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?