Overall

It took me quite a while to calm down to put my anger into writing. My wife and I planned a traveling to Belgium and after a time-consuming choosing finally I booked a room in Hotel La Madeleine in Brussels via an internet hotel booking system. In the first place, the booking was made without any credit card number, but to secure a room, again I booked a room in the same hotel on the same day. And consequently the previous reservation was canceled. After a rather tough day when we visited 3 major cities in Belgium, fairly tired and hungry, we arrived at Hotel La Madeleine and simply wanted the room we booked, then the terrible thing just happened: the hotel reception first admitted my reservation but then he told me that I already cancelled it and there was nothing for us. It was really a shock! I explained that I did cancel the previous booking but NOT the final one with the credit card number. To make sure who should take the responsibility for it, I asked him to check the according booking number in the cancellation page and compare with the booking number of the reservation with credit card. I also showed him the printed confirmation e-mail I took with me that clearly stated everything about my reservation with credit card. But he simply refused to do that and said what he could offer us was a single room without any toilet or bath facility with a rate that was exactly the same as the one for my reservation for a double room (incl. breakfast). I insisted his examining the cancellation more carefully. Finally, he admitted that the hotel made a mistake, but his attitude was just getting unbelievably rude: he teased me by saying 'why didn't you called me and directly book a room with me rather than via a hotel reservation company... This is not your country, you can not just get what you want...you can only choose to stay here in a single room or just get out of here with nothing...if you still stand here I will call the police!!!!' We were really irrigated by this bloodily ugly offense. We asked about talking with his manager. Ridiculously, his answer was we were speaking with the hotel manager now! After that, he left us aside and dealt with other guests. Just discovering it was no use to make any sense from such a man, we left this hotel really without anything - NO respect at least, NO favor to this city. It was after 9 pm and we were wondering in the street. After several "fully booked" answers by other hotels we just realized it was impossible to find a proper room in such a holiday weekend. Extremely frustrated and hungry, we took the last train back home in the Netherlands and arrived home after 1 am in the chilly morning...

Atmosphere

Convenience

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Value

6 June 2005 | A Yahoo! User

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