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NEWS: November 15, 2010 - My car has finally been returned to me - but I do not have satisfaction.

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Tuesday, January 11, 2011

GOOD REVIEW: Super 8 Anaheim

Been a little while since I've updated this, BMW is somewhat on hold until I find the time to start my small claims filing with the courts and all has been mostly well, so I thought I'd start off 2011 with a positive review.

My girl and I decided this year to spend Christmas at Disneyland.  We had never done a multi-day Disney excursion, but we are both theme park enthusiasts and oddly enough it ended up being a relatively cheap option for our Christmas vacation.  We got a 3-day Park Hopper pass, and to help keep costs down we decided to stay at the Super 8 motel that is less than a mile from the Disneyland entrance and just plan on walking there.  I had almost stayed at this Super 8 a few months previous (that story is outside the scope of this article), and while I only got a short look at the rooms I found them to be clean and the facility to be very nice, especially compared to what you expect when you pull into the flourescent glow of the Super 8 signage.  The price was only about $70/night, and considering that it was a holiday weekend and with it's proximity to Disneyland (and with Disneyland parking being approximately 1/5 the price of the motel room) being extraordinarily convenient, we both decided that it would do fine for our needs.

Being road trip people, we are both well versed in the comforts of the cheap hotel room, and we found this Super 8 to be on the upper end of what is normally expected of such places (which is the only scale you can honestly rate them on), nothing fancy, but clean and serves the purpose.  Our stay was uneventful save the fact that it seemed like our upstairs neighbors were having a multi-hour wrestling match on of the nights, and the Disney vacation was a total success.  One slight hiccup was that I had held the room with my AMEX card, but had told the clerk that I wanted to pay with a different one at checkout.  When we checked out very early in the morning (we planned to spend that day at the park and didn't want to come back to check out), the attendant informed me that the card had already been charged and it was too early for a manager to be on duty to reverse the charges and charge the correct card.  This was only a minor inconvenience, but in exchange they allowed us to leave our car parked in their lot for the duration of the day while we went to enjoy Disneyland.  A more than fair trade.

I am reporting this here because when I returned home I discovered an email from Super 8 asking me to fill out a questionnaire regarding my stay.  I generally fill these out when I have time, how else can they know what to improve if you don't tell them, and I gave them a good and fair review of our stay.  In the comments section, out of wanting to be sure I was complete, I mentioned the credit card charging snag, and within eight hours I received the below email from the manager of that Super 8.

These people have totally won my business with this response.  It was totally uneccesary, but shows uncommon integrity in a large corporation.  Thanks Kevin, you are an outstanding manager.


From: Kevin Chen [mailto:noreply@app.medallia.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2010 4:45 PM
To: Joshua Logan
Cc: Kevin Chen
Subject: Your stay at Super 8 Anaheim/Disneyland Drive

Dear Joshua:

Thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to complete our Guest Survey regarding your recent stay at our hotel.  I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed your stay with us and thank you for giving us wonderful grades. 

Thank you for bringing the billing issue to my attention.  I had a chance to review your reservation and understand that you did not wish to leave the payment on the same card you used to reserve the room.  I apologize for this inconvenience and let me try to clarify our reservation procedure and perhaps you can let me know if this does not meet your need.  Typically we do not authorize the guest's reservation credit card until check in, however, due to the busy holiday we do perform this authorization prior to guest check in because oftentimes the hotel will be holding reservations for guests who have no intension of arriving that day.  Having said that, we can always reverse the authorization and switch the payment to a different card should the guest requests.  I apologize if we weren't able to offer that when you checked out.  If you like I can switch out the payment for you, just let me know which card you'd like to use.   

Again, thank you for completing our survey and if I can be of assistance to you, don't hesitate to contact me directly at 714-778-0350.

Sincerely,
Kevin Chen 
General Manager
Super 8 Anaheim Disneyland Drive (www.super8disneyland.com)