 Hotel suddenly opened our door. Where they right to do this?
Hey guys,
I need your advice on a situation my wife and I had to deal with today. We live in a serviced apartment called Horizon Suite Hotel in Ma On Shan and have a 12 month contract signed with them. We have 4 months left in our contract presently. We have no maid service and usually the hotel doesn't disturb us.
Since it was Saturday we were sleeping in, and suddenly at 9:30 am we woke up to the door bell ringing and someone opening our door. Half awake and in a dream state still, we both yelled "Who's there" and got dressed as quickly as possible.
The door was already open before we finished dressing and we were quite irritated at the hotel staff who did it. We asked them what the hell they were thinking and they told us that there smelled a burning smell from our room and considered it an emergency situation and wanted to get in as soon as possible (The hotel room are equiped with sprinklers and fire alarms).
Anyway it turned out the burning smell wasn't from our room and their disturbed our privacy all for nothing.
Both my wife and I are pretty pissed about this, and we feel that the hotel breached their contract with us. Our contract with the hotel doesn't say anywhere that the hotel can come in to our room without our permission and doesn't discuss how they would handle an emergency situation at all.
As a result we told the hotel we want to cancel our contract early because we felt they weren't holding up their end of the contract. They told us we could, but would have to pay a penalty. This is true. In a normal situation, if we were to terminate early there would be a penalty equal to an extra month's rent. However we argued with them that this is a unique situation because they violated their own contract by not clearly spelling out emergency procedures.
This whole problem could have been avoided if they called us before they came to our room. Normally if the hotel needs to do something, they call us in advance.
Anyway the hotel apologized for the situation and admitted they made a mistake, but they refuse to budge on the contract. They claim they didn't violate it, and state that the contract says they reserve the right to "normal hotel management procedures" but it is never clearly spelled out in writing what these procedures are.
Also the hotel claims they rang the doorbell and waited one minute before entering, but from what we experienced it felt like they began to unlock our door immediately and entered. It's hard to say, because we were being rudely awakened.
Do you guys think I have a case in terminating my contract early? Is there any place I can formally file a complaint to?
Like I said earlier, if they simply called us in advance it wouldn't have been a big deal. They've always called us in advance in the past and it was fine. But today everything just happened so quickly and we barely got dressed before they barged in.
I never put down any sort of deposit, and the contract is signed under my HK corporation's name not under my personal name. That means the penalty would be sent as a bill and I wouldn't lose any deposit. I'm assuming if we tell them to pound sand, that they would take us to court. Would they have a case?
Last edited by IceAIM : 06-08-2006 at 02:11 AM.
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