Very, Very Bad Public Relations

Read the saga of what happened to two people who tried to stay at a hotel and encountered Mike, the Night Clerk. It starts out like this: "We held guaranteed, confirmed reservations at the DoubleTree Club for the night of November 14-15. - These rooms were held for late arrival with a major credit card. - Tom is a card-carrying Hilton HHonors Gold VIP? - Yet when we arrived at 2:00am? we were refused rooms! - Mike, your Night Clerk, said the only rooms left were off-limits because their plumbing and air-conditioning had broken! He'd given away the last good rooms three hours ago! He'd done nothing about finding us accommodation elsewhere! - And he was deeply unapologetic!" To read the entire story, see this link. It's a slide show, but no special software like PowerPoint is needed. Just click on the arrow at the bottom of the screen to navigate to the next screen. Make sure you read screen 16 (out of 17). Ouch. This took place in 2001, and the story has been circulating ever since. It almost makes you feel sorry for Mike. Almost. Via I Will Teach You To Be Rich. For Ramit Sethi's further comments about this and other instances of customer service (or lack thereof), see this post.