Damn you 100% Guarantee!!!

[Getoutofmylobby]

In theory, an ironclad 100% satisfaction guarantee should be a good selling point for a hotel. And really all reasonable guests should be satisfied with their stay. In practice though, I hate it. There are just too many loopholes and grey areas, and us desk people are left to deal with them, causing premature aging, ulcers and evil thoughts. Like this situation that happened this morning.

Lady comes up to check out and i can tell she clearly has a problem but doesn't speak up about it until i ask her the standard "was everything ok with your stay?"

Lady: Well our bathroom was not cleaned properly
Me: I'm sorry about that, did you call the front desk about it?
Lady: It was late, I didn't think i needed to.
Me: You should let us know of any problem as it arises so we can fix it.
Lady: But i don't want to pay for a dirty room, you have a guarantee or something right?

Dammit.

So here are the factors i had to weigh in:

1) If she saw the room was dirty last night when she checked in, she didn't tell us about it, so how could we fix it? We had plenty of empty rooms last night (one identical room to hers was right next door).

2) She used the bathroom anyway so how do we know what dirt is hers and what dirt was there when she checked in? (She seemed like the OCD, clean freak type. When we checked the room later most of the surfaces in the bathroom were covered in TP and those paper ass-gaskets she probably took from the lobby bathroom.)

3) Its unclear whether i have the authority to give 100%. I mean i know how to do it and technically i should but of the few times I have done it I've been told it wasn't necessary by management and that they should have been called first (hard to do when some pissed off woman is staring you down).

4) Our manager tries to weasel his way out of the majority of 100% requests and i tend to agree with the customer's point of view anyway which makes me ill-equipped for weaseling.

5) She wasn't a member of our frequent guest program. Had she been I would have given her 100% immediately.

But all of this doesn't matter because if i tell her NO on the 100% guarantee, like i should, our hotel has now lied to her and made a bad situation worse.

I couldn't just vanish into thin air (although i really wanted to) so i made a compromise. I gave her half off the room and stapled my manager's business card to her reciept. It was a cheap way out and we still failed on the guarantee part but if my manager wants to charge her full price (which he will) then he can do it himself. And if she was just looking for a discount she didn't deserve, she got it. And i got her out of my face.

She wasn't happy with any of this at all but what else could I do?

Anyone else have problems with 100% guarantees?

[chinashirtgirl]

Most of these kinds of problems could be solved if the customers would just call when there's a problem with their room. Waiting till the next day just screams "scammer" and as the OP says, there's no way to prove the customer didn't make the mess herself. Why do people "suffer in silence" and then go all SC when it's time to check out?

[BookstoreEscapee]

Why do people "suffer in silence" and then go all SC when it's time to check out?

Because if they gave the hotel the opportunity to fix the problem they wouldn't have grounds to weasel a discount.

[allniter]

It should be written:

100% Satisfaction Guarantee*


*Subject to conditions. If we cannot fix the problem, a discount of ___% will be applied to your bill. **Customer must have reasonable objections as to why the problem was not fixed and the objection must be backed by proof, not stupidity.


At least with this posted, we can point out they knew the full details of the guarantee beforehand. And if they object badly, they know we're calling them stupid

[mattm04]

Once we stayed in a hotel but got in late at night. It was in South Carolina in the middle of July. The A/C in our room was only half working. A simple phone call to the desk, a few minutes later a employee came up agreed A/C was broke and came back a few minutes later with a luggage cart and brought us to a new room. We got a 30% discount for the trouble. No SC actions needed.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

"Mister, if you don't shut up I'm going to kick 100% of your ass!"

Fast Times At Ridgemont High for teh Win.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

satisfaction is such a relative term.

For some people, a decent experience is satisfactory, for others satisfaction equals perfection.

[BookstoreEscapee]

It should be written:

100% Satisfaction Guarantee*


*Subject to conditions. If we cannot fix the problem, a discount of ___% will be applied to your bill. **Customer must have reasonable objections as to why the problem was not fixed and the objection must be backed by proof, not stupidity.

We should add: If you don't let us know there is a problem until you are checking out, you are SOL because we can't fix it if we don't know it's broken.


CrazedClerk - you are exactly right. That's the problem with saying "satisfaction guaranteed" - you never know what constitutes "satisfaction" to some people...

[Sliceanddice]

i think when people think about those guarantees they feel that it means 'if we cant fix when you tell us about it, when it occurs,we will comp you' or somethng like that

[HawaiianShirts]

Anyone else have problems with 100% guarantees?

