Hotwire through the Hoops

We booked a stay through Hotwire the first day of Semptember this year. We were heading over to San Francisco and decided that with all of the activities we had planned with the daughters it made since to stay over there.

Booking though Hotwire sent us to an overnight at the La Quinta Inn.

The La Quinta Inn in South San Francisco is constructed behind a food processing warehouse. Sounds pretty strange.. but okay. the rest of the story is that the rail road tracks for big businesses on the other side of Bay Shore freeway split the lodging buildings in half. Still that is okay as long as huge train horns do not wake you in the middle of the night... they didn't.

What was strange here was there business practices.

Hotwire found us a room that we pre paid for through Pay Pal. Hotwire lets you shop by area and stars and only reveals where you are going to stay when you have paid.

We had a great night at the hotel. It was not much more than a motel 8 yet was much nice and offered a great breakfast with make your own waffle irons and plenty of batter.

When we were checking out I noticed that a bill had been slipped under our door in the middle of the night. Usually on those occasions the balance is zero since we do not run up tabs in hotel rooms and the bill was pre paid through hotwire and pay pal.


This time it was not zeroed out.

When I brough this to the attention of the desk clerk that we should not owe 74 dollars as billed since we were hotwire customers.. she agreed and tore up the bill told us not to worry.

I had this happen once before in an Emmeryville hotel.


I notified hotwire and they made it right, and so did the hotel. Hotwire refunded my purchase price to Pay Pal and the hotel refunded my overcharge to the credit card company.

The same thing happened here. Hotwire refunded my pay pal account and the hotel will refund their errant charges.

In both cases I had to submit by fax the credit card billing, my hotwire itinerary number and what they would really like is a fax of the bill that didn't have zero on it. In the last case I didn't have this piece since they crumbled it up and threw it away at the desk. 

So we stayed essentially free because of their mistake. It pays to keep track of irregularities when you travel and get the docs to the right people in a timely manner.

: ) Pat