Robberey

Sigi

Me and my friends are staying in salou at the moment and our hotel room was broken into and robbed last friday night.they took approx 3000 euro from our 2 seperate rooms.I was wondering would the hotel have any liability in the matter and if so what could we do.Considering

The 3 rooms we were given all had balconys acessable from a public stairwell.
All had broken locks on the balcony door which the hoterl refused to fix
The cctv supposedly doesnt work
The security guard who has been here every night wasnt during the robery.
The guard didnt bother pursuing the man after he had revealed himself.The hotel said we were the only ones robbed when 5 rooms were.
3 nights later 4000 euro was taken from another room and the hotel still refuses to get a cctv camera.
They claim to have no insurance.
They refused to call the police when we asked them to.

I dont have any time left on this pc but i would appreciate a quick reply as im leaving in 2 days.Thanks

Never been there, so don't know if there's a time difference, but it's 5:06am over here, so you may get very few replies for a couple of hours.


Ususally hotels have a safe that they leave in your room and you can get a key for them at reception. The hotels usually have small print to say that you are only protected/insured for what is in your safe.


I don't know if that's any use to you or not?

Regardless of what the hotel are saying, get the Police involved immediately. Especially so if you have travel insurance which you may use to get something back later. A Police report will do you no harm.

If the hotel is a series or chain of hotels, contact the highest possible person/manager in the chain and let them know what happened as soon as possible (if you're only there or two more days, try do this in person?).


Can't think of anything else off hand. Sorry to hear about this happening to you.

old_aussie

Inside job

Pdfile

the hotel is liable providing they didn't offer you use of their in-house safe...


sounds like an inside job.


Get police and cause a polite roit. i mean explain the situation, get it ALL in writing then go about sueing the hotel for either 1) robbery 2) carelessness 3) both above.

91011

Firstly, you shouldn't have left cash lying around in a hotel room whether Salou or New York or Galway.

Secondly, why can't you call the police?

Thirdly, the hotel will have something written in terms & conditions that they are not responsible for theft.

What you need to do is...

Call the police in yourselves

Tell the travel agent

Write sh1te reviews about the hotel in every review listing site available.

Peyton Manning

Sounds very fishy to me that this is happening repeatedly and the hotel will do nothing about it. Those accusing them of an inside job may not be far off the mark.

Davidth88

Call the police yourselves .. you were robbed.

TheDriver

ditto to the above, call the police, bad mouth the hotel as much as possible, tell the travel agent etc.
P.S. in this day and age of cards etc, why the hell would anyone have that much cash with them??? Pure stupidity.

dudara

Call the police. That is a no-brainer.

Moved to Travel and Holidays for further advice.

dudara

Yawns

A hotel will not be responsible even if they didn't offer you the use of an in-house safe. You could request the use of an in-house safe.

Call the police. No messing about. You call them. Walk to the station if you have to. Get reports. The security guard who was there every night, was he a night porter? Could he have been helping another guest? Report to the police that he wasn't at the desk, they will ask him where he was.

The hotel doesn't have to show you cctv. They can tell you they don't have it. They must show it to the police tho so again get the police involved. Point out that the locks on the balcony doors are broke.

Did you make a request in writing to the hotel that you wanted the locks fixed? If you didn't technically they can claim the locks were working and you must have broken them. I'm not saying they will but this is why some people write down all that's not working in a hotel room they are staying in. They bring it to the desk so that they cannot be billed for items they did not break.

Yawns

You might be able to get your money back but you must call the police in now. Get it in the report that the hotel refused to call the police. You may have to take them to ocurt to get money covered.

As it is if it was cash lying about the hotel does not have to cover it. What if you claimed it was 30000 instead of 3000?

ankitadas

You should call the police immediately and get back to the Travel insurance which you have. It will help you and cover you. Hotel will not going to help you out.

keithclancy

Lesson learned IMO,

I would never leave anything in a hotel room that I couldn't afford to lose, too many people with access, maids etc leaving doors open when cleaning rooms.

Sigi

Hey, thanks for all the replys. We did call the police who came out the next day and confirmed the door locks were broken and that it is how the rooms were acessed unless a keycard was used.We all think its an inside job aswell.Would the hotel not be liabale in the fact that they refused to fix the locks and that their negligence,not ours, led to the robery(cant find question mark on spanish keyboard).

The police were out a couple of times and aknowleged that the hotel should have fixed the locks and the hotel also told them there was no cctv.But we hav'nt heard anything from them in the last couple of days.

