Just returned from a 2 night hotel stay in Warwick with my parents. It was a reunion for my Dad with the surviving members of the Captain Class Frigate Association. During WW2 these ships were the escorts/U boat hunters for the convoys that were vital to the survival of this nation of ours. Dad did Arctic convoys and D Day. His ship was torpedoed in 1944 off the Irish coast. The reunion itself with the veterans marching in, some leaning on each other for support was very poignant but the hotel!! Can I name it? The Warwick H*lton. The rooms were no better than a Travelodge, the food was dire, the coffees were £4 each and the bill for 2 nights was £270. That was supposedly a reduced rate as there were 135 of us, sadly only 35 of those were veterans, tempus fugit.
That's why we have an Eriba, good accommodation and good cooking and the wine and coffee are very reasonably priced, especially on the Continent.

To follow on from this, it gets worse. On Monday I checked my bank account to find that I was overdrawn. The Hilton had swiped my debit card on arrival, I assumed (wrongly) that this was just for security should we leg it without paying. We settled our bill on the Sunday morning on 3 separate cards, one for each room. Straightforward huh. No, the bank inform me that Hilton pre-authorised my card for £840. That money is "ring fenced" for the Hilton and consequently my account is now in the red. I have spent all week phoning the hotel and the bank to sort this out. Apparently all the Hilton have to do is send a fax or email to my bank to tell them that they do not need this pre-authorised amount. Despite all my calls, that is yet to happen. When I finally lost the plot and asked for the phone number for their HQ I was firstly given a number that was unobtainable and then secondly another number that got me through to an annoyingly cheerful American who wanted me to high five Hilton teams for their excellent service. When I kept following through the menu to get a person it cut me off. So back to the Hilton and more empty promises to sort this, to date, not sorted.
Watch this space.

I bet you won't be going to any Hilton accommodation in the future in a hurry....

would the bank treat it as a scam transaction if Hilton don't sort??
what a shock..

Thank you for the 'heads up' on Hilton hotels - we will give then a wide berth.

Sheesh! That is terrible, but if anyone can sort it Julie, you're the one. Good luck and get a huge compensation claim in.

You should post it on trip advisor, bet they will move quickly then!!!

Get in the Eriba and occupy the car park! I'd be locked up by now if someone did that to me! Best of luck with your quest

I understand that many companies monitor Twitter and react very quickly to customer comments and complaints. It may be worthy try!

Try putting a review on here, I did one for Specsavers after the coating came off my 14 month old specs and the local branch refused to look at them even, head office contacted me within 2 days and I had my glasses replaced FOC
https://uk.trustpilot.com/
Dave

Thanks for all the helpful comments folks. I don't do social media but maybe it's time to start. Thankfully today the Hilton have finally advised the bank that they don't want the £840 so the bank has released it and my account has money in it again. I did ask the bank if they could cancel the pre-authorisation as the Hilton had obviously been paid, that card payment went through fine. They couldn't, as they said people could skip without paying their bills and then ask the bank to cancel the pre-authorisation leaving the hotel out of pocket. The bank have no way of knowing if you have paid or not.
I am however going to blacken the name of Hilton whenever I get the chance. Pubs and the like swipe your card when you open a tab but they don't charge them and they certainly don't do it without telling you.
Moral of the story, stick to the Eriba