I visited a client in Irvine, CA last week and stayed at the Quality Suites John Wayne Airport, an establishment I’ve used on several previous occasions. I like this place because it’s modestly priced yet has plenty of room to spread out when I’m working for several days. Evidently lots of road warriors feel this way, judging from the number of single guys in the breakfast room at 6 am.
When I checked out I half-heard someone else complaining about an illegitimate charge on their bill. I couldn’t get my own bill because the printer was broken and they promised to email it to me. When I received the email I saw my own illegitimate charge, a daily fee for a safe I didn’t know was in the room.
I emailed the general manager (who had sent me the invoice) asking for a correction. Nearly a week later I’ve heard nothing. After a few days I went on the website of the parent organization, Choice Hotels International, and filled out a tedious form asking for help. Though they say “we appreciate that you took the time to bring these matters to our attention” and promise a response within 72 hours, nothing from them either.
Isn’t this a great example of terrible customer service? There’s no excuse for the invoice trickery to begin with, but if it was unintentional the management should have corrected it and apologized immediately. And I’m now seeing that there is nobody behind the curtain at Choice International, a somewhat toothless affinity organization since all their hotels are independently owned.
A lost customer to this establishment and more than likely any other hotel in the chain… plus nasty whiny blog posts and tweets… seem like a poor trade off for somebody’s desire to stuff a couple of extra bucks in their pocket. Bad choice, Quality Suites John Wayne Airport and Choice International.
If you’ve done any search copywriting, you will have noticed that I heavily salted the above post with keywords to see if either Quality Suites John Wayne Airport or Choice Hotels International were monitoring their social media presence. So far, nary a nibble. After a week, I did receive a rather formulaic apology from the hotel and a promise of a $3.26 refund for the safe charge. Nothing at all from the Choice loyalty folks.