Yeah, actually, I do, but from a slightly different standpoint. That kind of thing, to me, has often looked like a blame tool for managers. In the hotel situation, for example, if they have to refund the room because the guest was not satisfied, they can blame the staff for not cleaning the room or whatever the problem was. If that happens often enough, they can fire staff members on the grounds that X Employee was costing the company money by not providing satisfactory stays for all guests. When in reality, in some cases, it's the manager being either lazy (doesn't notice or act on problems) or spineless (refunds the room at the slightest complaint). Or some managers may use it to "weed out" the employees who are not "totally committed" to the company.

Why do I think that way? Because of this experience...

I was at a restaurant once that had signs up on every table, counter, and on buttons every server wore: "If we don't offer you dessert when we bring your receipt, you eat free!" I read that as a sneaky ploy by the higher-ups to make servers offer dessert more often in an effort to increase revenue by increasing dessert sales. Of course, that also probably meant that some servers would get in trouble if enough tables ate free because they forgot to offer dessert, or the table's bill might even have come out of their checks. I'm not sure, but I thought it was shady.

As luck would have it, our server brought the receipt, asked if we had enjoyed the meal (which we did), thanked us for visiting, and set down the receipt. In a very exaggerated whisper, as she was turning to walk away, I said, "Psst! This is where you ask if we want dessert!"

She cursed under her breath, turned, and asked me, cringing, "Is it too late to ask if either of you would like a slice of pie or a shake?" I told her it was not too late, but we were quite full. She sighed, and left.

The host who took our payment asked if the server had offered dessert, and I said she had. We paid in full. Before we could leave, though, the server stopped me at the door, and said, "Thanks. You saved me my job. The manager told me today if I had to comp one more table for the dessert thing, I'd be fired." Then she rushed back to work.

Now I could be overgeneralizing or just plain paranoid, but those things just don't sit well with me. They never have.

[Evil Queen]

I've never had the problem with the 100% guarantee. It's like people who stay at my hotels don't know it exists. ^_^

[hotelnpa]

Our hotel does not take pets...never has, never well. In fact, no hotel in the chain takes pets.

One night as I was working, I saw a guy come down the lobby and he had a dog with him on a leash. I informed him (keep in mind he is a member of our customer loyalty/points program) in a quiet tone that we do not allow pets, except service dogs. This dog wasn't a service dog. There were people coming in the lobby at the time so I was trying to be discreet about it.

The man went ape-sh@@ on me. He started yelling at me repeating "I am not 100% satisfied! I am not 100% satisfied!" I was never told I couldn't have a dog!" (Well I guess the signs at the desk saying "No Pets Allowed" is written in French or something.) "I am checking out and I want a full refund!"

By this time, he was already in house for about 10 hours. I am not the one who checked him in either. I called the girl who checked him in and she said they must have entered through one of the side doors because she would have stopped them if she saw their pet.

Of course the manager was out of town and couldn't be reached. Although we are told to use our judgement on these type cases, the last time I have a 100% refund, the manager yelled at me.

I checked them out and informed that I wasn't allowed to give them the refund. (He wouldn't receive it anyway because he violated the "No Pet" policy.) Of course he went ape sh@@ on me again. He asked for the corporate # and stormed out. To top that, as guests were coming in, he was saying "Don't stay here! They will rip you off!"

[Evil Queen]

"Hello new guests, this man violated our No Pet Policy. Please ignore him, as he ignored our obviously posted rules.* Points to No Pets Sign.

[calulu]

Flowers O Suck has a cheerful '100% Satisfaction Guarantee' that many assclowns take to mean that if their flowers get there five minutes late or they call up at 3 am requesting roses and we ain't got 'em or if some little minor thing goes wrong, say the florist substitutes something of greater or equal value because he's out that we should 100% refund their money AND allow them to keep the product.

It is pretty sucky because you either get the flowers or the money back but not both. Unfortunately that's not how much folks see it.

Dreading tomorrow when I will receive a million calls telling me that Momma is on deaths door because the roses arrived the wrong shade of pink or the florist delivered an orchid not a violet. I authorized all those damn changes and it's going to be hell....

[thehippie777]

It should be written:

100% Satisfaction Guarantee*


*Subject to conditions. If we cannot fix the problem, a discount of ___% will be applied to your bill. **Customer must have reasonable objections as to why the problem was not fixed and the objection must be backed by proof, not stupidity.


At least with this posted, we can point out they knew the full details of the guarantee beforehand. And if they object badly, they know we're calling them stupid

I pretty much agree that at least this requirement should be applied: We encourage our guests to inform us immediately of issues so we can make your stay even better!

But....yeah...no-go I guess



But yeah the 100% Garantee is good in theory, and is an attempt for a hotel chain to show they truly care. But, Communism is good in theory too until humans are applied to the calculation. The SCs among us want everything for free because they seem to think they are the only ones who need to save money. I often think such people really should have worked in hotels for a week at least.