This is the story of my recent up, down, up, and up adventure with Hotwire.com.
Since my half marathon race started at like 5:40 in the morning, we thought it would be a good idea to stay in the city the night before. I found the area close to the starting line and booked a hotel on Hotwire. Success! It was literally a block away from the start. This was in January, six months before the race.
A couple weeks before the race, I receive a voicemail saying the hotel is oversold, and that they bumped us to another hotel downtown. In this case, I believe “oversold” was their code for realizing there was a marathon starting outside their back door, and the rooms were suddenly much more valuable than what they sold one to me for back in January. I bet everyone who booked far in advance and got a good deal got bumped.
So at this point I’m pretty bummed, since I’d planned on being able to just roll out of bed and walk to the starting line. I call up Hotwire to complain and they say there’s nothing they can do, but offer $25 HotDollars (their equivalent of store credit) in return for my inconvenience if I call back after my stay at the other hotel. I’m also a little nervous since they refuse to provide any official-looking itinerary in writing noting the hotel change.
The new hotel though, is awesome. The Inn at Union Square, highly recommended (as confirmed by most people on TripAdvisor). OK, maybe getting bumped wasn’t so bad after all.
Either way, I call Hotwire up again this week, asking to collect the $25 HotDollar credit I was promised. To my surprise and delight, Hotwire credits me $115 HotDollars, the full value of the stay! Definitely above and beyond what was necessary or even expected, but I’m pretty excited to have a free night in the bank and to say nice things about Hotwire whenever given the chance.
Great recovery from a disappointing situation!
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Tags: customer service, san francisco, success
