Some days at work really make you question your life choices!

This front desk employee shares how a guest used third party app to book a reservation and mixed the dates up.

Check out the full story.

Third party chronicles

Heard about this Reddit from a guest of mine, thought I might as well share some stories here since I’ve been working as a front desk for almost a year now!

As the title indicates, this is about third-party booking sites. I haven’t had many problems with them; most issues have been cancellation requests or questions.

This is where it gets tricky…

But about 2 months ago, my hotel was pretty busy since we had 2 groups of college debate teams in-house, which meant we had a VERY limited number of rooms for that night.

So, towards the end of the night, about two hours before I leave for the night, I only had to worry about one guest. I wasn’t too worried about them since one of them had already called to say they would come in after the night audit.

So I decided to start my night duties, i.e., taking out the trash, making sure the coffee is fresh, and so on. However, as I was finishing setting up the new coffee, a guest walked in. We’re gonna call her Molly

Molly came in when I was starting my night routine at around 9:00 pm. I could tell she was a bit agitated already from the way she set her stuff down on my counter.

We already know there is trouble ahead!

But I treated her all the same with a smile and a “hello! How are you tonight?”

I asked for her ID and card that she wanted to use for our deposit while she told me about her day. But as she was talking, I noticed that I didn’t see her reservation on my list for that day.

I let this be known, and she looked MAD. So I quickly told her I’d check the system to see if her reservation might have been for the wrong dates.

Lo and behold, I found it; she wasn’t supposed to check in until two weeks from now.

However, she had told me it wasn’t possible; the dates had been changed earlier that day, and all of this should have been fixed.

She requested some arrangement to be made…

She explained that she had originally mixed up the dates and called the hotel to see if we could fix it. Because it was a third party, we weren’t able to change the dates or refund the money that wasn’t taken.

So my manager also redirected her to the third-party site and had her call them.

I asked her to call the third party herself to see what was going on. We waited about 30 minutes for them to get her off hold, finally.

I was also texting my manager to ask if she had talked to anyone about a third-party reservation in the morning.

As my manager was about to ask me to call her, Molly came up to the front desk, looking confused, and said, “They said they need to speak to the front desk because they’ve been calling you guys and you never picked up.”

UH OH…

We both gave each other a confused look, considering we BOTH have been standing and waiting at the front desk for over thirty minutes with no calls coming in.

But I just brushed it off.

At this point, I was getting a little antsy because I still needed to take out our trash and set up for my night audit. FINALLY, they called the front desk after 5 MORE minutes of just no calls whatsoever.

By now, I was getting irritated too, but I still kept my professional voice when talking to them. Of course, had to go through them asking my position and what my name was, blah blah blah, whatever.

However, one thing catches my ear, and I knew from that point I had to call my manager:

They knew something was off…

“So it looks like from our notes that we were told that your management would change the dates on your side, and the card used for the original reservation can be charged.”

“…I’m sorry, that’s not possible. Since you guys are a third party and have sent us a digital card that is only valid for the days on the original reservation, we cannot change the days or charge that card. and I can assure you my manager did NOT agree to something like that.”

“Well then, could you refund the payment, and we can take care of the rest from there!”

“We didn’t take a payment since we can’t check her in yet. We only take payments up front when a guest arrives.”

The conversation goes on…

“Well then, can the guest pay for another room, and then you guys refund that money?”

“….again, sir, we haven’t taken a payment, so there is nothing to refund on our side. YOU guys would be the ones to refund her payment since she paid through YOUR site.”

They tried to argue with me, saying I should change the dates on my side and that the card they provided should work. I told them that’s not going to work.

We can either cancel the reservation and THEY issue a refund to the guest, or they can change the dates themselves. I know they can do this because they have done it MANY times before.

After basically going in circles with telling them no, I called my manager and told them I would be putting them on hold.

They were trying their best to deal with this customer.

When I got hold of my manager and explained the situation to her, she immediately shut down the claim that she had even talked to them! She told me to keep doing what I was doing, and if they don’t budge, ‘oh well!’

It’s around 10:30 now, and I still haven’t checked Molly in, I still have trash to take out, and I still have to set up for the next shift.

I just took a deep breath and sighed for a minute before getting back on the phone with them. I told Molly what they were trying to get me to do.

I understood she didn’t want to pay for another room since she had already paid through them, and given that our rates were already high, I told her I’d follow up on what the third party said next.

I ended up letting them know that my manager did, in fact, NOT agree with what they told me I should have known they were gonna throw me back into that damn circle of me telling them no and what they need to do.

That’s INSANE!

We were finally getting somewhere when they told me they were going to get a supervisor on the phone.

From there, I explained what they could do and asked which manager they had spoken with this morning. Funny thing is, the supervisor told me my morning manager’s name, it was my general manager.

I texted her, and what do you know- she ALSO said she didn’t agree to that and told them EXACTLY when I told them! At this point, I was over being professional and just straight up gave them two choices

A- You can either change the days on the reservation, and we can all get off the phone, or B- refund the damn money, and she can just make a reservation through us since that would be SO much easier at this point.

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They finally budged and said I could cancel the reservation without a cancellation fee.

She knew she had to deal with them her way!

Once again, I had to reiterate, WE DIDN’T TAKE ANY MONEY/ WON’T TAKE ANY MONEY, so there WOULDN’T BE ANYTHING TO REFUND OR CHARGE!

I don’t know if that was what it took for them to let me cancel it finally, or what, but I had to make sure they were going to keep their promise to refund her the money SHE HAD ALREADY SPENT.

After that, I just wished them a good day and hung up.

In the end, I made her a reservation through our system and applied the military discount, since she had asked for it and I had already seen her ID. We talked a bit more before she went to her room for the night.

Finally things tamed down…

I was thankful that my night audit was running an extra 30 minutes late, which meant I was staying almost an hour over my time, so I was able to finish the last of my duties before they got there.

I crashed as soon as I got home, taking some Tylenol to try to soothe the headache I got from that whole interaction.

All in all, I pray for the other front desk that has been in this longer than I have, and possibly dealt with MUCH worse experiences with third parties than I have. (For reference, this isn’t the worst I’ve dealt with third parties, but it still boggles my mind to this day.)

YIKES! That sounds like a long night!

How do these third parties even get business when they have horrible customer service?

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a hotel guest who complained about noise from an event, then reported the employee who agreed with him.

Let’s find out what folks on Reddit think about this one.

That’s right! This user knows third parties should always refund when necessary.

Exactly! This user knows people need to stop lying.

This user knows third party apps are pretty bad!

This user wonder’s if Molly was trying to scam the hotel.

This user always goes to see if the front desk people know about this Reddit community.

Somebody needs to get some rest after all of that!

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who volunteered to help promote a church event for free, then was surprised to find she had to still pay admission to get in.