WARNING - HOTEL SAN GIORGIO

[sailaway54321]

A year ago I booked a room and prepaid (big mistake) for a night at the hotel.  Two day's before we were to leave on a plane I get the dreaded email so many others have gotten: see below

We wanted to be in walking distance to town so we passed on the offer to stay at there other property. Thinking about all the great reviews this hotel had a year ago I felt confident that my money would be refunded. (mistake #2)  Now I have been emailing the hotel for over a month and a half and I still have no refund.  The credit card company can't help because the charges are not within 90 days.  I urge you to read current reviews on other sites and see the posting title BEWARE - Bait and Switch in Civitavecchiaon this site:

BEWARE - Bait and Switch in Civitavecchia  who went through the same thing as I did, but I lost money.  I will update this post if this ever gets resolved. My advice is to stay away from this hotel.

We are writing this message as we are very sorry to inform you that there was an error in our room allocation/reservation system and on 06.10.2018 we are in an overbooking situation.

 Please kindly note that we do not have any other rooms available, therefore we offer you the following options: 

to cancel your room reservation free of charge as we are not in the conditions to honour the booking.

Or

to accept the reallocations in Hotel Mercure Sunbay Park ****

 We will bring you directly from the new Hotel the day after to go to the port

 We apologise for the inconvenience caused and attend your reply in order to find the best solution for your stay,

Kind regards

Alessandro Maramici

 

[Hlitner]

The only way we would book this particular hotel is if they sent us money, in advance, for us to hold as a guarantee that they would honor their reservation :(.  If you do some online research you will find that what happened to you is quite common at this particular hotel.  Is this normal in Italy?  No way.  We have traveled extensively in Italy on self-drive trips and booked many hotels throughout the country.  We have never had a hotel send such a letter.  And when you conduct some due diligence one would have to believe that the overbooking is deliberate.  Good luck in getting your money refunded.    In your situation we would suggest forwarding a copy of your correspondence and issue to the tourist office at info@civitavecchia.com.  And certainly post your experience on sites such as Tripadvisor, Expedia,  and other hotel sites.  You will be in good company as you will notice that there are quite a few similar posts.

 

Even if you never get your money refunded, you may have done a good deed in discouraging others from booking this property.

Hank

[samavarcruiser]

On 11/20/2018 at 9:14 PM, sailaway54321 said:

A year ago I booked a room and prepaid (big mistake) for a night at the hotel.  Two day's before we were to leave on a plane I get the dreaded email so many others have gotten: see below

We wanted to be in walking distance to town so we passed on the offer to stay at there other property. Thinking about all the great reviews this hotel had a year ago I felt confident that my money would be refunded. (mistake #2)  Now I have been emailing the hotel for over a month and a half and I still have no refund.  The credit card company can't help because the charges are not within 90 days.  I urge you to read current reviews on other sites and see the posting title BEWARE - Bait and Switch in Civitavecchiaon this site:

BEWARE - Bait and Switch in Civitavecchia  who went through the same thing as I did, but I lost money.  I will update this post if this ever gets resolved. My advice is to stay away from this hotel.

We are writing this message as we are very sorry to inform you that there was an error in our room allocation/reservation system and on 06.10.2018 we are in an overbooking situation.

 Please kindly note that we do not have any other rooms available, therefore we offer you the following options: 

to cancel your room reservation free of charge as we are not in the conditions to honour the booking.

Or

to accept the reallocations in Hotel Mercure Sunbay Park ****

 We will bring you directly from the new Hotel the day after to go to the port

 We apologise for the inconvenience caused and attend your reply in order to find the best solution for your stay,

Kind regards

Alessandro Maramici

 

 

Thanks for sharing 😞

 

 

[firefall]

Thank you for this information.  I will be cancelling my reservation for 10/19 !!

 

Kathy 

[Live4cruises]

Oh wow!  I have been corresponding with this hotel, and was on the verge of booking for next April.  I saw them on Expedia, then found their website.  Sailaway, did you book through the hotel directly, or another site?  Others who have had this experience, did you find a correlation between the two methods of booking?

Thank you,

[sailaway54321]

I had booked with the hotel directly off the website.  It is beyond me why since they cancelled my reservation they won't refund my money, maybe they are hoping that people take them up on there offer to stay at there less desirable property that is not in walking distance to town.

The day before my cruise I even stopped by the hotel and talked to the manager about refunding my money on the spot, looking back now I should have pressed for a refund while I was there or seeing if the police could help out. Not something I wanted to happen or deal with right before our bucket list cruise to the Holy Land.  Luckily we found a cute B&B within walking distance to the buses that take you to your cruise.

