My family had a wedding reception at the Four Points Sheraton on August 13. On the week of the wedding, the events manager Danielle Mattera, sent my mother an email with the balance due for the wedding. My mother, in a reply email, authorized that the manager could put the stated balance on her AMEX.
Following the event, my mother requested an itemized bill for her charges, as she was not given an invoice on the evening of August 13. When the bills arrived she noticed her credit card had been charged for 2 additional items, without her consent. She was charged for an open bar and for 6 additional guests.
The alarming charge is the 6 additional guests. We asked them why they charged us for extra guests and they said they had to bring in extra chairs into the reception. We asked them why didn't they tell us that they believed extra guests showed up and the events manager admits that she did not tell us about this.
1. There is an option to have an overflow table at the hotel. We did not take this option. We would not have allowed more guests into our reception than the number, which we submitted. They did not honor this by SUPPOSEDLY allowing more than this number of people into the wedding.
2. We were not notified, at the time that there was an issue. We should have been told that they BELIEVE more people were attending and we would have figured this out for them and if they were correct that someone did arrive that was not invited, we would have asked that person to leave.
3. The series of emails we received from the events manager, states ambiguity in her numbers. Therefore, she has never told us how she came up with the number of additional guests she charged us for. She said that she brought into the hall "at least 10 chairs and possibly more." Therefore, she doesn't know exactly the number of chairs she brought in. Also, it would have been impossible to bring more than 10 additional chairs without adding a table.
However, as more of our guests begin to hear about this issue of fraudulent, unauthorized charges, we have discovered more alarming details. Many of our guests said that they were at tables that were half empty. One guest also said to me that their table was set up for only four people, but was supposed to be set up for 5. Therefore they had to request that the hotel set up their table correctly and add an additional chair. These are just a few statements out of many.
Additionally, we know that there were also guests that did not make it to the reception. Finally, this leads me to believe that the numbers they are charging us for is unsupported and not authorized. They may have added chairs due to their own incompetencies.
When I asked the Director, Paul Dooley and manager, Danielle Mattera, why they did not inform us of the issue that night they replied, "this is our business and this is what we do. We can charge you what we want, to your credit card. This is business and you don't get it."
I have reported them to AMEX, Starwood Corporate headquarters where there is an ongoing investigation. However, there is still no resolution. I have not yet received the final word from HQ, where the representative is helping me resolve this matter. It is hopeful that this issue will be resolved in house.
She, the rep from HQ, feels that this situation with the group of individuals at the Four Points Sheraton (Danielle, Paul and now she is working with the regional manager, Kevin Casey) will not be resolved and we will have to take it to the next level within HQ.
She said I should prepare to get written and signed statements from my wedding guests that prove that there are discrepancies in the manager's numbers. She also admits that based on my information and series of emails back and forth with the manager at four points and my mother, and the lack of response from the Four Points group sounds like something illegal and unethical is going on.
Additionally, they provided impressively MEDIOCRE service. Following are examples:
In June we ordered pale yellow napkins for the reception. Two days before the reception Danielle, manager, sent us an email and said she could not get them.
They said they would charge us $250 to move a piano 12 feet to be used for 5 minutes. We declined. When we arrived at the reception hall that night, there was a piano in the reception hall, covered with a table cloth being used as a table to hold my table seating cards for the guests.
The hotel did not change the sheets for one of our guests for 3 days.
They broke my cake topper and tried to hide this from me by first, blaming my father and saying that the manager put it in his car so he lost it. When my father said that no one helped him and the manager was not there at all, the hotel switched their story to say, they gave it to my husband's sister-in-law. Next, they said that "Maybe one of my guests misplaced it." Inferring my guests were thieves.
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