If a hotel charged another guest's room to my account, can I sue them? [closed]

My boyfriend's account was used to purchase a room for another guest, by the hotel. What can be done about this? Wouldn't that be considered credit card theft at that point? Once we saw the "ghost charge", technically we could have reported our information stolen, correct?

hotels payment-cards

Best Answer

Hotel clerks make mistakes. Don't jump straight to suing. In order:

call the front desk and ask them to reverse the charge. Also ask if someone actually presented the card.
if the front desk won't help, call the chain's customer support
call your credit card company and refute the charge
watch out for any other charges on your card and if you see a second thing you didn't buy, tell your credit card company. They may ask you to tell the police.

If all else fails, there have been no other charges on the card, the hotel continues to refuse to reverse it, and your credit card company won't either, you could go to small claims court. Bring your paper records of where you were when the charge happened, and all your notes (written during phone calls), emails, chat logs etc in which you asked the hotel and the credit card company to reverse it. Should be an easy win, which is why it will never get to the point of that. Someone will reverse it as long as you are able to stay calm and ask politely. Use the word "mistake" rather than "theft" to keep the person you're talking to in a mood to help you.