I have sent my problem to Elliott to see if he can help.

It's not so much about the money at this point, I just don't want them to be able to get away with this.

When I booked the hotel a year ago, I did do a search on the hotel and read nothing but good things, I recently searched and found people with the same problem I'm having.

[Live4cruises]

Thank you, Sailaway,

I had just come back to this thread to say “never mind my last question, we don’t need that kind of stress!”

We will make another hotel selection.  Thank you so much for posting your experience, and I hope you are successful SOON in getting your refund.

 

Best,

Live4cruises 

[Despegue]

Well, I can recommend to stay at Tenuta dell’ argento up in the hills around Civitaveccia.

 

San Giorgio is infamous for their “overbooking” scam.

 

[Hlitner]

I am going to straddle the board rules to give some more help to the OP...assuming they want to truly pursue the matter and perhaps make a difference.  There is a pretty decent consumer-travel advocate named Chistopher Elliott.  He is for real as is his organization, but they do pick and choose which issues they prefer to pursue.  But if the OP has all the facts, in writing, then Mr. Elliott may take an interest and get you results or an explanation.  So here is a link to his web site where you  can read about what they do and how you might be able to get them to work on your behalf

https://www.elliott.org

 

Hank

[nini]

Can you challenge it with your credit card company since you never

received what you paid for?

[sailaway54321]

10 hours ago, Hlitner said:

I am going to straddle the board rules to give some more help to the OP...assuming they want to truly pursue the matter and perhaps make a difference.  There is a pretty decent consumer-travel advocate named Chistopher Elliott.  He is for real as is his organization, but they do pick and choose which issues they prefer to pursue.  But if the OP has all the facts, in writing, then Mr. Elliott may take an interest and get you results or an explanation.  So here is a link to his web site where you  can read about what they do and how you might be able to get them to work on your behalf

https://www.elliott.org

 

Hank

Thanks Hank, as mentioned in post #6 I used Elliott as a hint of what I was doing. I wasn't sure if you could post outside links. 

On Wednesday the day before Thanksgiving, I sent Elliott my story and I could not believe he replied on Thanksgiving asking for me for more documentation.  I sent him everything he asked for and two days ago, on Sunday, he responded by telling me that the hotel said they refunded the money to me and to check with AMEX and see if it was credited.  On Monday morning I contacted AMEX and they told me that no credit or refund was issued on that card in the last 11 months and if I can get a transaction number of the refund that they can investigate. I let Elliott know what AMEX told me and I am now waiting for his response.

So I can think of 3 possibilities:

1:  They refunded my money and AMEX lost it. (a transaction number will help find the missing funds)

2:  They lied to Elliott and still have no intentions of refunding my funds to me.

3:  They did the refund after being contacted by Elliott and the refund will appear in 3-5 business days

 

Thanks NINI, as mentioned I did contact AMEX, but most credit card companies will not do a charge back that is not within 60-90 days. I made this reservation a year in advance because I had read good thing about it on this site a year ago.  (recent reviews are now not so good)

It's to bad that the Credit Card Companies can't do a charge back for services that are pre-paid in advance and start the 60-90 days when you used the service.  I will never pre-pay the full amount for an overseas hotel again unless it's a major chain, which you won't find in Civitavecchia.

 

Thanks everyone, and I will let you know the outcome with Elliott.  (a fun site to visit)

[puppycanducruise]

Good luck.

Please let us know the outcome.

[Hlitner]

Am also interested in the outcome.  When it comes to believing that hotel vs AMEX I would have to side with AMEX based on more then 40 years of dealings with AMEX.  Perhaps its a clerical error on the part of that hotel since despite their history of overbooking and canceling reservations, we do not see others being denied a refund.  It is terrific that Mr. Elliott has taken on your issue as it just reinforces my growing respect for this consumer advocate.  Those who follow Christopher Elliott know that he and his staff have a good track record in getting results so you should have some cause for optimism.  

 

On a personal basis I stand by what we posted earlier which is we would not consider booking a reservation with that hotel until such time as they change ownership/management.  History tells us that the San Giorgio cannot be trusted.  When you couple this with more then a few bad reviews we have seen elsewhere it would seem that there are better options with other hotels.

 

Hank

[samavarcruiser]

I cancelled my reservation for 2019 🙂

[sailaway54321]

Just to update, the Elliott team contacted the hotel on November 28, and they are still waiting for a reply.

 

[GeezerCouple]

Good to know that Elliott et al. really do "act" in suitable situations.

 

I'll be very curious to know how this hotel finally handles this information.

 

I would have interpreted the "... free of charge..." to mean they'd automatically refund your money, once you let them know that was the choice you made.

