Complaint Review: Civic Center Motor Inn

Last week I was in the SF bay area on business and finished early, so I decided to stay a couple of days in San Francisco and take in the sights. So on Friday I walked into the Civic Center Motor Inn in San Francisco and checked in to stay for a couple of nights. It's no place special, and they usually have a rate of around $85 a night. Well, this weekend their quoted rate was just over $200, due to a big event happening in the city. The price was a bit steep, yes, but I chalked this up to supply/demand, and decided to stay anyway.

I stayed my first night without incident, and the next morning left the hotel to spend the day in the city doing some sightseeing.

When I returned to my hotel that afternoon, I found that my key card wasn't working, so I went to the manager's office so that they could fix the problem. The clerk behind the counter got this uncomfortable look on her face and told me that they had checked me out of the hotel and had rented the room to someone else!

The first things I asked were:
-How did this happen?
-Where is my stuff?
-What room are you going to move me to?

That's when things started to get downright nightmarish. It was at this point that the clerk told me that she didn't know anything about the situation (stating "no one from the last shift told me anything"), and would be happy to move me to another room, but at the new daily rate of $299 a night!

Of course, I told her that this was unacceptable. She then told me that apparently they must've only had me in their system for one day's stay (trying to justify their evicting me). I asked why they didn't at least call me before doing what they did. She said that they tried calling, but that I must've given them the wrong phone number or entered it incorrectly into their system.  This was false because:
-I only have one phone number
-I gave it to them and THEY entered it into their system
-I had my cell phone on me, and it had plenty of signal/power/ect all day
-I had not received any calls or voicemail from them

When I asked to verify what information they had, she refused, stating that it was no longer in their system...but again saying that they couldn't possibly have made a mistake (remember, they entered the information) and that it must have been MY fault.

The clerk claimed ignorance of my situation and powerlessness to correct it. So, I insisted that she call her management to fix it. She called her manager, and I then overheard her as she misrepresented the situation to her manager by describing me as "the man who checked out earlier today" instead of "the man who we mistakenly checked out earlier today".  I think there was some CYA going on there. Of course, the management over the phone was also unwilling to budge on the new, much higher daily room rate.  So I had to leave.

When I asked for my luggage, she claimed ignorance again and pointed me to a pile of unlabeled, mixed luggage in the back of the manager's office. When I found my luggage, I saw:
-My luggage had been rifled through
-Was unlabeled as belonging to me
-My toiletries where thrown in with/amongst my food purchases--some specialty french pastries I was taking home for my Dad).
-The clerk didn't even know which luggage was mine.

I was LIVID, and left the hotel and San Francisco altogether. I preferred the 6 hour drive home to L.A. to having to search for another hotel room.

*My Analysis of the Situation*
Bad Customer Service:
-Potentially poor data entry by staff when I checked-in (failing to note my two night stay, possible mis-entering my phone number, or failing to enter either altogether)
 Failing to contact me before evicting me from my room (I had my cell phone on me at ALL times, and never received any call, text, or VM from them)
-Staff failing to keep each other notified of unusual situations between shifts (and thus getting the "I know nothing" excuse)
-Staff failing to own up to mistakes (blaming me for the mistakes in their data entry or omission)
-Staff failing to communicate the situation to management
-Staff failing to communicate the situation between shifts of staff
-Staff failing to communicate with me (never gave me an initial invoice. They only gave me a room card upon check in).

Lying:
-Staff playing CYA games with management, once again representing the situation as my fault rather than theirs
-Staff lying to me about "not knowing" what happens on another shift, yet making statements about what happened on another shift as fact in an attempt to place blame on me.

Thievery/Privacy/failure to properly store property:
-Taking my possessions from my room.
-Rifling through my luggage.
-Throwing my toiletries into my foodstuffs
-Failing to refrigerate my foodstuffs
-Failing to label and separate my luggage/food from other luggage