121–130 of 533 posts
From their FAQ: "Is it worth the investment? Absolutely. Hotels equipped with Rest have seen an 84x increase in smoking fine collection. Plus, our smoking detection technology helps prevent damage to rooms and reduce a number of future violations." Apparently there are way more people smoking than we thought there are or the sensor just generates a lot of false positives. The language they are using all over the site…
I'd refuse to pay the charge on check out. If they charged my card anyways I would demand a refund and inform the consumer protection agency, wait 30 days and issue the chargeback. Luckily these things work well in my nation.
Well the point is you can’t really refuse it. They won’t rent you the room unless you have a card on file authorized to make charges for incidentals.
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AmEx used to be good about doing chargebacks generally, but they once sided with the merchant during covid when I was sold an impossible itinerary and cost me $2k. Since then I realized that I won’t always be able to do a chargeback, and I am much more cautious with vendors.
I think there are exceptions about "exigent circumstances" and COVID was considered one. My EU flight was not refunded as well despite the EU having strong protections. The airlines, at the time, were given a life-line. I think these once in-a-decade or more events can be swallowed. But wouldn't be happy with a regular occurrence.
I saw a little quote about the modern business landscape that seems to apply here: “Save a few pennies by destroying trust.” The Hyatt franchise needs to shut this down ASAP. Most hotels are independently operated or operated by franchise groups. Not many hotel brands actually own the hotels and essentially act as marketing firms. If I were to give this the “never assign malice to that which can be adequately explain…
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Leases often work this way. In theory it's illegal in the UK (for a home, businesses are assumed to be big boys who can negotiate on equal footing) but it's still pretty common to be charged when you move out. Specifically UK law says "reasonable wear and tear" is just an expected cost of people living in a house you let to them - so e.g. they're going to wear out carpet after some years, but a cigar burn is not OK,…
They absolutely prey on people not being having the time/resources to fight back. A friend in the UK had his deposit withheld as "mail charges" by his landlord upon moving out. Turned out the fine print in his lease said that he wasn't allowed to receive mail at the house he was legally renting.
This reminds me of Hertz new "AI" camera based damage detection... Although much less effort... This is the end. May progress have mercy on our souls.
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Airlines: "Hold my beer!"
"Delta moves to eliminate set prices, use AI to set your personal ticket price" , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44596355
Maybe more relevant would be oversize/overweight baggage fees. Where there is some fine print about baggage policy and you may find yourself paying expensive fees at the gate because you didn't realize the weight limit included your handbag or that the allowed dimensions are nonstandard.
A hotel charging $500 for smoking that didn't happen is worse than all of that, it is just fraud. Personal ticket prices is just business, controversial, but they are not trying to trick you. The fine print is bad, but at least, you can avoid the fees by being careful. Here, you have no choice but to pay and maybe hope to get your money back by filing a complain.
If I got one of these I'd pay it and never, ever, ever stay at any hotel owned by the entity again. Being that I spend $25k-50k a year on hotels, their loss is a small hotel's gain. In fact, whoever does this will lose my business ahead of time as I will never stay at any hotel that uses this service. A few minutes on Tripadvisor and you'll know. Such incredible business myopia. Hotels are one of the few businesses t…
Synopsis and excerpt: [Rest] markets itself as a way to "unlock a new revenue stream" with the help of a "robust algorithm" for detecting smoking. Hotels where these sensors are installed rack up complaints and negative reviews, after Rest sensors register false positives - thereby unlocking that revenue stream for the hotels. The awesome thing about black-box algorithms is they can't be challenged when they're wrong…
I bet it’s also a rev share model. Hotel doesn’t pay for the device but revenue is shared. Like the traffic cameras where they shorten yellow light to durations that a car is incapable of stopping in time.
The app even tracks the whole fee amount in-app being collected. "Net charge", "adjusted charge amount" reasons of "guest complaint"...
Hanlon's razor doesn't cut it anymore.