Hilton - Hotel complaint got me banned from the property
I have an Amex Hilton rewards Diamond membership. I had to spend over 13K to receive certain rewards like a free room. We’re not rich, by any means, it took a long time to build up to a free room.
It was my sons birthday so I called the local Hilton to see if we booked a room if we could have small party for him at the pool area and invite a few guests. They were very nice and accommodating and said absolutely and even offered for us to use their fire pit and grill as well. A week later we booked the room and went to the hotel to ask if we could see it to get an idea of sleeping arrangements. They said they couldn’t at the time. Ok, no problem, so we left.
The day before our stay we got an email to choose our room and noticed the room wasn’t what I thought it was. Being a Diamond member we’re entitled to free upgrades that are available, and have always been treated kindly about that. Not at this hotel. I called Hilton cust serv line and they said they tried to get the upgrade but sounded like they’d had a problem with the hotel, and advised I try to speak to them myself. They were super nice about it, but I could tell the cs agent was frazzled after speaking with the hotel.
I called the hotel and once the front desk accessed my acct and saw the free room, her attitude became awful! I am a calm steady person from years of customer service, so I didn’t feed into her snarky behavior. I felt she was lying about not having an upgraded room avail.
So I called and spoke with the GM. I complained to her about the previous convo with her front desk agent and asked that she looked into it. Well, She was worse! She began saying we couldn’t have a party unless all guests were registered to our room and began changing our agreements. I told her it was no problem, we can add them on to our room, there were only a couple of teens coming, so it would’ve worked out ok. Our room could fit 6, and we only had 6 people. But She didn’t offer to do that nor did she ask if we were ok with the room. She just said this is a free room and it sounds like we cannot accommodate you here and that she was cancelling our room. We were 2 hours from the party time. I begged her not to cancel because we had guests meeting us there. She insisted she was doing it, so I told her if she did that, I would call the state attorney general because I never consented to her changing and breaking the contract. By cancelling it, it made me lose my free room.
I called Hilton and asked for their district managers number. They said I’d have to call the hotel to get it. So I did and got the nasty GM again. She said because I “threatened legal action, I was banned from the property” and if I step foot there they’d call Georgia patrol. I was absolutely floored! I kept my cool and never said anything for her to go that far. I tried to do everything the correct way… asking to have the party beforehand instead of sneaking people in, tried to see the room beforehand, tried to use my diamond status to work through a misunderstanding instead of raising cane.. etc. There was no reason for her to do that.
My son was looking forward to having his friends there for his birthday. I had 3 hours to call parents and make new arrangements. It turned out that the teens just wanted to ride bikes all day and barely would’ve even used the hotel. We didn’t need it after all. But I’d like to have my free room back and be removed from their “do not rent” list.
Thinking about it now, I believe they just didn’t want to rent to people who use their free room.
What advice would you give me? Should I file the complaint with the state Atty general or let Amex do it? Or something else all together?
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