Otherwise, it sounds like if you do anything else, they'd charge you *more* 

 

When we had vacation rental cabins/lodges (we stopped that when we got too busy with our own travels!), we had only one chargeback, from a scammer, but it was either VISA or MasterCard.  But it was months after the initial payment.  We sent copies of the relevant emails, and had the chargeback reversed.  Point is... it was *months* after the initial charge.

 

Is it clear that Amex will *never* do a chargeback when the charge was further back in time, and it's such an obvious situation like this (e.g., not dissatisfaction with a product, but the vendor saying, "sorry, we cannot give you what you paid for")?

 

GC

[sailaway54321]

On 12/10/2018 at 12:11 PM, GeezerCouple said:

Good to know that Elliott et al. really do "act" in suitable situations.

 

I'll be very curious to know how this hotel finally handles this information.

 

I would have interpreted the "... free of charge..." to mean they'd automatically refund your money, once you let them know that was the choice you made.

Otherwise, it sounds like if you do anything else, they'd charge you *more* 

 

When we had vacation rental cabins/lodges (we stopped that when we got too busy with our own travels!), we had only one chargeback, from a scammer, but it was either VISA or MasterCard.  But it was months after the initial payment.  We sent copies of the relevant emails, and had the chargeback reversed.  Point is... it was *months* after the initial charge.

 

Is it clear that Amex will *never* do a chargeback when the charge was further back in time, and it's such an obvious situation like this (e.g., not dissatisfaction with a product, but the vendor saying, "sorry, we cannot give you what you paid for")?

 

GC

 

As of now I'm still waiting to hear back from Elliott and his team.  He practices the three “P”s — be patient, persistent and polite.  

[fma.muskie]

We had booked at the San Giorgio for late 2019, but after reading "concerns" on another site were able to cancel and received the full refund to our credit card.

[sailaway54321]

UPDATE:

Finally, after visiting the hotel the day before we set sail, several emails and then writing to the Elliott team for help, I finally have the credit posted to my AMEX.  They charged my card the same day that I booked, but took almost 2.5 months of hounding to get the credit back on my card.

 

[lisiamc]

That’s good news that you finally got your refund!  It’s shameful that it took so long, and doesn’t say anything good about the current management of the Hotel San Giorgio.

[Hlitner]

That is great news I hope they are aware of this negative thread....plus negative comments found elsewhere on the web.

 

Hank

[Pia1913]

I accidently came across this thread while looking for other information, so I therefore must chime in.   I stayed at this hotel twice before, and checked in again on December 3rd; yes, less than a month ago. I was there for two nights before boarding the Nieuw Statendam on Dec. 5th.  I have never found any problem whatsoever with this establishment and yes, paid in advance (nine months to be exact) for my stay; including airport pickup and shuttle to ship.  Everything has always gone well, so I'm not understanding the bashing taking place.  This hotel is in a great location, especially close to two markets,  large supermarket, McDonalds if you so desire, etc.  And always free wifi in the hotel.  Included breakfast quite adequate.

 

Just because someone had a "not to their satisfaction" experience does not make a hotel bad for everyone.  And, I don't understand why someone who has never stayed there would be so quick on the draw to give a bad recommendation.

 

[lisiamc]

1 hour ago, Pia1913 said:

I accidently came across this thread while looking for other information, so I therefore must chime in.   I stayed at this hotel twice before, and checked in again on December 3rd; yes, less than a month ago. I was there for two nights before boarding the Nieuw Statendam on Dec. 5th.  I have never found any problem whatsoever with this establishment and yes, paid in advance (nine months to be exact) for my stay; including airport pickup and shuttle to ship.  Everything has always gone well, so I'm not understanding the bashing taking place.  This hotel is in a great location, especially close to two markets,  large supermarket, McDonalds if you so desire, etc.  And always free wifi in the hotel.  Included breakfast quite adequate.

 

Just because someone had a "not to their satisfaction" experience does not make a hotel bad for everyone.  And, I don't understand why someone who has never stayed there would be so quick on the draw to give a bad recommendation.

 

It’s not just one “someone”. It’s at least five posters on Cruise Critic, one on this thread and four or five on the Celebrity board.  And if you look at TripAdvisor, as Hank suggests, or at Booking.com, the number jumps by another 31 people.  I think 36 people having the same bad experience with the same hotel is worth warning others about, don’t you?  And when one poster had to keep pressing for months and enlist the aid of a consumer advocate to get his/her money returned, I completely understand why they have worded the warning very strongly.

Edited December 30, 2018 by lisiamc

[Trixsea]

This hotel is in a great location and great for pre/post cruises but terrible with refunds.  Will never recommend.