In the international practice of the hotel business, it is accepted that when a hotel guest books a room in advance, a certain amount of money is blocked on his card. Rarely, but there are times when hotels do not block, but deduct funds from the client's bank card. In most cases, this is either due to a mistake by the hotel employee or due to a mistake by the bank. But, one way or another, at the request of the client, this money is returned sooner or later.
Each hotel, when booking a room, without fail informs the client that upon booking, the amount necessary to pay for his stay will be blocked on his bank account until the moment this client arrives at the hotel. And, unfortunately, it is impossible to book a room without agreeing with this rule.
This is done so that the hotel receives the client on the appointed day and does not give the room to another. But the hotel also needs a guarantee that the future visitor does not change his mind and a guarantee that this visitor is able to pay for his room.
In order to respect the interests of both parties, the bank, in the interests of the hotel, freezes the funds on the client's account necessary to pay for his overnight stays. The blocked money remains on the client's account, but he cannot spend it until the hotel employees remove the block.
The hotel can legally write off money from the client's account in the following cases:
- If the room was booked on a full prepayment basis without the possibility of a refund. In this case, the funds for the estimated time of stay are debited from the account at the time of booking the room, and will not be returned under any circumstances. It should be noted that in this case the hotel is sure that it is guaranteed to "earn" its money, therefore it gives a good discount when booking a room on these conditions. That is why this type of armor is quite popular.
- If the rooms were booked with a refund option, but the period until which you can withdraw the reservation without paying a penalty or interest has expired. In most cases, this period is 3 days, and the penalty, as a rule, is equal to the cost of a daily stay at the hotel.
- Due to the human factor. In the procedure for blocking money, in addition to the guest himself, two more parties are involved - the hotel and the bank. In both organizations, due to employee error, sometimes money is actually written off instead of freezing. From a formal point of view, this is illegal, so in practice, a call to the bank's support service or to the hotel will quickly solve the problem.
In the first two cases, the procedure for debiting money is absolutely legal, and it is almost impossible to challenge it in court, especially if the hotel has warned about it in advance. You can block the card through the bank so that the hotel does not, under any circumstances, write off the money due to it under the terms of the agreement. Only after that, the hotel security service will blacklist such a client and share this information with other partner hotels, and this client will have big problems with booking in the future.
It is quite another matter when the hotel promises not to take a penalty for canceling the reservation, but subsequently writes off them, ostensibly for paying for the service. In this case, the courts stand up to protect the interests of the deceived guests, and the court proceedings end in their favor.
In addition, the hotel, knowing all the details of the client's card, can write off money from it both for additional services provided and for damage to the hotel's property. This is also a normal global practice adopted in the hotel business. In this way, hotels protect themselves from situations when "forgetful" guests do not pay for additional services provided. Or from situations where the property of the hotel was damaged or stolen through the fault of the client.
In these cases, even if the required amount does not appear on the client's account, the hotel will still write off the money in minus from the debit card. If the card has an overdraft, it will drive it into an overdraft. In this case, the bank will have the right to charge the account holder with a fine for each day of the overdraft and demand the repayment of the debt. If there is no overdraft, the money will be written off in the negative, most likely, there will be no fine, but the bank will still force the debt to be repaid.
There is one more nuance that is worth paying attention to. The fact is that Russian banks are more bureaucratic and much slower than their European counterparts. In some banks, you can find out about all the movements of funds on the account thanks to the SMS service. In some - only from accounting documents, in which the operation of re-authorization (freezing of funds) looks like a transaction to write off money. Thus, our bureaucratic and clumsy banks, forced to comply with all sorts of regulations, unwittingly expose their clients, who, in panic, begin to call the support service.
