Last month, I reported on the possible re-emergence of energy fees in the hotel industry. Today, I have some good news for you -- and an update from the hotel that allegedly charged the fee to one guest.
Since that story was published, I've heard from no other travelers who had to pay a mandatory surcharge to cover their hotel's energy costs. So the problem appears to be contained for now.
Well, not entirely.
Almost two weeks after the post was published (the feature first appears on Frommers.com, then a few days later on my site and in syndication), I received an e-mail from the general manager of the resort that was said to have charged the fee. He said the Oyster Bay Beach Resort does not force its hotel guests to pay for energy usage, that he had no record of the customer I interviewed. And he claimed I never contacted him.
Uh-oh.
So I'm going to do a deep dive into the facts to determine what went wrong -- and, most importantly, to find the truth about the Oyster Bay's fees.
Energy Fees
Does Oyster Bay charge its guests for energy usage? Yes.
"We do charge a $12 per day energy surcharge for a two bedroom and $7 for a studio apartment for our timeshare guests and exchangers given the high level of utility costs on the island," said the manager. "We pay over 42 cents per KWH in St. Maarten and since the water is desalinated, also the cost per cubic meter is very high."
OK, so the guest who had complained about the energy fees was staying in one of its two-bedroom units. In his e-mail to me, he hadn't drawn a distinction between the hotel and timeshare unit. He just said he was staying at the resort.
But Oyster Bay says it's an important difference. Timeshare owners are informed about the energy fees in their contracts and when their stay is confirmed. It sent me one of the letters, which does indeed note the existence of a utility fee in the fine print of its confirmation letter. So this guest -- if he's really a guest -- should have known about it.
The Mystery Customer
What about the traveler lodging the complaint, Jack Permadi? Oyster Bay says it could find no record of him. I sent the resort a copy of his e-mail correspondence, and it quickly located his record, although it was under a different name.
I'm always concerned that someone isn't who they claim to be online, particularly when they're making a charge like this (no pun intended) against a travel company. In a world or savvy reputation-management companies that try to manipulate search engine results and TripAdvisor reviews, hotels would do almost anything for a good write-up. I'll have more on that in a second.
You Never Wrote!
The most baffling of all the accusations was that I hadn't bothered to ask Oyster Bay about this fee. If I had, I was assured I would have been given a quick reply. A review of my records show that I sent an e-mail to the general manager's address, contacted Oyster Bay through its Facebook site, which it acknowledged, and then sent another e-mail to its general "in" box, after being referred to it by someone answering its Facebook page.
In each e-mail, I was clear about my intentions -- I was a reader advocate trying to answer a question from a guest about energy fees. I enclosed the customer's e-mail in each of my requests.
The e-mails were sent May 6. I waited four days for an answer before filing the story, and the post appeared May 12.
Oyster Bay claims it never received any of the e-mails. I find that difficult to believe, since it had acknowledged my Facebook post, and knew that my question was coming.
"I am sorry but our Facebook page is a social page for our guests and owners (and) is not a business page or an official way of communicating for us," the general manager wrote to me in an e-mail.
Oyster Bay is disappointed with my original story -- "pissed" is how the manager described his reaction -- and demanded a new article clarifying the fee. The Oyster Bay Twitter account also sent me several public messages berating me for committing a reckless act of journalism. Over the Memorial Day weekend, the manager sent me numerous follow-up e-mails, repeating his demand for a follow-up article.
I'm happy to oblige.
So, to recap: Oyster Bay does indeed have an energy fee, the guest exists, and the resort's e-mail apparently doesn't work.
Behind the Scenes …
This story offers an interesting look at hotel reputations and how they're controlled by companies.
Note the lag time between when the story was first published and a belligerent manager began e-mailing me.
Why did it take almost two weeks to contact me? The first story appeared online May 12 and the manager didn't contact me until 6:53 p.m. on May 25. Shouldn't the Oyster Bay's PR team have caught the story sooner?
If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say the manager was either Googling the resort's name one Friday evening, or that his reputation management software had ID'd a problem in a weekly report.
Either way, he worked quickly to repair the perceived damage. He even told me he'd persuaded one online news outlet to delete the "erroneous" article from the Internet. I won't mention the name of the organization, except to say that the site never asked me for a clarification.
Throughout our correspondence, Oyster Bay mentioned the online comments, which were costing it precious reputation points.
One reader accused Oyster Bay of "frauding the customer," adding, "Don't these businesses know the definition of lying?" (I'm sure she meant to say "defrauding.")
Another commenter said energy fees, at least the way Permadi described them, ought to be illegal.
"Any hotel that pulls these undisclosed fees is a total fraud," he wrote. "Obviously they want to present a lower price to the unsuspecting customer in order to get their business, knowing that most travelers in a foreign city won't walk away from a confirmed reservation."
Would a new story about Oyster Bay's energy fee make any difference in the way it was perceived?
The hotel apparently thinks so. It believes the complaint was made by a guest who glossed over several key facts, didn't do his homework and then complained to a consumer advocate who didn't bother to confirm the veracity of his story. With these new facts revealed, Oyster Bay's reputation would be cleared.
I don't know if it's that simple. The fact that one of its own timeshare owners didn't know about its mandatory energy fee comes as no surprise to me. The "utility fee" is literally the last item at the bottom of the Oyster Bay confirmation letter. And I don't buy the resort's explanation that Facebook is no way to communicate with it, given how concerned it seems to be about its online reputation.
But I'm most troubled by Oyster Bay's lack of response to my e-mails when I began researching this story. Either its e-mail doesn't work or it simply ignores the messages it doesn't want to answer. It makes me wonder how closely the resort is listening to its own guests.
Who's right? As always, I'll leave the verdict to you.
Christopher Elliott is the author of "Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals" (Wiley). He's also the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine and the co-founder of the Consumer Travel Alliance, a nonprofit organization that advocates for travelers. Read more tips on his blog, elliott.org or e-mail him at chris@elliott.org. Christopher Elliott receives a great deal of reader mail, and though he answers them as quickly as possible, your story may not be published for several months because of a backlog of cases.
