hesn

Can I please have some advice about how to get a cancelled room deposit back from Jnane Tamsna, a luxury hotel near Marrakesh. I cancelled my hotel reservations 4 weeks ago and have been e-mailing the owner weekly and asking her to refund my $750 deposit back to my visa card. There has been an excuse from her every time as to why she can not refund my depost -- either she is either traveling and can not trust her employees to make the credit, or, she is sick ... I was understanding for the first two weeks and now, well, I am suspicious. For some reason, the owner simply will not refund my money, even though I cancelled this reservation a full six months before we were scheduled to go, which is well within the hotel's written cancellation policy. What can I do to get my money back? It is starting to feel like FRAUD!

ShelliDawn

Talk with your credit card company and see if they will reverse the charge. I don't know what the chances are that they will, but it can't hurt to try.

LSky

Yep, call your credit card company. I'm sure you read through the fine print. Don't let this go another minute.
I would mention the incident on Tripadvisor to warn others.

Did you book directly through the hotel?

doug_stallings

I would try very hard to resolve the dispute with the hotel before appealing to your credit card company. Since the hotel is not in the U.S., they may not have to do anything.

If you have been corresponding in writing, make sure you print off all replies and correspondence. If not, make sure you request the cancellation in writing. Fax or send it by mail.

I don't know this particular hotel but I'd go that route first. Then if you simply cannot solve the problem, appeal to your credit card. But this should NEVER be your first resort.

ShelliDawn

Doug, my impression is that the OP has already tried multiple times to deal with the hotel:

<i>There has been an excuse from her every time as to why she can not refund my depost (sic) ...</i>

Sounds like time to call the credit card company to me.

abram

I wouldn't call the cerdit card company--I'd write to them.

hesn

Thank you everyone. After weeks of e-mails back and forth with the owner of this hotel, I did finally get a definitive response shortly after posting this problem message on Fodors. My deposit was refunded today, however it did not refund back as a credit to my visa. Apparently in Morocco there is a special procedure that has to be followed that makes it impossible to fund it back to a credit card when the owner of the hotel is not present in person to do it, which I was unaware of until yesterday. The owner had been away from the hotel for weeks and for security reasons she did not have anyone on the staff at the hotel who was able to do it for her in her absence. She refunded it with an international wire transfer instead directly into my bank account, which she suggested.

I know that this hotel has a good reputation with guide books, but I do caution anyone who is making a reservation to be sure that you are not going to cancel it for ANY reason. Also, do not expect the same level of professionalism that you would get at another luxury property when it comes to the reservation process. For instance, I like to have my reservtion numbers for all of our hotels when we travel and I take them with me in case there is any issue at check in. This hotel also never gave us a confirmation/reservation number, even after I tried requesting it by e-mail and this fact even concerned me from the beginning. Then after we had to cancel our reservation, the owner and I had several more e-mails back and forth over the course of weeks as I attempted to get my refund back for my room deposit. She basically did not follow through with what she said was going to do for me regarding my refund for weeks. It ultimatley took an e-mail mentioning that I was going to be in touch with my bank and an international attorney (which I did do as well) and then I had to post this on Fodors for me to get her real attention and for me to get my money back. It was all very irregular from start to finish and below my expectation for a how fine hotel should operate.