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British Mensa Travel Special Interest Group |
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Paris
and the sting In September I went to Mauriac in the Auvergne for ten days. It made sense to spend a night in Paris on the way there and another on the way back, so I booked a room by fax at the two star Modial Hôtel Européen. I had stayed there before and been satisfied. On the way out there was a slight hiccup. I was charged for breakfast which I had not booked. The desk clerk insisted I leave my booking confirmation with him so that he could explain to his employer why he had deducted the charge from my bill. I asked him to make sure that my second booking did not include breakfast but he advised me to do that when I checked in. On the way back things were more serious. When I reached the hotel at about 5:30 p.m. I was told that my name did not appear on the list of reservations. I produced the document I had originally faxed and the bill from my earlier stay and the desk clerk, a woman this time, accepted my claim to have a confirmed booking. There were no rooms available, she said, and she was not responsible, she was only an employee, but she knew someone who could put me up in a room without a shower (but with a sink) for only €50 cash in advance. I declined the offer so she phoned some hotels. None of them had a room. An older man appeared, the proprietor or the manager, and suggested more hotels. None of them had a room. At my request she phoned Eurostar and asked if I could change my ticket to leave that evening. They refused. She said I might be able to share with a guest who had not yet arrived. I was not keen. Besides, who knew what time she would arrive and whether she would agree to share with me. Several people came in looking for accommodation and were turned away. The desk clerk told me her shift finished at 7:30 but she had been in my situation herself and was sorry for me and would try her best to find something. She phoned hotels in the suburbs. None of them had a room. Eventually I capitulated and said I'd take the room without a shower. She informed the landlord and gave me precise instructions how to get there. I was led me up two flights of worn wooden stairs past the premises of a clothing distributor. My landlord explained that he had bought the place as a buy-to-let investment and intended to do it up if he could get planning permission without too great an increase in taxable value. He unlocked the door of a room decorated several generations ago with apple green paint, now peeling and grubby and showed me the loo, which was some distance away and had its own key. All the walls and ceilings sported bulges, cracks, pipes and cables. The room boasted a sink with a cold water tap, someone's clothes in the cupboard, someone's photographs on the cabinet, someone's notebooks and glasses on one of the tables, grey half light through windows I could not open, an electric bulb too weak to read by and creaking floorboards. Every step I took produced a loud creak. In the loo the bottom window pane was missing and had been replaced with cardboard, the walls were scrawled with orange graffiti and there was a puddle on the concrete floor. On the Eurostar the next day I got chatting to my neighbours. It turned out that the couple sitting behind me had been bumped out of their hotel room despite the fact that they had paid in advance because, allegedly, a child had broken his leg and his mother couldn't leave Paris. They finished up in a room at a lower standard hotel, which was in the middle of being renovated, and which cost them £120 more than their original room. And the young man on my right, who had just finished a six week training course in Paris, had been obliged to vacate the hotel room booked for him by his home country's embassy. The embassy found him a room at another hotel at an additional cost of €150. We concluded that we could have saved ourselves a lot of bother if we had slipped the booking clerks a little something to unbook someone else, or offered to pay a higher rate for our rooms. I wonder if VISA readers know whether we have any redress and/or how we can avoid situations of this sort in the future. First published in VISA issue 70 (Dec 2006) |