I rated 2 stars bc they charged me for 2 rooms when I only booked one
Jan 23, 2025 J H
BEWARE! THE CUSTOMER IS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT AT THIS HOTEL!!!!!!!!! I rated 2 stars bc they charged me for 2 rooms when I only booked one. I tried booking this hotel for one night, but during checkout I received the infinite circle scroll (I was doing this on my phone) so I closed out of safari. I never received a confirmation email, so figured… Read more
BEWARE! THE CUSTOMER IS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT AT THIS HOTEL!!!!!!!!! I rated 2 stars bc they charged me for 2 rooms when I only booked one. I tried booking this hotel for one night, but during checkout I received the infinite circle scroll (I was doing this on my phone) so I closed out of safari. I never received a confirmation email, so figured it didn't go thru, so a couple weeks later I booked one night (the same night for 3 people -listing the same 3 names as per instructions) and it went thru- I took a screen shot of the confirmation number, but again, never received a confirmation email to my aol address. Keep in mind the ads for this hotel were received in my aol address but no confirmation. I had never been to Santa Barbara before- I usually book bigger hotel brands when traveling but this seemed like a good location so I figured maybe it's family owned and they don't send out confirmations. The only way I could confirm my hotel reservation was to go to their website, put in my confirmation number and email address and then a pdf would pop up that I could print. I probably could've called them- and that's the only error on my part where this clusterf&ck lies. We arrived to check in and they claimed I had 2 rooms reserved. They had printed out emails that were sent to me to confirm these rooms. I had the confirmation from one of them, but the other must have been the first attempt that I thought hadn't gone thru. I explained this to them. 'Unfortunately' since 'the policy which I agreed to in the booking' was that if bookings aren't cancelled 72 hours in advance, you are charged one nights accommodation, so WE WERE ON THE HOOK FOR PAYING FOR BOTH ROOMS! They wouldn't budge on that, despite that their emails were never received (I checked spam and never delete stuff) and despite that 'their policy' is to only send the ONE confirmation email despite having my cellphone number that they could easily text a week prior to confirm my stay/ LIKE EVERY OTHER HOTEL DID during my week in CA. Even tho both rooms listed the same individuals staying in them, they were only willing to take off the parking fee from one of the rooms. Keep in mind, when I asked for a manager, the woman said to him 'it's a double booking' as if they have had that before! At what point are they going to realize double booking mistakes are THEIR fault, NOT the customers! At the time, we were livid. But wanting to not ruin an otherwise nice vacation (we were there only one night- the hotel was not full, so our reservation hadn't kept anyone else from being turned away), and since they were charging me anyways, I signed off on the room and we used both of them. I had them print the 2 emails they had sent- and now that I'm home- these 'proof' emails were addressed to a 'Lara B' - NOT EVEN MY NAME OR EMAIL. The content of the message had my email but there is NO PROOF that this was EVER sent to me. SO BEWARE - this hotel's policy does not fix THEIR mistakes. I told the manager they should be texting confirmations a week before- yada, yada, yada, - they'll 'look into it' DON'T BOTHER- just stay at the Ritz and save yourself the headache. Read less
