I’ve never spent Christmas away from home so I’m fascinated with trading in a fragrant douglas fir for a margarita on the beach or map of Paris. If you are considering traveling instead of visiting family (or perhaps traveling with family), there are many affordable places to visit. Getting a cheap flight is possible, too.
Hotel prices in major American cities are 75% lower than rates in the summer in some cases. Hotels in (more…)
You get what you pay for, but in New York City you get even less. Four years after leaving the Big Apple for sunny Los Angeles, I re-learned this lesson after booking a budget hotel room on the Upper West Side with appalling results.
The $145 room – well below normal prices for a Manhattan hotel – had a shared bathroom and lacked amenities. But for one night it would be fine, I reasoned. I had used the same booking site in the past and gained great deals on beautiful hotel rooms. I trusted they would never work with sub-par hotels (Mistake No. 1).
We arrived a few minutes before check-in and noticed that, after each party checked in, an attendant walked them to their room. When it was our turn, a young woman led us through a maze of connected buildings so disorienting that I joked about getting lost. So this is why we were walked to our room, I thought. (Mistake No. 2).
The woman stopped in a narrow hallway and turned the key. No modern card swipes at this hotel. She opened the door and motioned for us to step inside.
I was stunned. The blue carpet was so ancient it was beyond cleaning. The pillows were flat as pancakes. The mysterious smell made me breathe shallowly. A single window blurred by years of muck looked onto an alley. The bed – oh how I was ready for a nap until I saw the bed!
“Do you still want the room?”
I looked at my friend, looked at the woman, and paused. I turned down the sheets and squinted to see possible tiny red spots, a sign of bed bugs. The thin yellowed sheets showed through to the mattress. I did not see any spots, but the light was too dim to erase all doubts.
“We heard there were bed bugs,” I said to the woman.
She shook her head. “The things people write online,” she said. “Disgruntled employees.”
“Oh, okay.”
“So the room is okay?”
No, it was not okay, But I was so ashamed that I had gotten myself into this situation, that I had believed I could get such an amazing deal, that I was too cheap to pony up for a better room in the first place, that I looked at the woman and nodded. (Mistake No. 3)
She closed the door behind her.
“Do you want to stay here?” I asked my dismayed friend.
“Do you want to stay here?”
We both agreed we could suffer a night in the dingy hotel room, but that we really, really wanted a nicer hotel room. We gathered our bags and marched back to the lobby.
“We changed our minds,” I said. “The room is not acceptable. I’m sorry.”
The hotel staff was ticked off. The manager refused to give us a canceled receipt because it was the booking site that was charging us, he said. Arguing was no use. We walked out.
I immediately called the booking site and asked them to refund the $145 charge because the room did not match the online description, to put it mildly. The customer service agent offered me a 10% refund. I politely pushed back. She offered me a $50 credit. No thanks. Manager, please. The manager refused to help a loyal customer and, after more than an hour on hold, my cell phone battery died. The next day I called my credit card company to contest the charge.
Whether or not I end up paying for the hotel room, I’ve learned three lessons. I was greedy, thinking I could find a better price for a hotel room than the millions of other tourists who visit New York City. I made assumptions that got me into trouble and did not recognize them until it was too late. And to top it off, I kept quiet when I should have spoken my mind.
As karmic payback, I booked a ridiculously expensive hotel, slept extremely well, and made free Starbucks coffee the next morning in my room.
My frugal friends at Savings.com shared these coupons.
Get 15% off your order at Crocs. Expiration date unknown.
Get 15% off with free shipping on games of $29.99 or more at GameStop. Expires May 31, 2010.
Get 5% off 1 or more nights hotel stay at Orbitz. Expires July 31, 2010.
Get $50 off $250 with free shipping at Kate Spade. Expiration date unknown.
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