Hello all. I would like to share with you an experience I had this week while traveling on business. I think this is an important safety message for everyone, especially for women traveling alone.

Like many hotels these days, my hotel room had one of those electronic locks that is opened with a plastic card. After a day of work I checked into my hotel, went to my room and changed clothes to go to the gym. I came out into the hallway and closed the door behind me. I don't usually do this, but for some unknown reason I reached back to test the door and make sure it was locked. Much to my surprise it opened. I know that hotel room doors are supposed to lock automatically, but I still went back into my room to try and figure out if there's a way to lock the door. Nothing I did worked; it just wouldn't lock.

I called the desk and they sent up a maintenance guy. He immediately suspected that the batteries had gone bad. He opened the electronic lock and pulled out the batteries. Not only were they bad, but one battery had dried battery acid on it. Evidently this battery had been toast for some time, so there's no telling how long this lock had not been functioning.

In my case no harm was done, but just think what a bad situation this could have been. What if I had gone out for dinner and someone came in and stole my laptop? Or worse yet, what if the bad guy realized that a woman was staying alone in that room, and decided to wait for my return?

From now on I will never again take it for granted that the hotel door locked behind me as it should. Heaven only knows how many other people had stayed in that room before me, having no idea they were leaving their door unlocked. Batteries will go out from time to time, so please everyone, check the door when you leave the room.

Hello P_M, thank you for this very important information!! Who knew?? I for sure will check the hotel exterior door in the future. I hope we all will. Thank you for the heads up! Have a relaxing weekend.

WOW! I'm glad that you noticed the fact that the door did not lock. It is unnerving when you think about the possibilities.

I remember once we left our room and I believe my husband was the last one out the door. Half way down the hall, I went back to the room for something. The door was unlocked. He failed to "pull" the door shut, just sort of left it to slam on its own (which I hate, btw). Now we always, always properly pull the door closed.

As you know, my son was robbed due to his moronic roommate who left their dorm room door unlocked. I could care less about the stolen property, but I am still shaking over the fact that he could have "walked" in on these thugs - that thought has left me very unsettled.

Thanks PM for the information. I would have never thought that the batteries would die on those locks or that they even operated on batteries for that matter!

And to think that my family always makes fun of me for checking doors after I've locked them! You can be sure I'll be telling them about this!

Thanks very much indeed for the heads up!
I once had the unnerving experience of having another guest enter my room, with a key card, while I was in it--seems the front desk goofed up and checked him into my room by mistake. No harm done, but now I always set the chain on the inside of the door...

I am so glad that you did not find out the hard way that the door was not locking...shudder!
Caph, we all have that check the door several times phobia in my family. My son thought something was wrong with him LOL but we stop just short of it being a phobia
My new worry is that I will forget my keys, so I will check more than once to be sure they are with me before I go out the door ~

Scarlett, there was a time when my DH would constantly misplace his keys. We bought him a device to attach to his keys so that when he would misplace them, all he would have to do is *clap* and the device would beep.

The only problem was they would beep at the wrong time, like in church or during a meeting. It was kind of funny, come to think of it.

It did *cure* him from his bad habit though.

Boy can I relate to that, Scarlett! Just the other day I was telling my kids the story of how I locked myself out of our apt. when my daughter was about 6 weeks old. She was in the apt.!

For some reason, at that time I kept my apt keys and my car keys on separate rings. I went down to the lobby to check the mail and realized I'd taken my car keys instead of my apt. keys. The stupidest thing about it was my realization that it was Columbus Day so there was no mail delivery!

Because I did have the car keys, I was able to drive to the rental office and get a duplicate key. And, thank God, my daughter slept through the whole thing. But, believe me, I learned a lesson. I've always been very careful to check for keys before closing the door ever since. At least until last year...

A little less than a year ago, one day just after I pulled the door closed, I realized my keys weren't in my pocket. I was on my way to work (it's about a quarter of a mile and I walk) and didn't have time to do anything about it right away. To make a long story short, after thinking about it, I remembered that I'd had the oven on the night before. It got very warm in the house so I turned off the furnace and opened the front window. I distinctly remembered that I hadn't locked the window when I closed it.

So I pulled the screen off the window, slid it open and crawled in. Now, keep in mind that this window is probably about 4 feet off the ground (I'm 5' 2") and there's a 2' wide hedge in front of it. I'm sure it was an absolutely hysterical sight for anyone who happened to drive by!

My husband was furious because I bent the heck out of the screen. But it was a lot cheaper to replace the screen than it would have been to call a lock smith! The old screen was in bad shape anyway. The new one looks much better!

Believe me, I am now super paranoid about forgetting my keys! And my family will never let me forget my little escapade.

A short time after it happened, I came home with a load of groceries one day. I hollered for my son to open the door for me. He said, "Why, Mom? The window's open!"

And my husband gave me one of those magnetic key boxes for Christmas last year!

