A Hilton property in Budapest emailed a guest saying that they’ve discovered about $325 still owed from a stay 15 months earlier. Another guest reports receiving a similar note from the property. Despite the hotel giving themselves more than a year to identify the underpayment, they’re demanding that the customer make good within two weeks.
I stayed in the Hampton in Budapest for 4 nights last September. I received this attached email today. They also attached the bill for the first amount (which shows I have a zero balance). The second amount 126,690 HUF (about $325 USD) is nowhere to be found on anything they sent. I booked this through the HHonors app if I recall, but the past stays section of the app doesn’t go back that far.
15 Months Later, Hotel is Saying I Didn’t Pay?
byu/airtrafficchick inHilton
It’s important to check your hotel folio to make sure it’s accurate. Hotels make billing mistakes all the time. Almost always it’s in the hotel’s favor, adding charges that shouldn’t be there. Sometimes you’re on a points stay and the hotel accidentally bills you instead of the hotel chain for the points reimbursement.
Many guests don’t even look. And one of my pet peeves is adding charges after checkout, and then not even telling the guest.
I’ve written about a Hilton property that discovered a billing mistake after more than a year and then went ahead and charged guest credit cards for their stays. I’ve had a Hyatt property charge me after five months.
- I felt that in that case I owed the money so I should pay the money.
- Some readers felt that anything over 30 or 60 days should be eaten by the vendor, while others believed a hotel ought to be able to avail themselves of whatever the full legally permissible time period is in their state.
Good luck, though, if you’re a business traveler getting your employer to reimburse an expense five months after a trip. That’ll likely run afoul of timeliness provisions in their reimbursement plan, since the company will want to stay on the right side of the law – in order to do tax-free reimbursement a company must operate an ‘accountable plan’ which requires expenses to be submitted in a timely manner.
How long is too long? How many months is too long after a stay for a hotel to say they forgot to charge you for part of your bill? After a certain period of time it’s not reasonable for a guest to even have good access to their records to validate whether they were previously charged – either during the original stay or subsequently – so maybe the amount of time and effort involved in researching to validate the charge ought to involve some compensation?
I had a hotel in Zurich ask me for money after the fact (60 days) because they screwed up at the front desk and didn’t charge me for the upgrade like they should have. I emailed the GM and they comp’ed it accepting that since it was their mistake, I should not be liable. Park Hyatt Zurich. 600 CHF.
Its a scam. Bank transfer?….yeah right.
Coincidentally, that hotel has a great breakfast. I stayed there about the same time….wonder if I’ll get an email too.
The Reddit thread correctly points out some reasons to be suspicious — the second guest seems quite confident he was correctly charged — but if it is a real demand from the hotel, I have to respect the audacity of starting the email “following your recent stay”.
FWIW, though, if you value your loyalty account (and the OP is a Gold member), I would tread carefully with billing disputes — the moral high ground won’t mean much if it costs you your account in the process.
My buddy is a manager at a Hyatt property.
They add extra charges all the time to accounts. But they’re not stupid, they only do it to people staying on OPM accounts, since its far less those people will care what the final bill is.
As long as they are ripping off other corporations and not individuals, good on them.
We should expect the proliferation of scams like these everywhere, not just Hungary, namely because enforcement, accountability, and decency are dead. Why ‘do the right thing’ when there are no consequences? Well, some of us still live by the Golden Rule, ‘do unto others,’ but when our leaders, both parties, at home and around the world, too, get away with things, it all starts to erode. We’ve had a lot of chances to self-correct, but instead we are doubling-down. After a while, can you blame us for feeling like the manager of the hotel in season 1, episode 6, of White Lotus: “F@&# this place!”
so what recourse do you legally have?
International email asking for money. Sounds like a scam to me. Ignore it.
This was my Reddit post. There was no underpayment. The second page shows that the balance of the bill is 0 HUF. My credit card statement also shows that I was billed the 130,059 HUF for the 4 night reservation on Sept 14, 2023. The second amount for 126,690 HUF is completely out of the blue. I do have to second the breakfast buffet there. It was great.
My mother was once leaving a hotel in Switzerland and as she got on the bus the desk clerk ran after her saying, “We made a mistake, you owe us more money!” I don’t think it was a lot, but she calmly looked at him and said, “Would you be running after me if you owed that to me?” He stopped and stared as she boarded and left.
There are way too many hotels in the world for anyone of them to pull an after the fact charge on me! Let alone send me an email demanding money. The Luxor in Vegas tried it once. After a few choice words to the accounting department, they understood my position. I only pay for my mistakes!
Lol I would have my CC deny that so fast.
We once got a charge from A Denver airport IHG property points stay and figured out before even speaking to the manager they charged us the points reimbursement. $29 on a 25000 point stay. I tolder her I’d trade them my points back and them keep the 29. No wonder they didn’t seem to want to honor benefits on points stays. They make nothing.
C L, did you get any sort of email confirming the reservation that included the room rate and preliminary miscellaneous costs? This sounds like a scam. Maybe having the credit card used reissued would be prudent so no scam charges are put on it.
We stayed at a small hotel in Embilipitiya, Sri Lanka. I had the hotel arrange a car and driver to take us to our next hotel in Galle. An hour into the drive the driver’s cell phone rings there’s a discussion and he hands the phone to me. It’s the hotel manger calling to say he overcharged me by about $10 USD and he told the driver to pay me $10 and he’d reimburse the driver the next time he saw him.
That’s integrity and service!
JNS, the room rates are listed on the second picture in the original reddit post. It is my folio listing the individual night charges, my payment of 130,059 HUF and zero balance. I stayed here over the fancy Hilton in Fisherman’s Bastian because it was half the price (and the location/overall experience wad great!). I ordered no room service/extras. Pretty sure this is some kind of hack. The whole thing is very strange.
I had a Marriott Renaissance property 10 months after my stay ask me to pay them in points for my stay. They claimed the points were never transferred and it was only then discovered. I had my Marriott ambassador verify. So, I know it happens. My guess is some properties have really bad accounting and then eventually an auditor comes in and they discover a wave of issues. These things are probably not limited to one customer. I had another property, a Marriott Westin, that seven months after an event at the hotel determined it hadn’t billed my client. It then took another two months for them to provide the paperwork showing this to be the case. During this time the owners fired Aimbridge and hired a new management company. I assume Aimbridge dropped the ball big time.
C L, thank you for the clarification. I don’t use Reddit so I didn’t know that there was a second page. I agree that it seems like a hack or scam because the billing seems complete. Maybe you could contact Hilton corporate to sort it out if you want to stay at the same place again or maybe contact them just because.
Park Hyatt Zurich tried to charge me for a someone else’s meal at the restaurant charged to my room. I did eat at the restaurant and paid with my credit card after eating. I told them this, and they removed the charge.
I had my receipt from payment, but I don’t believe they asked for it. It wasn’t a double charge because the amounts were different. This was in 2018
If they don’t have a correct bill at checkout then the hotel doesn’t get paid. The only exception would be an obvious error (e.g. rate was $100 not $1000) or a food/spa charge that was incurred on the day of checkout. Otherwise the hotel should eat the cost.
What would happen if a consumer came back 15 months later and said they were overcharged? They would be laughed at and kicked to the street. Consumers have 60 days to dispute credit card charges.
If a hotel came to me after 15 months I would send a letter to the chain and tell my card issuer it was a scam charge.
I always request a printed receipt at checkout. As far as I’m concerned that final receipt represents the end of our contract. They can’t come back months later for additional payment, only to refund me if necessary.