Over the past two weeks I have been on holiday in the USA. I drove around quite a bit, covering 5,600 miles or 9,000 kilometres in that time. That's almost as much driving as I do in a year. In the next few posts I'll recount my experiences, describing the places I visited, the people I met, the food, shopping and the whole tourist experience both good and bad.
To start this off, let's start at the beginning of my journey, before my feet have even left the ground. Booking and paying for the flights was easy enough and getting a new passport was also a breeze. I needed to have a firm base at least for my first two nights, to get set as it were, and so I enrolled in Hilton's HHonors programme, and booked through them. Big mistake that and here's why.
On the 9th September I booked two nights using my BNZ Platinum Visa at the Hilton Garden Inn San Jose/Milpitas, total cost US$218.24. That's not excessive but neither is it a raging bargain either. The booking was handled through Hilton Advance Purchase Memphis.
Then nine days later, on the 18th, the hotel takes it upon itself to bill my Visa card another US$218.48. This was a totally unauthorised transaction. Then on the 21st of September, without my pointing out the matter (the statement hadn't actually arrived, I only found all this out when I returned from overseas and opened my mail), they reversed the $218.48 three days later.
Have they done a good job? You might think so eh. But they hadn't. Why? That $218.48 in New Zealand dollars was NZ$308.18 charged to my account, then only NZ$292 going back in, putting me out of pocket to the tune of $16.00 or thereabouts. If you're going to put something right, then put it right correctly, HHonors took $308.18 off me, then they can put $308.18 back in. Nothing else is acceptable.
Do you see my point? Had I ignored HHonors I'd be $16 better off. Issues that need answering include; who authorised the hotel apart from central booking to charge this card, and what did they think they were doing? I hadn't even checked in yet. The room had been 100% prepaid, so what's up? What if this charge had put me over my limit on the card?
Quite frankly, I'm not happy about this. Hilton HHonors were too loose with my credit card details and I'll not be using them again and I strongly suggest anyone reading this avoid them as well.
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