| rev:text
| - First of all, thank you Yelpers! Your warnings have helped us prepare for and avert what could have been a very disastrous situation. Here's the story:
For whatever reason, our previous, previous tradeshow coordinator booked and paid for 4 hotel rooms for us through Convention Housing Services. Somehow, about two months before the event, someone on the team googled CHS and found a lot of negative reviews about this company. Concerned that we may have been scammed, we called the hotel and was assured that our reservations were in place. However, because there were too many negative reviews, we kept a vigilant eye out and had contingency plans just in case.
T-14 days from the event - called hotel. Rooms reserved for us.
T-13 days - called hotel. Rooms reserved for us.
T-12 days - called hotel. Rooms still reserved.
T-10 days - called hotel. Rooms still reserved.
T-7 days - received this email from Convention Housing Services: (copied verbatim, in case they want to dispute this, I have a copy of the email from them)
Good day,
Unfortunately it has come to our attention that the rooms that were reserved for you are no longer available. We will process a full refund for the unprovided nights, so as to not inconvenience you any further.
Thank you,
Convention Housing Services
http://www.conventionhousingservices.com/
866-563-8944
T-7 days: In panic, contacted hotel. Reservation still in our names.
T-6 days: contacted hotel. Reservation still in our names.
T-5 days: contacted hotel. Cannot find our reservation. It was cancelled by CHS.
Because we were vigilant and very paranoid, our coordinator immediately booked through the same hotel directly, and got a rate cheaper that what we paid Convention Housing Services for!
This could have been disastrous for us for a couple of reasons. First, the tradeshow was in Europe. Second, we were 3 days away from boarding a flight to Europe... imagine what would happen if we had not been so vigilant.
By the way, we never did get our money back from these guys.I think we were out $10K.
Why did this happen? My theory is that these clowns reserved and booked the rooms for us, they did so at a certain negotiated rate with the hotel. When it came time to pay (months after we paid them), the rate they had with the hotel was probably no longer honored by the hotel. Instead of eating the cost (after sitting on our payment for so long), or contacting us, they just made up some BS excuse about the rooms not being available (when in fact, because we had been calling the hotel almost daily, we knew that the rooms had been available and in our names).
Had we not been so vigilant and paranoid, we would have been screwed. This tradeshow is a big deal for our company, and would have been a major source of new opportunities for us. Imagine if we had arrived and not have any rooms, this would have impacted our company's future fortunes. This is not something you can just say, "oh the rooms are not available... sorry..here's your money back!".
As I said earlier, I don't know why our previous, previous coordinator booked thru a 3rd party service. Moving forward, we will book directly with the hotels.
That said, all the previous Yelpers, with the exception of the one who gave it four stars, are correct. If you do business with this company, you do it at your own risk, and it could be more than just inconvenience - if you were like us, the health of your business could be put in jeopardy.
Conclusion - stay away from this company. If it is too late and you've already booked a room, do what we did. Contact the hotel directly everyday when the event gets closer, and have contingency plans in place.Then tell everyone about this company.
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