Hello,
I want to share with you the rude treatment my mother and I received from the Villa Elda Hotel. I booked a 6 night stay for September and arrived to find that the hotel had incorrectly booked our stay for July. I believe the booking engine on the website simply captured the dates incorrectly. I say this because during our attempts to book another hotel we encountered the same problem, but luckily were aware of the mistake immediately following and were able to resolve it with the other hotel.. We shared 6 emails between Villa EldaHotel and ourselves confirming details for our stay, but they never re-confirming the dates of the stay after the first email which I did not find until much later after our arrival. When I asked why they had not confirmed the dates with us I was told that it took too much time to do that every time they sent an email. I let them know that I had booked hotels in 5 other cities and all of them had re-confirmed our dates of stay with every email they sent to us. They had charged us for the complete stay prior to our arrival and when we arrived they refused to work it out with us. They had rooms available and refused to even let us purchase a room for the night there. We had arrived at 9pm at night, tired from traveling by bus that day with full trekking backpacks...incidentally my mother is 68yrs old. She even told the front desk staff this and they seemed to careless that this was a hardship for her. We had planned on enjoying 6 days in Siena but the difficulty with Villa Elda Hotel was so unexpected and disappointing that we left 2 nights after, which was as soon as we could secure a hotel in another region of Italy. Before this incident, Siena was my favorite city in Italy based on a trip in 2003. Needless to say we felt that many of our interactions especially with transit centers for bus and rail service were exceptionally rude and unhelpful throughout the country this time. Thank you for the opportunity to share this information. We both feel no desire to return to Italy again for a trip.
Posted by
Chicago
2044 posts
I'm am sorry to hear that but it sounds from your description that you put the wrong dates on the website-perhaps putting the month first instead of the date as is done in Europe? I am also confused about your confirmations-did you not see the dates were wrong when you received the confirmation or when you were making changes? Did you send an email afterwards asking them to confirm a date?
If the date mishap was user error and you didn't notice prior to arrival then that is your responsibility. Were there rooms available that night as I find it hard to believe a hotel wouldn't let you have a room for the night? Did you print out a confirmation of the reservations showing the dates? I'm sorry if you had a bad trip and a bad hotel but I always reconfirm with the hotel a few weeks in advance the days and the hotel room I have booked and print out all correspondence. It has saved me several times as far as price and room quality as some hotels try to change rooms or prices.
Posted by
Seattle, WA
17427 posts
That is unfortunate.
Their booking engine does seem a bit sketchy. I tried to test your theory that the website captured the date incorrectly, and indeed it did. I used the drop-down menu for date selection on the first booking page, and chose 3/4 (3 April next year) as the start date for a 3-night stay. I confirmed that the initial choice uses European format for the date, meaning the first field offered 31 days and the second offered 12 months (by number, not by name).
When I hit “search” the next screen had changed the date to 10/3 and then said there was nothing available. When I looked at the calendar view to see general availability, I found that the “10/3” was using US format, in other words October 3. In other words, it defaulted to today’s date, and oddly displayed it in US format with the month first. Very strange.
So I am wondering if the same thing happened when you booked, changing for example 7/9 (September 9) to July 7. I cannot test that theory because the website would only show availability for October 2019, not for any later month.
Nevertheless, if that is what happened, you should have noticed during the booking process, or when you received an automatic confirmation (I always take a screenshot of that page). Or at least when they charged you in July for the no-show and it showed up on your credit card bill. So I do not think it is fair to blame the hotel for failing to confirm the dates in the 6 emails that went back and forth, unless you specifically requested that they re-confirm the dates and asked nothing more. Did they simply fail to respond at all?
Posted by
Idaho, USA
7803 posts
The day/month/year order always makes me do a double-check, especially when booking non refundable hotel reservations. But, it’s on you to check that your confirmation paperwork shows the correct dates. I think this is another example where an app such as TripIt is so nice, since that would have shown the reservation dates when you loaded the email into the app.
“Needless to say we felt that many of our interactions especially with transit centers for bus and rail service were exceptionally rude and unhelpful throughout the country this time. Thank you for the opportunity to share this information. We both feel no desire to return to Italy again for a trip.”
I’m wondering if this comment sheds some light on why the hotel did not want to give you a room that evening. I just returned from three weeks in Italy, and found all of the workers I dealt with for train & bus transportation to be cordial and even helpful, especially the bus drivers.
Posted by
Reno, Nevada
1025 posts
Am I alone in noticing that many of the most critical reviews of hotels, restaurants, transit systems, and driving conditions seem to be contained in first time posts by individuals? I'm not suggesting that the OP's experience didn't happen, but it seems to me that there is a bit of overkill in the conclusion reached by the OP, to wit, "We both feel no desire to return to Italy again for a trip." What???
There are rude people everywhere, and traveling brings surprises, both pleasant and not. From the OP's post, it seems that he/she felt that Italy (and its rude and unhelpful hoteliers and transit centers) were consipiring against them.
Posted by
San Francisco Bay Area
5697 posts
Another thumbs-up for Jean's suggestion of Tripit -- when I booked a room in France for a wrong date, Tripit made a change in my trip dates, which alerted me to my error (the booking was a month before my inbound flight)
As a matter of style, when I correspond with a hotel the subject line includes booking date with month spelled out (7 June)
Posted by
Northamptonshire, England
33820 posts
Not only is it a first time poster, the name they have chosen for themselves consists of a single solitary letter of the alphabet. I would have thought they would have wanted to be identified a little more than that at least to the hotel which is the victim of their ire.
I'm afraid I can't give it any more credibility than an anonymous first time TripAdvisor poster who runs a place down.
Posted by
Chicago
2044 posts
Interesting catch Nigel, I believe they changed their screen name from wandering_fish
Posted by
WPB, FL & Firenze
3112 posts
If there actually is a serious problem with the hotel's booking site, then contest the 6-night charge with your credit card company.