Recently, I visited 5 random hotels across Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Montana on a county trip. I used a variety of methods of booking the hotels, including paying for a few stays (one to take advantage of a Wyndham promotion and the other because I’m being reimbursed by my company), using points and even using one free night certificate. I had a good trip, including getting the best hotel upgrade I’ve ever seen (or at least the most unexpected)
Checking My Hotel Bills
I don’t always check my hotel bills right away – I tend to just assume that they are right unless I have a reason to think otherwise. But I do generally and regularly check all of my bank and credit card transactions just as part of general finance. I was gone for about a week, so hadn’t gone through my transactions yet, but I did when I got back. This was also partially due to the fact that part of this trip was a work trip so I had to (joyfully…) fill out an expense report 🙂
It was then I noticed a charge for a hotel of $204.99 on one of my credit cards.
This was surprising to me, because on the hotels where I paid cash, I prepaid (for lower rates), so those charges had all cleared several weeks or months ago. I am not naming the exact hotel here directly because I think it was probably an honest mistake and (as you’ll see) they fixed it easily so I don’t want to give them tons of bad Internet publicity.
Once I saw which hotel it was for, I knew that it was one where I had booked using points. My first thought was that somehow I had screwed up my reservation, but I double checked and it was showing as a points reservation
Calling the hotel
With that information in hand, it was time to call the hotel. The first person I spoke to could not find my reservation at all, even when I gave him my name and the date I stayed there. This made me wonder if this was perhaps a no-show fee? He ended up passing me off to his manager, who was able to find my reservation quite easily. Not sure what was going on with the first person. In any case, she was able to find my reservation and figure out what the problem was. I’m not sure what happened, but in any case, she said that she would refund my card.
The Bottom Line
Just like you should regularly review your hotel reservations, you should always double check your hotel bill. You might not always regularly review your bank and credit card statements, but it’s a good habit to get into. While in most cases it might be a smaller discrepancy, in this case if I had not been reviewing my credit card statements, that would easily have been over $200 that I lost.
Have you ever had an instance where a hotel messed up your bill? Leave your experience in the comments.
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
I would recommend this as well. The beginning of June I stayed at a local IHG airport hotel for an early morning flight. The hotel was booked using a free night certificate. I checked out at the front desk early in the morning without issue turning in my room key to a front desk employee. I thought no more about it until I got my July credit card statement & noticed a $28 dollar charge for the hotel. I contacted the hotel to inquire about the charge on 7/10 & they have still not contacted me back. I have put in a dispute with my credit card company who asked that I submit documentation showing that I had paid for the night with points. Thank goodness I hadn’t trashed that email, as when I went to pull up the reservation from the hotel sight, it was no longer in their system. Like you said in the article, always check your bill & save your receipts!
Hopefully that works out for you! I had another stay on this trip where my hotel charged me $29.90 for 2 days of Internet, even though I’m a Marriott Gold so shouldn’t have had to pay the Internet charges. Like you, I’m waiting for the hotel to get back to me to correct the problem.
The good news is that the $204.99 charge that was the main topic of this post has already been refunded to my card, so that is nice!
My hubby does not look at bills so days later he saw there was A $504 room CHARGE FOR mojitos and a seafood tower! called and got it fixed. Then days later he saw a $1984.00 charge for the hotel on a card he used to pay his Uber rides… called CC company and taken off and new card sent to him…
Took a taxi to airport hotel as it was too late for their shuttle. Got charged for parking. They refunded that via chat in the app.
I personally think they should have reimbursed the taxi ride, but…
(Taxi driver not too happy with it late night 2 mile fare from the airport.)
I had locked in a favorable rate several months in advance for a hotel in London. Got to the hotel early in the morning and left the luggage for a couple of hours, waiting for rooms to be cleaned. We were giving a room, but it wasn’t the one assigned to us originally since we got there so early. Didn’t think anything about that part until check out a week later. Worker hadn’t changed the original reservation to the new room so we were charged the rack rate for every night. Charges were about double what I was expecting. Luckily I checked the bill before leaving and it was resolved. But very glad I didn’t leave the hotel without asking for the bill.
I NEVER use in room check out. I always check out at the front desk and, more importantly, I ALWAYS get a printed final room receipt. If there are any erroneous charges listed, that is the time to get them taken care of. Even when the desk person tells me that there are “no charges”I insist on and get a final receipt.
I remember a stay at a Vegas hotel where I saw a room service charge that I didn’t remember. It turned out it happened because I picked up one of the snacks off the tray with a sensor on it but it didn’t register me putting it back so it charged for it. I was able to call customer support while waiting in line at the front desk and quickly have it removed.