I booked a hotel on April 1 for a short trip to San Francisco, wanting to stay in the city for 4/3 - 4/5 of the trip. My teen age daughter had wanted to take our small dog on one of our vacations for a long time. We live in Los Angeles. I was going to have to drive anyway, so decided to try out officialpethotels.com after finding it via a Google query. I had not used this service before. For the price I was going to be able to pay, pethotels.com suggested Hotel Monaco as a dog friendly hotel. Hotel Monaco was listed as a 4-star hotel on Union Square (hence would have a place for dog walking across the street, I imagined). Hotel Monaco even had a separate pet invite form, etc. I thought we were set. Company policy was that you had to pay the $623.24 up front. We actually arrived in Bay Area on 4/2 and stayed with a friend 30 miles away. On 4/3 we toured the city, then went to the hotel to check in at 6:30 pm. Driving was tough in the city and was very crowded. I drove through the Union Square area. Hotel Monaco was not on the square. When I got to the hotel, there was no place to park; no reserved spot for checkin, 2 very rickety old bag trolleys, no one out front to help guests in, and 2 skid row types leaning on the front of the hotel. There was no blade of grass within blocks of the hotel. It was very crowded and noisy. The hotel looked run down from the outside, and one corner of the hotel had glass sides with shelves and shelves of alcoholic beverage bottles in the window. My 15 year old daughter (who is slightly autistic) totally panicked at the sight of the place and begged me not to take her there. There was going to be no place to walk the dog within blocks. And there was no way I could let her on the crowded street with skid row folks - in what turned out to be more of the Tenderloin district. I never even got to set foot inside of the hotel because the whole situation was such a disaster. I had to drive 30 miles outside of the city again to find someplace else to stay.
I called Pet Hotels that evening to tell them what happened. They told me that someone would call me back in 24 - 48 hours about the incident. They didn't offer to find me anyplace else, nor to call the hotel, or anything. They talked to the hotel at the time. I thought they told the hotel that I was not coming. This whole situation all but ruined our trip, was a total panic being stranded with a dog and a daughter in a city I hadn't spent much time in in 20 years.
Two days later I get a call from a snide pethotels agent who said that because I was a no-show at the hotel, they were not going to do anything for me. I could call the hotel manager, but nothing was going to happen. The man from pethotels was pretty rude. I should not have been considered a no-show by the hotel if pethotels had informed them that I wasn't coming. At least the 2nd day was available for the hotel to re-sell. I did not want to ruin my trip any further so came straight to scambook about this.
I am writing because this is not the first time that I've run into a situation where a hotel is oversold where you were required to pay up front with no refund possibility under any circumstances. I am tired of these companies getting away with this. On top of it, I had to use a debit card for this transaction, so have no recourse to dispute the charge, etc. Except you. I am certainly hoping scambook can help with this - and that perhaps I can help other people avoid being scammed by one of these situations. I would hope, under the circumstances, that I would at least be able to recover half of my costs, i.E. $300, if not the whole $623.24. On top of all this, I purchased an "insurance policy" that pethotels sold - for $38 - that of course had exclusions for what happened with me. I chose to be honest in dealing with this rather than trying to say that I got sick, etc. And go through the insurance company to be compensated. And then I just get penalized. And went through the trauma with my daughter... Thanks for your help.
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