This situation sucks, and raises questions, as it reads there was never a confirmation email and never a charge on the card. I learned at the second to last Jacon, to never get off the phone with the sales person until there is an email about what you are discussing, people, sad to say, don’t always do all of their job, even when they are managers, and it sucks.
I really feel for the 60plus people that are out of rooms, I know what that’s like from smaller conventions, and while I really hope the Marriott does something to fix this, as someone who is staying at the Marriott, I also hope that my reservation and the ones of my friends and family that attend this convention aren’t a part of the 22 rooms that would, without cancellation from other guests, be taken away from other people to be given to them.
It’s a terrible situation, and I know I’d be on the phone and internet with every possible outlet working to get it fixed. I hope the Marriott gets up and handles this with the compassion they deserve.
You know, I deal with service issues all the time. The first thing I noticed in this one is that the Marriott allegedly charged a deposit on a credit card. If that’s the case, then I suspect that constitutes (at minimum) a verbal contract of some sort.
(READ: I am not an attorney.)
I think that a couple of carefully placed calls to Marriott’s corporate offices coupled with presenting the info to a couple of news sources (Atlanta Journal/Constitution, online “geek” sites, and maybe even the D*Con LiveJournal) might create just enough push to grant a correction of (at the least) a compensation for the mistake.
Either way, I’ve tagged their Twitter name in the subject now. In the past, Marriott International has been really good at following up issues for me. Hopefully they see this.
For the past few years, my good friend Scott has taken care of booking our (300 DC’s) hotel rooms for Dragon*Con. He’s done this while on active duty with the United States Army and he’s always come through. This year was no different, except in that Marriott lost our reservation, took zero…
I started off two people from the front, but decided on getting better images and video from their seating.
Dir En Grey at Centerstage Atlanta, GA 12/07/11
Taken on our way to the Dir En Grey concert.
Not 15 minutes before it was cloudy and gloomy, and quickly returned to that, I feel lucky to have snagged this shot.








