I refuse to "voluntarily" give up a seat I have paid for, and am, in fact, occupying, and some

[csziggy]

86. Oh, well - at least they didn't evict while you were out during the day

A little over a decade ago my husband and I planned a vacation visiting Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, just north of Cape Canaveral. We reserved a room for a week in Titusville at the Comfort Inn. Each morning we'd leave the room before dawn so we could get breakfast before the gates opened and we would stay at the refuge until dusk, stop for dinner and at Wal-Mart to burn our photos to CDRs so we could fill up the memory cards on our digital cameras again the next day. This worked great for the first two days.

The third evening we got back to the hotel about 9 PM, tired from a long day of birdwatching. Our key card wouldn't unlock the door - then from the inside a man opened the door to see what was happening. He and his companion had checked in around 6 PM and didn't know that the room had been ours.

We went down to the desk and they insisted that we had checked out that morning. After almost an hour they brought out all our luggage, into which they had thrown our stuff - though over $40 worth of food was missing. They insisted we had checked out despite the fact that we had a reservation for a week. They also insisted that they had no room available for us.

Meanwhile I was getting louder and louder. During the time we we in the lobby several family came to check in and I wished them luck with the motel honoring their reservations. Eventually the owner arrived and "found" us a room, giving us three nights free. By the time we got into the room it was nearly midnight.

Each morning after that we packed all our stuff in our car - didn't want to take a chance of anything going missing. When we did check out, they gave us the last part of the week free - I thought we'd been charged for the first few days but when my credit card bill arrived there was no charge at all. That really did not compensate us for the hassle and stress - and the lost day of enjoyment since we were so tired the rest of the week from worrying about losing our room.

When I complained to the Comfort Inn national offices, they told me the franchisers were not under their control and they could do nothing about their screw ups. Since I had made the reservation through AAA, I sent them my complaint and that Comfort Inn was removed from the AAA system.

I will NEVER stay at another Comfort Inn - or any of the other hotels/motels in that system. If they will not set standards for their franchises, what is the point of following their brand?