For our trip to New York, we stayed at the W Hotel in Union Square. We got a “special” rate for the room (I almost need to take out a loan to pay for it!) and the room was not bad. The W is supposed to be a boutique hotel that offers “Whatever/Whenever” service where the concierge can arrange almost anything. Of course, everything comes at a price.
One of the features that the W advertises is complimentary rides in an Acura MDX. I thought that was pretty cool as we had to get to the wedding one day. Not only would it save us a cab ride, I’d be able to ride in an Acura MDX which I hope to get someday (once the gas mileage gets up and I save up my pennies). I asked at the concierge desk to arrange the car and the concierge said, sure, but there will be a $78 one way drop fee and she suggested taking a $7 cab ride instead. Wow, so for a ride that was less than 2 miles, the W wanted to charge us $78 for a complimentary service.
I looked up complimentary on dictionary.com and here’s what it said (in this case, the W site uses it as an adjective):
given free as a gift or courtesy: a complimentary ticket.
There is no disclaimer on the site saying that there were restrictions and other fees associated with it. Is this just a misunderstanding or is it frankly false advertising? Considering each hotel has a limited number of cars (maybe even 1), they either don’t expect people to use the service or they add these charges so that no one uses it and it looks good on their site.
I went ahead and submitted a false advertising complaint on the FTC’s Web site. While I don’t really expect anything to come of this, it makes me feel better knowing that I at least made an effort to get this changed. I also sent email to the W Hotel; we’ll see what happens.
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