Adventure at the Discount Motel

My wife loves to find deals on just about everything. And it’s awesome. But sometimes, those deals are almost more trouble than they’re worth.

This past weekend we had the privilege of attending a wedding reception on Friday night, and then a wedding followed by a luncheon followed by another reception on Saturday. Since both these weddings took place about 2 hours north of us, it was only reasonable to get a hotel up in that area.

After we partied until it was late (around 8:00 on Friday night), we headed out to our hotel. We pulled into the parking lot of the Super 8 Motel around 8:15 (this post brought to you by the number 8), got our kid out of the car, and the three of us went to check in. The man at the counter confirmed our booking and was ready to give us the key to our smoking room.

Wait, what?

We don’t smoke, my 1-year-old doesn’t smoke (nor will he), and my wife is also pregnant with our second kid. A smoking room is very much out of question. The man at the counter understood our plight, and was very willing to upgrade our room to a non-smoking for $40 extra.

Wait, what?

Since my wife got the killer deal  on the room through Expedia, we were never confirmed as getting a non-smoking room. Apparently we requested one, but it’s left to the motel’s discretion as to whether it’s validated or not. This time, it was not.

The man wouldn’t budge, either. He used words that, to him, made him sound like he cared, but I could tell he wasn’t having any of it. $40 or bust, motel’s rules. Well, we weren’t having any of that, either. We looked up Expedia’s phone number and gave them call.

My wife talked to the customer service agent, who also felt bad for us I’m sure, and offered us a whopping $25 to use for a different hotel. Thanks, but…I’ll take the salt in the wound before that meager offering. $25 most certainly will not get us another room, and we certainly weren’t about to pay an extra $40 for a Super 8! By then it would be nearly $100, for which we could have stayed in a lovely hotel, thank you very much!

My dear wife (bless her heart) asked to speak with someone who could help her. While she was on hold for approximately forever, I took out my phone and began constructing a message to post to their Twitter and Facebook account, just in case they wouldn’t help us. Being a social media manager myself, I know how to get what I want (for the record, public shaming for trying to give a pregnant lady with a 1-year-old a smoking room would most certainly do the trick).

Finally, my wife was able to talk to someone up in the ranks. Whoever she talked to apparently did care (or at least had a reputation to keep up), because the person on the other end said they would refund us the extra $40 on the room “upgrade.”

While we were on hold, other people had come in to the front lobby (where we were) and had checked in to their rooms. Before my wife was done talking with the Expedia person, the man at the counter asked me if they were going to pay for the upgrade, and if so, would we like to go ahead with it because there’s only one more non-smoking room.

I doubt he would have cared if he had sold it on us while we were still on the phone, but we took it and finally made it up to the room. Our poor kid had only slept a grand total of 15 minutes that entire day, so his 9:30 bedtime must have been quite rough on the lad.

Fortunately, everything worked out, and we were able to get a non-smoking room right at the end of the hall where the door to the outside shook our entire room and sounded like an explosion every time it closed.

But hey, at least it was non-smoking.