HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

While in Houston, I stayed at the NASA Clear Lake Hilton. I checked in around 6:00 local time and, in accordance with my company’s policy, I made an allowed phone call to home to assure my family I had arrived safely. I usually don’t bother wearing a watch, as I always have my cell phone with me and it provides me with the most accurate time available. In fact, it even picks up the local time so I don’t have to change it when I travel and, in this case, that is exactly what I did.

My phone told me it was around 6:30. However, I had just forgotten that I was in the Central time zone and it was only 4:30 at home. There was no way my wife was at home and, sure enough, I got our answering machine. I left a very brief message noting my safe arrival and hung up. I couldn’t have been on the phone longer than 45 – 50 seconds.

When I awoke on Friday morning, the day of my departure, as is customary in most hotels nowadays my closing statement for hotel charges had been slipped under my door sometime during the night. I glanced at it and almost fell over. That phone call of less than a minute had been billed to my room for almost $13.00.

I couldn’t believe it. The call I had made later, when someone was actually home and we talked for a while cost almost $30.00. I was dumbfounded at first. I went downstairs for breakfast and, after having some time to think about it, went back upstairs and called to notify the front desk I was checking out. They asked me if everything had been OK and said it had, with the exception of those phone calls. As a result of the complaint, they took the first charge off my bill. I’m still upset about the other charge being so much, but I’m at a bit of a loss for what to do.

The way I’m thinking about it now is that, if my company reimburses me for the call, I probably will just let it go, as it will not be worth the time, effort, and aggravation to do anything about it. However, if they won’t pay for it, or if they pay for only a small portion, I’m going to complain and suggest they push the hotel to put warning stickers on the phones, “WARNING! Use of this phone may be dangerous to your wallet” or something like that.