A water main break delayed my move-in date for our new house, forcing me to find a local hotel for 2-7 nights & to call each day to see if the place was ready or if I needed to add another night to my stay. I started with a 2-night prepaid reservation on hotels.com for this La Quinta, as I've had good experiences at these hotels thru the years & this one's 3 mi from my house & next to Walmart. When I checked in they said since I was local I had to pay a deposit of 2x room rate as a hold against parties, flights, etc. While my ID's local my husband's is not & he'd be joining me in 2 days after his work trip. They confirmed they'd release the deposit hold when I checked out & wouldn't need 1 if we changed our room to my husband's name. Ok, sounds good.
Red flag 1: my receipt for the deposit. Didn't say hold, didn't say deposit, just looked like a regular room charge receipt.
Flag 2: by the next morning, that deposit went from a "hold" on my card to a full completed charge. I asked why, weren't they just going to release the hold when I checked out, they said no but they'd refund the charge. I didn't agree to that, & was pissed.
Flag 3: Surprise! They never returned that money. Kept claiming they had, could never show me proof. Told me Wyndham had my $. I put Wyndham on speaker to confirm to front desk that they had nothing to do with this. Clerk walked away from desk to back office, called police, had us escorted from property. IT'S A SCAM. NO DEPOSITS RETURNED.