Stupid traveler tricks II

Now for the second part of the mystery: How did the hotel respond?

As you may recall, when we left the scene last week, I was anxiously peering with the front desk clerk at the prolific printout of my phone charges, trying to divine what had happened.

When I heard that every local call gets charged $1 and when I noticed that the calls were placed exactly every five minutes, the light bulb flashed: "Eudora!" I exclaimed.

I explained to the clerk about the e-mail program automatically connecting to the MindSpring server to check for mail every five minutes and then said something along the lines of "I realize this was a very stupid thing to do and was entirely my fault and you're not responsible for my stupidity. On the other hand, I didn't get anything out of these calls. I was away at dinner and really didn't intend to make them, and I'd be ever so grateful if you could take these calls off my bill. Is that possible?" And I put on as pitifully imploring a look and as winning a smile as I could muster.

It would be good for the hotels of the world to see your e-mails to me on this matter, for about two-thirds of you felt that the hotel had stuck me with the charges in full, or at least in half. About a third of you thought the hotel waived the charges. And a small number of you wondered if the hotel waived the charges just for me because they knew I was a travel writer.

To address this last point first, I don't think the hotel knew that I write a weekly travel column for Salon. My reservation had been made as part of a large block of rooms for the conference I was attending, I hadn't received any kind of preferential treatment up to that point, as far as I could tell, and none of the hotel people I had encountered seemed to have the foggiest idea who I am (a not-uncommon occurrence).

I must say that when I had explained to the clerk what had happened, I was sorely tempted to take out a notepad and pen and say grandly, "By the way, I write a weekly travel column which is read by hundreds of thousands of people, and what did you say your name was again?" -- but I didn't. I just smiled and implored.

The clerk looked balefully at me and then at the Proustian printout and said in a tight little voice, "Excuse me," and walked through a secret doorway behind the reception desk that is used only in cases where guests are considered to be unreasonable or unstable.

I was expecting her to return with a couple of knuckle-cracking musclemen in tuxedos or a slick-suited, sour-faced, "Sorry, but there's nothing we can do"-spouting manager, but to my surprise she returned after a few minutes, alone and with a sweet glint in her eye.

She unfurled the phone log in front of me, raised a pen like a sword into the air and said, "We will not charge you for the calls made from here" -- and she slashed above the first of the phony phone connections -- "to here," and she Zorro'd a line beneath the last of the lot.

Then, poising her pen above the next call, to a San Francisco number, she said, "It appears that you actually made this call -- is that correct?"

Suffused -- almost dizzy -- with gratitude, I simply said, "Yes, yes, that's correct."

"Well then," she said, with a mix of clerkly efficiency and queenly compassion, "let's see -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... " -- and she knighted every single call with the tip of that pen. The total came to somewhere around 70 calls -- $70! -- and she poked a few buttons and pressed a few bars, and then a new bill spewed magically out of the printer with all the phony phone charges removed. History. I did not have to pay for them.

I felt like hugging her, but instead just thanked her a dozen times and complimented her company's foresight and graciousness and shook hands with all the porters in the vicinity and told someone who was just checking in what a handsome hat she was wearing and then danced Fred Astaire-like out to my waiting taxi, dispensing lavish tips to everyone I encountered on the way. Happy ending.

But here are a couple of additional lessons worth considering:

1) Sure, I had been stupid and I really was responsible for those phone charges, but what kind of hotel charges $1 for a five-second local phone call? (Well, many kinds of hotels, in fact -- but this certainly inspires me to check my hotel's phone billing procedures more closely in the future.)

2) It pays to ask if you think something's wrong. When I realized that Eudora had done me in, I was tempted to timidly eat the charges -- but that just seemed unfair. Why should I pay so much for calls I hadn't intended to make? And this applies to everything: If you don't like your room, ask to be moved to another. If you see a charge on your bill that you can't account for, challenge it. If your filet isn't done well enough, send it back. If the dry cleaner didn't get that stain off your suit, let it know. It's a lesson I keep having to learn over and over and over, but you don't get something taken care of unless you speak out about it.

One more thing: Now that I've thoroughly humbled myself in front of all of you, and hopefully taught you a valuable lesson about turning off your computer and your e-mail program in your hotel room when you're not using it, I'd like to ask you one last question: Do you have a stupid traveler trick from your past that you'd be willing to share?

If you do, tell me. I'll be happy to share your hard-won lessons anonymously, if you so desire. The important thing is that we can all learn from one another's mistakes.

And if you tell me your worst stupid traveler trick, I'll tell you about my other, much more memorable travel faux pas: the Case of the Undocumented Daughter and the Dumbfounded Daddy.

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