Is This Fairmont Hotel Playing Games With Me, Or Do They Just Have Wonky Rules?

Fairmont Hamilton Princess Billing Error

I don’t know if I am in the thousands of hotels realm as Shawn is (podcast throwback there), but I have stayed in more than my share. In all of those stays I have never had anything like this Fairmont Hamilton Princess billing error before. Heck, I’ve never even heard of such a thing before. It kind of defies logic, but I am hoping someone has experience with the hotel and can chime in. I know an MTM Diamond group member is going through the same thing. Which means it isn’t just some one off wonky experience.

My Booking

We threw together a last minute plan to travel to Bermuda for spring break. Most of it came together swimmingly, except for the positioning flight to NYC. Luckily, my credit card application plan finally ended up working out as I had hoped it would. We now have all of the flights locked in as of early this week.

The hotel bookings were a seemingly less hectic endeavor. That was until the Fairmont Hamilton Princess billing error happened at least. I had booked a one night stay in a suite at the hotel. It was cheaper than booking two individual rooms for the four of us. I used some Amex FHR credits for the following nights at another property.

Fairmont is a part of the All Accor program. Their set up works a bit differently when talking about award stays. You redeem points in 2,000 point chunks to take 40 Euros off your bill. That is a little over $46 USD worth at the time of writing, or $0.023 per point. An amazing redemption rate, especially if you took advantage of some Bilt transfer bonuses like I did.

I had used 36,000 points to offset $843.91 of my $849.90 stay, which left $5.99 being charged to my card. An expensive night, but a great use of points. Or, so I thought…

Fairmont Hamilton Princess Billing Error

After a few weeks of booking I noticed that I was never billed the $5.99 for the stay. It seemed a little strange, but I figured it may be something I just pay at checkout. That was until a massive charge hit my credit card a few days later.

Uh, what the hell is this?! It made no sense to me where this $693.64 came from. I initially thought it was an error on the points processing side, but it wasn’t even for the right amount. After looking at the initial booking more closely, I noticed it was the base fare for the room before taxes and fees are added in. That made even less sense to me.

I looked at my All Accor account and the reservation still showed I owed $5.99. Why the heck am I being charged almost $700 then?

Calling Accor Provides No Help

I first tried calling the ALL Accor help line. They seemed less in the loop with their hotels compared to other award programs I have dealt with. The phone rep looked over the booking and said that she shows it should be $5.99. She was questioning if it was a temp charge or not. I said it hit my account a few weeks back, so no it was not a pending charge. After some back and forth she did advise that I call the hotel directly and ask for in house reservations (the only useful thing I got out of the call). The rep said they would email the hotel and let us know what they said. I never received further communication from them though.

Calling The Hotel Directly

After hanging up with All Accor I reached out to the hotel directly about my Fairmont Hamilton Princess billing error to see how to get my money back. I spoke with an annoyed sounding woman at the in house reservations department. I am guessing she gets this call a lot and is tired of explaining it, but blame your hotel’s stupid rules – not me!

She explained that on “special” promo rates that they collect the money up front. Then at check out they would apply the points, assuming no room charges etc. are there. Problem is that you already took my points. That means you have my points AND my money – not cool. I can only imagine the headache at checkout too. The last thing I want to do on vacation is argue to get my $700 back.

I will say that she sounded very confident about all of this. She also gave off a high level of competence, which both things when combined calmed my fears down a bit. I was at least a little hopeful that they seem to deal with this often and it shouldn’t be an issue at checkout. Just a little bit though.

Being Charged While Using Points

This Fairmont Hamilton Princess billing error is a weird one. Hopefully someone reading has already gone through the process and can chime in how it worked out. I don’t have a ton of experience with ALL Accor, but I have used points in the past without a problem. I don’t know if this is an all Fairmont hotels policy, or just a Fairmont Hamilton Princess policy. Either way, it makes absolutely no sense to me since they take the points up front.

I have a nice stash of points that I planned on using while on property towards food and beverage charges. Now I am afraid that will just confuse the entire process. If I was to ever book this hotel again I would just pay cash and then redeem my points at checkout to get credited back. If I am going to front the money either way, at least on special rates, then I might as well streamline everything. Then it is just one calculation at checkout, versus two or three different ones possibly here. What a mess…