This week our Compensation Clinic is back in Las Vegas where a reader had a bad experience at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino due to some issues with the water supply.
Remember that you can always email us, send a message via Facebook or use Twitter and include photos too. We’ll try to cover a Compensation Clinic case here regularly.
Water supply can be a problem in Las Vegas for multiple reasons yet most of the time it has something to do with the hotels maintenance and this is exactly what one of our readers experienced last week.
As relayed to me by Kevin when checking for the best rates, both the MGM Grand as well as the Park MGM came out with the most attractive offers offering a $48 daily rates plus tax and resort fees. He decided to book one night at each property to try them out.
While the Park MGM stay apparently went well the MGM Grand wasn’t quite as satisfactory.
In the early morning hours there was no hot water even after letting it run for a few minutes. A few hours later the tab water tasted salty for whatever reason.
Kevin sent us a Facebook message asking how to best approach this issue and I said the best is to already call down and report the issue to a manager. At this point it would be a good opportunity to ask for the resort fee to be waived which is basically just a scam charge by most Las Vegas hotels. The front desk agreed to taking the $42 off the bill.
A short while after a manager called back to check on the guest and since there hasn’t been any improvement he apparently agreed to waive the entire night. He essentially paid nothing for the entire stay and left with a zero folio. For reference, Kevin is MLife Gold based on a Hyatt status match.
I responded to the reader that the best would be to charge something from the gift shop or mini bar to the room in order to ping the account for the Hyatt stay credit. Unfortunately by the time he read this his check-out was already completed. Too bad!
I had success with receiving stay credit for Casino comped stays in Las Vegas several times as long as I charge something to my room account.
Conclusion
Our reader had a bad experience with the water supply at MGM Grand Las Vegas as his room first lacked hot water and later on it tasted strange with a very high saline level.
After reporting the issue to management they made it right and waived his overnight charges, consistent of the room rate and resort fee of roughly the same value. Rather good service but of course this relies upon the guest reporting these issues to the front desk as soon as they occur.
To give the hotel a chance to correct issues I always advise to call immediately rather than just mentioning it upon checkout. There is very little a hotel can do when the guest is already checking out and expecting compensation without a verified prior complaint is always difficult.