Beat: Overcharged for casino hotel room (kinda long)

[ACG2x]

So last Friday, the wife and I got away for the first time since having our little one in July. We stayed at a hotel/casino about an hour away from our home (Grand Casino Hinckley in Minnesota for anyone wondering).

Of course, yours truly put in about a total of 12 hours in the poker room and had an overall "meh" night poker-wise, but made a killing at blackjack the following morning. I was actually on my way to getting back to even in the poker room, but we got down to 3-handed at 8:15 AM.

We tell the floor that if we can play for a reduced rake ($2 instead of $4), we'll play 3-handed for a while and just have the button always straddle (this was a $2/10 spread game with blinds of $1/$2). The manager says "you can play for 15 minutes, then we're shutting down". I ask her if that means closing the room and she says yes. She says "since we have tournaments on Saturday's, the room usually picks up at about 10 or so".

My question was since we were willing to keep playing until the room picked back up, why shut it down? They're still taking a rake. I was playing with one kid who was getting stuck and playing way loose and another LAG guy. So even 3-handed pots built up quickly. I was up for that session too and had a healthy BR.

Anyways, she is defiant and after about 12 minutes exactly, she brings racks over to our table and places them down and says "you have three minutes".

Almost 3 minutes exactly later she shuts the game down. When I was playing blackjack about an hour and a half later, I saw a list for $2/10 about 5-6 names long. Hmmm...maybe let us just ride it out since you KNOW players are coming to play pre-tournament (which started at 2:00 PM).

I didn't go back to the poker room because we had decided to hang out for an hour or so and then head back. Had the game continued on, I could have gotten another 2-3 hours in.

Anyways, my wife was doing our checkbook yesterday and find that we were overcharged for our hotel room. Here's how it went down-

I called the casino last week to inquire about room availibility on Friday. The front desk girl said she had one king bed room for $88something. I said I'll take it and booked the room. When we arrived at the hotel, the line to check in was mega-long but at GCH, they have these auto-check in machines where you swipe your card, confirm your room and they issue your room keys right there.

Also, the front desk was being pretty inept at dealing with a customer issue and we were a few people back and I saw one of the machines open. So I headed to it and checked in. On the check-in screen, it clearly said the $88something I was told on the phone.

We get up to the room and were surprised to find the room had a fridge and microwave. We had never stayed there and thought maybe that's just how the rooms are. Remember, the check in screen on the automated machine clearly said the price I was told. I figured $88 for the room x 6.5% sales tax = ~$94-$96 total. We ordered no room service or movies, long distance calls, etc. Nothing but the room itself. We check out using the express check out in the room. The instructions just said to go to the Guest Services menu, find "Check Out" and confirm it. We do this, leave the keys in the room and go home.

Doing the checkbook, my wife finds that we were charged nearly $140 for the room! [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img] I was like WTF? The woman on the phone told me $88, the check-in screen said $88. I call the hotel immediately and tell the front desk. She says she can't help me but I can talk to their Auditor who handles these things. Of course since it's a Sunday, the Auditor is out of the office. I leave her a VM and ask for an immediate call back. I note how frustrated I am.

My wife ALSO notes that we were overcharged on our dinner receipt as well. We always leave a tip for dinner (which we paid for seperate from the room with our credit card) to equal a whole dollar amount. So if the bill is $35.27, we'd leave something like $41.00. I added in the tip so our bill for this meal was $26.00 even. I have my copy which I put $26.00 as well. The bank statement says we were charged $27.19. I have no idea how the extra $1.19 came in.

So if the Auditor tries to BS me, what's my play? Anybody had this happen to them? I can assure you I had no intention of paying $140 for a hotel room. I would have never stayed there if it was that much.

Oh yeah...

Beat: Overcharged for dinner and hotel room, poker room shut down despite us wanting to play 3-handed.