Two things:

I clip my keys to my belt loop at all times. This saves my pocket from an uncomfortable/unsightly/hole producing bulge of sharp metal.

I hide a spare key off my property so that I will never be truly "locked out".

You can buy the same lock boxes that Realtors use at most home improvement stores these days. They either hang from a doorknob (or water pipe) or you can buy the ones that mount permanently on the wall.
Ours has saved us so much trouble over the years...I couldn't begin to count how many times I've locked my self out of the house, not to mention how often the kids did too.

Now AAA could count exactly how many times I've left my keys in my car....they threatened to cut me off more than once!!

We always check the doors to make sure they are locked when we stay in a hotel and have found them unlocked a couple times. Once it was the battery just like P.M. and another time the actual lock was broken. Both times the hotel fixed them immediately. You can't be too careful now days.

While staying in a hotel in Oregon, my husband went out one morning, came back to the wrong room, put the card in the lock and opened the door. Imagine the surprise of the couple in bed when that door opened. Imagine his embarrassment! We told the front desk and they said that should never happen. Scary. Be sure to use the deadbolt when you are inside the room.

We'll be staying in a hotel the next 5 nights and will be sure to check the door behind us.

Thanks.

P_M. wow i am so glad your experience was not worse! i travel alone all the time so this is a huge tip for me. thank you!

"A short time after it happened, I came home with a load of groceries one day. I hollered for my son to open the door for me. He said, "Why, Mom? The window's open!" ---Caph, kids!!! (thanks for the chuckle )

When the batteries in our doors in the Tampa hotel went bad, they just locked the door and you couldn't get in. Inevitably it happened when I'd just come back from a run dripping with sweat, or back from the grocery store in the middle of July with a trunk load of things that had to get to the refrigerator and it meant going to security, or calling them and waiting for them to get out to the casita with the master key. PITB!!...but better than just having the door not lock I guess.

I have that "give the knob a twist" habit too--all doors do not close equally. I've been in hotels where I thought it had shut completely, but it wasn't quite caught.

Using the interior chain is a good idea too, although I rarely do. Anyone coming into your room should knock several times and announce who they are before opening the door but you never know! When we were living in the Savannah hotel the housemen delivered our patio furniture, putting it in place in our rooftop patio...WHILE I was in the shower, and they had to come through our bedroom to get to the patio! We made up some new rules after that episode!!

I'm nutty about having a spare key somewhere for everything, although I've still gotten caught with TWO spare keys locked in the car. There isn't much anyone here can do about my crumble-cake brain, BUT here's a travel tip I've posted elsewhere but will review here:

When you rent a car, you almost always get 2 keys on the same ring, one a valet key, the other a main key. It once took me 4 hrs. to get help on a weekend evening when I inadvertantly locked the ring with both keys in the trunk of my rental. The locksmith says this happens often and he always tells people to split the two keys up as soon as they rent the car and stow the valet key somewhere other than with the main key.

You do run the risk of losing or forgeting one of the two keys when you return the car, but I now make splitting AND "reuniting" the two keys a part of my rent-a-car ritual.

(Side-tip -- I carry a bunch of locking plastic "cable-hangers/hose-hangers" to lock my luggage zippers and I use them also to put the keys back together.)

Good stories, all. I'll never forget when, in Rome, about 7 am when we're still sleeping, the door opens. It's the maid, wanting to check the mini-bar. Now? Our room was one of those with the skeleton-type key, no way of locking it from the inside.

And why is it that car rental companies give you 2 keys, yet it's on a cable that cannot be separated by hand? Many times we have to hunt down a hardware store to find some sort of gizmo to cut them apart.

Good question, PM.

Happy travels, y'all!

Twice we have been checked into a room that was already occupied. Once we walked in on a couple in bed and once no one was there except ALL their stuff. Had we have been bad people we could have stolen it all. Now, I always slide the inside bolt shut. The front desk must make those mistakes a lot and that's pretty scary.

Good reminder P_M. Beign a guy, I probably tend not to think much as about it when I'm in the room but do think about what I'm leaving behind when I go out. I really should reach back, to at least check.

This past month I was at a conference at one of the large Disney resorts in Orlando. The hallway door looked to be latched, but I found I could push a bit and it would unlatch - unless I finally slammed it a couple of times that could be heard up and down the hall.

Then I found that the sliding door to the balcony also wouldn't latch under any circumstances. Not a very likely entry point but definitely reachable from the next balcony over (for a thrill seeking cat burglar out for some wrinkled business casual, at least).

I pointed this out to the front desk as I left, but I hope people make a walk through and check on that when they first get to the room. Good advice!

This just happened to me a few months ago as I was leaving my Moscow hotel room for the day. For whatever reason, I reached back to test the door once I closed it, and was surprised that it was still open. It turned out to be a sticky mechanism thing and not a battery thing (I was kind of embarrassed when it took the maintenance person one flip of the inside door handle to fix it). Nevertheless, ever since I've been more careful about checking hotel room doors to make sure they are locked. Good reminder.