When checking out of the Randolph Hotel in Oxford a couple of weeks back, I was surprised to be charged £3 for “Credit Card Processing.” What? When I pay hundreds of dollars for a room, I expect the hotelier to pick up any finance charges.
The next evening I posted my thoughts on the Randolph’s billing policy to TripAdvisor.
I forgot about the incident until an email arrived from Trip Advisor this morning.
In only 7 days, your review has had 327 readers
If my “review” turns off only one potential guest in 20, at $500/room, the Randolph will forego $8,000 in revenue at its standard $500/night rate. Reviews lose their punch after a while. Mine is the 747th review for the Randolph on Trip Advisor. In a month or two, my review will sink beneath the surface. By that time, they’ll have foregone more than $20,000.
Obviously, this is asymmetrical punishment. Hotel screws me out of $5 and offers no apology; I ding their sales by $10,ooo or $20,000.
The internet empowers Jay the Avenger, to counter commercial injustice wherever he finds it. I feel good.
Ugh. The manager of the hotel responded on TripAdvisor. He pointed out that they don’t charge customers for paying in cash or with debit cards. That doesn’t answer my complaint that they do charge for credit cards. I didn’t see the advance warning the manager refers to.
Unfortunately, TripAdvisor doesn’t offer a way to reply to comments, so the proprietor has the last word.