Brag: Had awesome ah-sexy time with wife at 4something AM when I wrapped up my first poker session which we can finally do condom-less because she was just able to go back on the pill. After the little session, I headed right back down to the poker room and resumed playing.

Variance: Making a killing at blackjack in a short period of time.

[4_2_it]

I couldn't get through all of this, but this situation is the reason why you should pay everything with a credit card, dispute any overcharges and let Amex or Visa deal with the merchant.

[blinden84]

how to make this not ridiculously long is to leave out the pointless first 7 paragraphs.

[apefish]

There are reasons I dont frequent Mille Lacs or Hinckley any more despite living within an hour of both.
Nothing in this post even remotely surprises me.

[ACG2x]

[ QUOTE ]
how to make this not ridiculously long is to leave out the pointless first 7 paragraphs.

[/ QUOTE ]

Point taken. Here you go...

I called the casino (Grand Casino Hinckley) last week to inquire about room availibility on Friday. The front desk girl said she had one king bed room for $88something. I said I'll take it and booked the room.

When we arrived at the hotel, the line to check in was mega-long but at GCH, they have these auto-check in machines where you swipe your credit card, confirm your room and they issue your room keys right there.

Also, the front desk was being pretty inept at dealing with a customer issue and we were a few people back and I saw one of the machines open. So I headed to it and checked in. On the check-in screen, it clearly said the $88something I was told on the phone.

We get up to the room and were surprised to find the room had a fridge and microwave. We had never stayed there and thought maybe that's just how the rooms are. Remember, the check in screen on the automated machine clearly said the price I was told. I figured $88 for the room x 6.5% sales tax = ~$94-$96 total.

We ordered no room service or movies, long distance calls, etc. Nothing but the room itself. We check out using the express check out in the room. The instructions just said to go to the Guest Services menu, find "Check Out" and confirm it. We do this, leave the keys in the room and go home.

Doing the checkbook, my wife finds that we were charged nearly $140 for the room! I was like WTF? The woman on the phone told me $88, the check-in screen said $88. I call the hotel immediately and tell the front desk. She says she can't help me but I can talk to their Auditor who handles these things. Of course since it's a Sunday, the Auditor is out of the office. I leave her a VM and ask for an immediate call back.

My wife ALSO notes that we were overcharged on our dinner receipt as well. We always leave a tip for dinner (which we paid for seperate from the room with our credit card) to equal a whole dollar amount. So if the bill is $35.27, we'd leave something like $41.00.

I added in the tip so our bill for this meal was $26.00 even. I have my copy which I put $26.00 as well. The bank statement says we were charged $27.19. I have no idea how the extra $1.19 came in.

So if the Auditor tries to BS me, what's my play? Anybody had this happen to them? I can assure you I had no intention of paying $140 for a hotel room. I would have never stayed there if it was that much.

Oh yeah...

Beat: Overcharged for dinner and hotel room, poker room shut down despite us wanting to play 3-handed.

Brag: Had awesome ah-sexy time with wife at 4something AM when I wrapped up my first poker session which we can finally do condom-less because she was just able to go back on the pill. After the little session, I headed right back down to the poker room and resumed playing.

Variance: Making a killing at blackjack in a short period of time.

[w33ktight]

too long

[GeezyTehSnowman]

stop smoking meth before posting plz

[goofyballer]

I think you should chalk the $1.19 up to variance. Pick your battles here.

[DoGGz]

The $1.19 is because most places add 20% to the bill for tips, this is normally fixed later on down the road. If you paid with VISA, this is against visa policy and just call them to dispute. This is something Visa hates, but most restaurants don't bother to follow. They will handle everything and you'll either be given back the $1.19, or the $27.19 all together.

[MissChriss]

We got overcharged for the minibar in London!
Normally we never have something cos its ridiculously expensive!
I accidentally threw some things over tho so it charged automatically...stupid sensors!
Anyhow it was only like 70p so we didn't bother to tell them.