Capital One, Aspire, Case# [protected]
Name: Vanessa Anania & Maria Anania
Date: February 26th, 2021
Card Number **2405 & **3419
Capital One, Aspire, Case# [protected]
Name: Vanessa Anania & Maria Anania
Date: February 26th, 2021
Card Number **2405 & **3419
3147 Garthwood road
Mississauga, ON L5L 4Z1
Canada
Please forward this to further Review.
Dear Capital One Fraud Department
This is my letter explaining what happened on the week of Dec 21 while at the Riu Playa Blanca, Panama. Upon booking the hotel in early November 2020, there was only a small notification on the Riu website regarding COVID-19, saying some things may be different, but there was no explanation as to what, and upon making a phone call to their reservation department, they had let me know that the hotel was open and running and pools and restaurants could be used. Until then, no further e-mail or notifications were received.
December 21, I checked into the hotel, they let us know 2 pools were open, and 2 restaurants should be open, and 1 bar, this would be the situation for the first 2 days there. After that, full lockdown came into place, which they then informed us, via a letter in our door at the hotel, that everything was shutdown, all pools, all bars, and all restaurants, we would have 1 hour, 3 times daily to eat, all alcohol and drinks were to be ordered to the room and drank in the room, and the beach was closed. This was absurd, as the hotel was now not limited to services, it was next to no service at all, except for meeting our daily human needs of food and shelter in the hotel. We paid for a full service hotel, multiple pools, bars and a beautiful beach for Christmas holidays, and instead received the absolute bare minimum. A hotel anywhere else with a “UberEats” would have been more sufficient and more enjoyable. The food that was served was similar to prison food, 4 trays and served to you at a “buffet” with limitations, being a vegetarian was more than difficult.
When we checked in they said you can cancel at any time, but being the most expensive time of the year to travel, 3 days before Christmas, we had nowhere to go, and no way to get there. We already had to pay a way to get there and a way to get back. All buses were shut down as well, and you were not supposed to travel within Panama unless you had a flight leaving the country, this was due to the lockdown in effect.
We were offered a 50% refund which we of course accepted at the time but never intended to leave it at that. The service we received was ghastly in comparison to what was advertised and we were always going to dispute it. To be left high and dry in the middle of full lockdown in a country we are unfamiliar with is hardly a second option.
If Riu had let us know what was happening in regards to restriction, we absolutely would not have gone. Offering us a cancellation on arrival is absurd, it was no longer possible at this point. An email 1 week prior would have taken one of their staff less than 5 minutes and avoided the entire mess, instead we feel as though they mislead us into thinking it was normal, so that they could secure our stay and our money. When we arrived there were less than 50 guests and everyone we spoke to had the same to say, nobody had been warned of any changes. Letting 50 guests know of changes would not be a hard task at all, the only reason I can discern from this is that they wanted the guests to still arrive in the hopes that it would be too difficult to leave, as was the case for us.
Riu is a very large and international company, we are quite shocked as to the extent of their unprofessionalism in this situation. We really thought that their customer service would be better than this and are extremely disappointed at how unwilling they are to resolve this properly. The refund we have requested is an entirely fair one and we hope that the right thing be done and the refund honoured.
Regards,
Vanessa
Desired outcome:
full refund
Found At: RIU Hotels & Resorts: Reviews, Complaints, Customer Claims, Page 5 | ComplaintsBoard