Nighmare dealing with accommodation rental

Since JohnChow has blogged about this, you'd have already read this. If not, let me share this ridiculous travel story with you.

Before reading on, let me ask you a question: When you stay in a hotel, are you charged by day or by night stay?

Pedro & Grace are frequent travlers, who has travelled to many places and stayed in many types of accommodations. They will start travelling around the world nonstop for 1 year starting from January 2008, with their second stop in NYC from 18 Jan to 18 Feb, i.e. 31 nights.

As they planned to truly experience NY Living, they wanted to rent an apartment instead of a hotel. They have booked themselves in Furnished Quarters (Jersey City).

Their nightmare has just begun after the availability is confirmed. First, they had to pay $1k for deposit which would only be returned 45-60 days after check-out. Next, they were asked to produced a lot of personal and financial documents including bank statements. And then, they were charged based on days stay, instead of nights stay - i.e. 32 days. The check-in and check-out time is like many hotels (or shorter): 4pm check-in, 12 noon check-out.

Just like many of their experiences, Pedro & Grace blogged about this in their travel blog.

The drama started here...

These guys from Furnished Quarters, apparently read the post, started to make disguised comments there, under various identity posting fake customer testimonials backing up the company. Their comments are not consistent, and their IP is from within the company!

One of the fake customer claimed himself to be a consultant, then later he said he is a real estate broker. LOL! I think he is none of these, but a joker. Hahahah!

You may want to hop over there to read more. Anyway, my comments here are:
1) I've also travel a lot (though not as much as the couple)
2) I've never been charged by days stayed.
3) I've also stayed in business apartment before. And they also charge by nights - instead of what they claimed to be 'standard policy' of daily charges. It is NOT standard.
4) I've never been asked to produce documents of such, really wonder what's the point, isn't credit card and deposit sufficient?

And my final words -- one question to ponder. I normally would check the quotations before making payment. I wonder what the process in their case when securing the booking. If they had checked the booking detail carefully, and refused to pay for the extra 'day', they'd probably not caught in this situation. They are uncomfortable of staying there now, but cancellin at this stage would cost some penalty. Maybe a good lesson learnt?

I hope this blog doesn't catch their attention to place a few fake customer testimonials. LOL!

Upcoming Trips

Looks like yesterday was my last day in the office until mid March!

From Monday onwards, I will be either traveling, away for meeting in downtown KL, or on leave/holiday!

My boss just called this morning, telling me that I need to go to US for another global team meeting. I really hope that it doesn't clash with my sister's wedding. This would be too unfair for me, if I am penalised for not able to attend.

Anyway, talking about US trip, it reminds me of my last NYC trip. I've just stumbled upon this New York real estate site that also offers short term New York furnished housing for those who do not want to stay in hotel (aka corporate housing).

They also have a very good NYC Neighborhood guide that travelers may find interesting and useful.

Had I found this site earlier, I wouldn't have spent so much time and effort trying to plan our last NYC trip!

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