Being Recompensed for your Inconvenience

This week's article....


Being Recompensed for your Inconvenience

Ahhh... Sorry. If I'm paying $50 (or more) a night for a hotel room that's twice the size of a walk-in closet, upwards of $30 on top of that for their special "gifts" they give us now with their "Resort Fees" (things I don't need or want), and now $10 to park my car..... things better be damn near perfect if you want my money. There's way, way, way too many places for me to spend my hard earned dollars elsewhere.

Ray

I have to agree with the article. Life's too short to sweat the cheap stuff. Don't get me wrong, if there are major issues I'll be concerned as anyone should be. But if I walk into my room and find a trash can with a candy bar wrapper in it, I don't expect my stay to be comped or an upgrade to a suite. In over 60+ trips to LV, I've never been assigned a room that was unacceptable. I've seen an open bar of soap in the shower, the trash can I mentioned and burned out bulbs in lamps, but that's about it.

Good Luck!
Ric at Joes

Agree.

I think in years past the hotels more commonly gave a small comp, a meal or buffet or something without even asking if a problem was reported. So like everything else, it came to be expected, and the gaming was on.

Our biggest "recompense" we didn't ask for at all. At Harrah's, the first of three nights some people moved into the next room (maybe two rooms) in the wee hours. They slammed doors time after time, talked loudly to each other from room to room endlessly. We called Security, they came up but the damage was done and we got little sleep after that.

All I wanted was to get a different room away from those jerks for the next two nights. When we went to check-in to ask to be moved, I explained why, very nicely, no venom, no blaming. They called the manager, who came over and had us moved into one of their best Executive Suites. To this day it is the nicest "real" suite we've ever been in. The funny thing was that my husband was saying "I think those other people should have to move instead of us!" I kicked his shin pretty hard to shut him up.

At what point should you be compensated for our troubles? I remember checking in to Caesars in a smoking room and there wasn't an ashtray in the place. I called down to the front desk to ask for ashtrays and they offered to move me to another room. I said my room was fine but could someone drop off a few ashtrays.
A few minutes later they brought them and I later got a phone call apologizing and was offered a breakfast buffet. I stay up all night so it wasn't useful but I liked the gesture.
Another time, in Ballys AC, I was given a room at the old Claridge, which is quite a hike from Ballys check in. Hauled my stuff up to find someone elses stuff in it.
Had to take everything back downstairs, wait on a very short line but it was forty five minutes until I was in my new room. Was I materially hurt by it? No, but I certainly expected them to do something for me.
Casinos push loyalty programs, and try to make us feel special. They promote the sense of entitlement. Its a shame the customer service people are the ones that have to deal with it, but that's why its called work, and not fun.

I had reservations for the Grand Opening night at Palazzo. They called me two weeks before and told me that the opening was delayed and they were moving me to the Venetian. I explained to them how disappointed I was and that I had always wanted to be there at a major opening. They threw in tickets for Blue Man Group. I thanked them for their generosity and then continued to whine. I was transferred to supervisor who comped the stay at Venetian and gave me the show tickets. I could tell the whole conversation from their side was scripted. It's all a game.

I don't think I've ever complained about a room though....not even when my gambling buddy Robin got locked in the bathroom at Plaza and it took an hour for maintenance to come free him.

Thanks for comments.
I knew this was a subject that would elicit many different opinions!

Flamingo a couple years ago we came back to the room at 12:30 at night to find we were locked out of our room. The room was way at the end of the hall so after the long hike down to the front desk then a 15 minute wait to get to talk to someone. We got the rudest clerk who claimed we did not checkout of the room and our reservation was over. Because we stayed past checkout we owed for another night and they needed the room so we needed to pay and get out. I told her we had two days left on our reservation and had paid in advance. She wanted proof and I said it is in the room I could get it if she let me in the room. She demanded I pay and that security was coming to kick us out of the room. This went on for 15 minutes before a second clerk came over and pointed something out on her screen then she asked for the keys so she could reprogram them for the rest of our stay. So by the time we got in our room it was 1:45.
They sent out a survey after our trip and I filled it with the details and we got 3 nights comped which was not that big of a deal because I had other room offers.