[Ambarsilva]

So you just have consumption in hotels, which you are aware of and manage a way of not paying them… Mainly It.

If you sign a Tab and someone forgets to debit the charge to your room or by any other system malfunction its not there, you believe that no payments shall be done after. Considering it a bonus.

A thief goes it to a bank and robs it. He didn’t get caught by the police and no jail time was awarded so i presume robbing the bank was the right attitude.

Yes late charges may be annoying yet you are being charged for something you had. If i’m informed prior ti charge and if they prove tat the charge is mine. Go for it.

[rferguson]

Hotels would have to have the mechanism to post charges after departure. Could you imagine the chaos of checking out if after everytime you left your room the room and mini-bar had to be checked for the robe, mini bar contents etc etc? But I totally agree with what others have said, the hotel should email you first and let you know.

[Ahmad]

rferuson,

Isn’t it invariably the case that upon checkout a call is placed by the reception/cashier to housekeeping asking them to check the room while they process your bill?

I too have stopped giving my credit card at checkin and give a cash deposit instead. Not because of late charges which had been few and far between in my case, but because I have often had my initial authorization amount blocked for weeks because incompetent staff do not do offline transactions and simply charge again by taking a fresh authorization. In one case I was actually charged twice and still haven’t got my money back after over eleven years. It is much simpler to just make a cash deposit and settle your bill at the end of your stay. If I am not mistaken even the staff is happier since there is less of a chance of their getting embroiled in a dispute later. Needless to say they get impressed by cash transactions and one gets better treatment. The hotel has your address so if there is any omission at checkout they can always send you a bill. Anyway, I always check my bill thoroughly and have pointed out omissions and for that matter over charging on many occasions and had them rectified. For this reason I always ask for my bill the night before leaving and check it long before going to the checkout desk (at which time most of us are in a hurry).

In an other example, I once left the charging wire of my brand new digital camcorder in the Seychelles. The hotel found it and since the item was so new that a replacement was not quickly available from the manufacturer, I asked the hotel to send it to me by courier. As usual, I had not given my credit card at checkin so they simply asked me to fax them an authorization to charge the amount to my card with a copy of the card itself. That done, they were easily able to charge the card and send me my wire.

[LuganoPirate]

In this respect Ahmad, Hilton are quite good in that they place a copy of the bill under your door in the early hours before check out so you can look it over before you leave.

As to cash deposits, I think it depends where you’re travelling. HMRC have threatened twice to confiscate my cash, one you can read about in an earlier thread and recently when I only had £2,000 in Swiss Francs and Euros. Even though you can can legally carry €10,000 and even the Italians don’t blink when you do, the British take some perverse delight in hassling me!

[Ahmad]

Sorry to hear that LP, I hope you are not on one of their watch lists. Fortunately, I have only been stopped once at Heathrow and that was many years, dare I say decades, ago. But then I don’t travel to England that frequently now.

You are right, cash deposits are a luxury depending on where you travel. On occasion I go to places with strict exchange control restrictions. There, I make doubly sure that there are no errors or omissions in the bill and make sure that the cashier does an offline transaction for the initial authorization amount and a separate transaction for any excess.

[Author]

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