Yawns

Chances are there is no cctv. As for the locks being broke, the hotel will claim it was only recent. The hotel will not replace your money nor are they obliged to do so. You can get in touch with a solicitor to try your case when you get home. It could be costly and there's a chance you could get nothing.

At the least I think you would get would be the accomadtion free of charge. So a refund on the rooms. As far as the cash goes I do not think you will see a penny of it. What's to stop you saying you had 3 million stolen? I know it's over the top but the idea is that all valuables are at the risk of the owner and not the hotel, unless it was in a hotel safe.

Credit cards, traveller's cheques should be used for large sums of money. Not cash lying on a table. I know it's not what you want to hear and the last thing you think of on a holiday is some1 robbing your hotel room. I do have huge amounts of sympathy for you tho I admit it may not come across in my posts, I apologise for that.

Even if you suspect it was an inside job, you would need proof. If you go all guns blazing claiming it was inside you can kiss goodbye to any refund. Speak to the highest person you can. Do not take any excuses either that they are out to lunch. My old place used to use that all day everyday. Find out where the managers office is and wait outside to speak to them. If they have to come by reception desk to come in/out then stand there. Keep asking the front desk staff to ring the office.

The last thing a manager wants is to speak to you because you are in the right. Most complaints in my old job got brushed off, some people kept being persistant and they were the ones who got refunds and such. Anyone who gets fobbed off will continue to be fobbed off.

Yawns

Also if a keycard was used it can be tracked. The computer used to make the keys keep a log of which key accessed which door at what times.

Sigi

Thanks for the replies.We tried to get a refund but they said they'd only give 20% as booking.com supposedly takes 80% of the fee(total fee approx 2500) which uis obviously a lie and i confirmed that it is.How do you suppose i could go about getting a refund given their lies.

Yawns

OMG they are so bad at the lies it is unreal. Booking.com boils down in basics as just a search engine with their hotel in the database for that area. In return for this the guest uses booking.com and the booking is done automatically, hotel recieves a fax and must fill in the details on their system.

For the guest finding the hotel thru booking.com the website gets a percentage of the booking as commison, that is how they get paid. Most of the money is paid to the hotel. So yes they are lying. As for getting a refund they are clearly going to dig their heels in.

Write up a list of everything that is wrong in the hotel room or rooms. Everything that was wrong when you went in right down to a dirty mark on a table. Give them a COPY of the list. Keep a copy for yourself. Now feel free to lie yourself and tell them you explained that you voiced complaints already about what was on the list which will include the broken locks.

Seeing as nothing was fixed & as a result of the damaged locks you want to be compensated for the duration of the stay.

How many days are you there for? You won't get the full stay compensated but aim for at least 75%. Now make sure you hand this list to the manager too. If you can do it in public the better. Nothing worse for a hotel manager than someone running down the place legitamly. Don't scream or cause a scene tho, be calm and to the point.

Yawns

Also I should point out to you, as far as I remember you would have booked using a credit card yes? If the hotel followed standing proceedure they would not have charged the credit card yet. You can ring and cancel the credit card and refuse to pay but they will call police themselves

You could cancel the card, walk out the door hours before checkout time and head straight home. All they can do is issue you bills etc to your door. Please note I am not telling you to do this just merely pointing it out to you

If I was treated as you say you were I would be sorely tempted to do the same. If you had meals or w/e you could go to the front desk before hand and say you want to pay for all seperate charges with cash rather than charge the card, they will accept this and give you a recipet for the bills incurred, all that will be left is the room charges.

If you cancel the card and go home without paying, you could dispute them over room charges via e-mail. Point out their lies etc. I would advise ignoring e-mails from them if you did something like the above tho as they will hold all correspodance in case they get you to court which I doubt it. Simply claim you weren't there after all they have no cctv

Yawns

Whilst I know you can take a business anywhere in Europe to a small claims court these days I am not sure of the limit. You will not get your cash back that was stolen unless the police retrieve it. The hotel won't pay it. You could argue for most of the room nights charge be waived.

Try talking the manager. Explain that since the locks were nto fixed you refuse to pay for the night of the break in and the nights following it.

91011

as per Yawns, there is a small claims procedure available throught he european consumer centre in Dublin http://www.eccireland.ie/

Yes, the hotel could be held negligent for not fixing locks as soon as they knew they were broken and assuming that they were broken before you started your holiday and also assuming that they did not warn you of the broken locks or offer you an alternative option for storing valuables.

Maximum award under arbitration is €2000.