My First Night as a Married Woman...

...will be spent here!






Jacob called and booked the room yesterday... I'm just hoping that we aren't so tired that night that we can't enjoy the jacuzzi tub and wonderful views! =)

This is the SECOND place we've booked for the wedding night... the first turned out to be a bit of a mess. I'd been browsing around hotels in the area (online) and wasn't able to find anything "special" enough that wasn't going to cost more than I felt we should have to pay (and I really don't want to spend our wedding night in the same hotel as our family... if you knew my family you'd understand). And then I started thinking about beach houses and how I didn't need a fancy hotel room, but a cozy little place to stay for the night and watch with the waves with my new husband.

Beach houses in the area are pretty reasonably priced, especially since it's not a huge touristy spot. HOWEVER, many of them have a two or three night minimum. With our budget and the fact that we're having a Saturday wedding and need to work Monday morning, it just seemed like a waste of money to pay for two nights. However, after finding one house that we liked, we decided to go for it; even though it had a two night minimum, we figured we could rearrange our schedules a little bit.

So we booked it... without knowing that there was an additional booking fee that wasn't clearly stated on their web site. Now, the booking fee was not going to kill us, however we were already spending more than we had budgeted to pay for two nights. When we saw the final cost and I recalculated a bit Jacob and I pretty much determined that we couldn't afford it and should look elsewhere.

There was a cancellation fee, but it was minimal (according to the policy information that I'd seen on their website). I sent off an e-mail stating that I was aware of the cancellation fee and accepted that we'd be paying it, but that we needed to cancel our reservation. I received an e-mail back saying that the cancellation fee that I'd stated was not the current fee, and that the current fee was about 150% of the rate quoted! I looked on their "policy" page on their website again, and, sure enough, there was the small cancellation fee that I had originally seen. So, I sent another e-mail. And got another e-mail back directing me to their policy page!

APPARENTLY going to the policy page from their "home" page took you to a different set of policies than the link from their "reservations" page. I downloaded the policy that I had seen and e-mailed it back to the company. Then I got a phone call.

"I don't know where you got that policy, but it is our old one and no longer valid."

"It was on your website"

"Please hold"............ "The policy page on our website is the new one."

"Do you have the website open??? Go to the reservation page and THEN click on the policies link"

"Please hold"............. "Well, that's our old policy. Did you not see the new one"

"Umm... no."

"I don't know what we can do for you. Our manager is out of the office until Monday so I can't do anything for you until then"

Seriously? I couldn't believe this. It is ON THE WEBSITE! How can they not do anything for me? It's their fuck up, not mine! Thankfully the manager agreed and we got an e-mail the following week telling us that the entire cancellation fee had been refunded to us.

So, happy ending, but still not something I wanted to deal with.