comments. It is less likely you will get a refund if you vow to never stay at that brand again or are belligerent, because they won't want to try to please someone who will not be a return customer or will tell others not to show. And if you are rude and nasty, they won't want you back on their property anyways, which it doesn't seem you are which is good.

I would describe the problem with the toilet, how you wasted hours of your vacation waiting for plumbers, managers, etc. and how you don't feel the compensation he provided was adequate but you didn't have time to discuss the matter further.

Do not let them bullshit you into saying that since you've left the property they can't provide any more refund to your credit card or anything like that, because they certainly can, and from the sounds of things, should. Also, if you had a really high rate, as opposed to a low rate you may have found with Orbitz, that will determine how much they will refund you. For example, in the winter when our rates are extremely low, we only offer 5-10 dollars back for minor problems, whereas in the summer when our rate is twice as high, problems like toilets or lights etc. get 15-20-30 dollars back depending on how adamant the guest is about the problem.

I hope you get at the least some more dough back. Spend it on your new wife :)

Oh, and as far as the flight goes. I would contact Delta in the same manner, they may offer points towards flight miles or money back etc. Chadd has airline experience, so I'm sure he can chime in here and help more with how flights / Orbitz works for the airlines.

[Chadd 916]

Oh, and as far as the flight goes. I would contact Delta in the same manner, they may offer points towards flight miles or money back etc. Chadd has airline experience, so I'm sure he can chime in here and help more with how flights / Orbitz works for the airlines.

Always book via an airline website. It eliminates the number of loopholes and places where they can pass the buck. It's always worth a call though, might as well give it a shot.

[foppa21 0]

Fire- Does it sound like a BS line for them to say that they can't refund money onto your credit card because their accounting system doesn't work that way? I was told that and given the option of a voucher for two nights free stay or credit applied to our room charges.

[Fire0nIce228 1]

I would assume that if the shitty ole Red Roof Inn can do it, a big fancy resort could do it. Can you explain to me a little more what they said about credit applied to room charges? The way our system works, we apply negative room charges to your account, then do a negative pay, which is in effect, putting money back onto your card.

If you REALLY want to throw a wrench into things, or if they won't budge at all, contact your credit card company and file a fraudulent charge onto your account. The card company sends them something that they have to reply to within 10 days. It might not succeed in them giving you money back, and thats not really how the fraud service is supposed to be used, but people try and do it all the time to our hotel, and I'm sure its the same everywhere (for no show charges, unhappy with room, etc.). At the least, it will land on the managers (or someone higher up than a front desk clerk) desk and he'll start to remember your name so you can call or write again, however your pursuing it.

But yes, it does sound like BS. If Red Roof Inn, at 49.99 a night can do it, wal mart can do it, I've had a gas station put money back on my card for being over charged, then their hotel should be able to do it as well.

What you can do, which is may sound weird but is how I do it for people, but tell him to set you up a reservation, check you into the hotel using the same CC as payment, post the credit to your account, and then immediately check you back out without posting room charges for the 'ghost' stay he just set up. Takes about 10 minutes for me to do credits at my hotel, its not a hard process at all 99 outta 100 times.

See, the way most hotels work is, they swipe your card but it just puts an authorization hold onto your account. Nothing is physically taken from your account until you check out, IE, you always have the option to switch payment type at checkout.

At my hotel, room charges are posted each night when they run the night audit. So, in theory when you first check in, nothing is posted to your account until they run the audit the first night, then 1 night is posted, second night, the second charges are posted, etc. etc. So, if it was my hotel, I'd check you in using your CC, which would put a hold on it. But then I'd be able to work with your card and post a credit to your account (negative room charges) and then check you out, which would credit your account. No charges aside from the negative ones I create would be on your account, so no more money would be withdrawn, only credited to you.

Keep asking if you need to. But to sum it up, they should be able to. I smell shit.

[Chadd 916]

Fire- Does it sound like a BS line for them to say that they can't refund money onto your credit card because their accounting system doesn't work that way? I was told that and given the option of a voucher for two nights free stay or credit applied to our room charges.

Give them a choice:

They can credit your card or you can dispute the entire purchase via the credit card company.

[foppa21 0]

Basically, anything we did at cost, i.e., my wife's afternoon at the resort's spa, pay-per-view movies, gift shop purchases, a photo package from the resort photographers, and different island tours with affiliated companies were charged to our room. At the end, the guy we dealt with came up with a figure and just credited that amount to our room charges, so that when we settled the bill, I paid the room charges minus the set amount he credited to us.

[Fire0nIce228 1]

Okay. Even though he did that, if you feel thats not enough, he can go back in and credit more. I know my hotel does it by posting negative charges to the account and the computer does its thing and you get money back into your account.

They can credit more if they choose to. I know they can. Every place with credit card capabilities has the ability to debit or credit the account. They pretty much have to I would imagine. The question is will they do it. Thats up to you and the manager or whomever is in charge of that stuff and your correspondence with eachother.

Obviously, he's not going to give you money back for things like the movies and spa, so what you need to try and do is figure out how much you spent just on the room itself per night, and then decide if the amount he gave you back was sufficient to you regarding your room itself. If you spent 2 grand total, but only 1000 of it was for your actual room, then determine if he gave you enough back on the room itself. If you only spent 1000 on the room, and he gave you 100 back for a leaky toilet and having to wait around for the plumber or a manager, I'd say that is reasonable as a credit. Our hotel has 118 rooms, and one maintenance man, so it does take awhile for them to get down the list to your room when it comes time to repair anything.

[fatwabbit 93]

dont go on a honeymoon. Been married 5 years, and still havent gone for ours yet! been telling her that this posting overseas has been a 2 years honeymoon, cant beat that!!! haha...

we've gone to many places last year though for holiday, although the kid did come along. We're going to do the same this year.

back to your story, I would have don all the bookings myself. The only time I use the travel agent is for work, if anything f's up, I can get upgrades with my corp credit card. Usually when its for the family, I do the bookings online, even for the hotels. The wife has the final say for the hotels though, as she's the fussy one.