Audra, your question was: "Was that enough compensation? Thoughts?" That's all I was responding to.

As to why one hotel would offer one thing, and another hotel another...it's as individual as the people are you are dealing with. I don't believe there is a set policy, but my feeling is that the better the hotel, the bigger the freebie. IMHO things such as this (not the replacement shirt, which was owed, but offering more), sets an unfortunate precedent which leads to the sort of incidents I described. They are creating their own headaches.

It's gotten so bad in the insurance industry that there is a data base of frequent claimants--types of accidents and settlements. It'd be unfortunate if something that started out as a goodwill gesture led to the same with the hotel or restaurant industries!

bonniebroad, I'm quite certain they paid something just to get rid of it.

I was an adjuster in both Dallas and New Orleans. In New Orleans I handled a claim against our policyholder, a business, for a Mardi Gras incident. If you are familiar with Mardi Gras, things, trinkets...beads, doubloons, little things, are thrown from the floats for the crowd to catch. That's probably 3/4 of the draw of the parades--the fun of going after the trinkets, because the floats themselves aren't that special. The policyholder's float was throwing out all the usual and their special "treats" were those little footballs, maybe 4" long. The claimant went for the football but missed and it hit her in the mouth instead. There was no injury, but she said her mouth was sore. She too retained an atty. Ugh. Those experiences really soured me on that profession and the sort of thing we are talking about here. It's also why I'll wonder how someone can get their foot UNDER the bed when they are getting out of it. Bedskirts don't have flare unless they are brand new out of the box...and even then...

I think what it boils down to is people expect to have a perfect stay at a hotel and when that doesn't happen, people expect compensation.

I'm with OO on hotels have done this to themselves. $%^t happens. One of my sister hotels used to offer weather insurance. If you bought it and it rained more than 65% of the daylight hours, they would reimburse you for that days hotel stay.

My husband being in the restaurant business sees it a lot worse. I would last two seconds in his position. Customer orders meal, customer eats entire meal, customer complains about meal, customer wants meal comped and wants gift certificate for future visit.

Hey folks. I posted about how this thread was dead ended and I contacted Fodors to find out why, but never heard. Well, I just got an email from them saying they reviewed it and agreed with me that it was travel related and was not offensive (although they said they edited out a couple of nastier posts). They re-entered it "into service". So here it is again.

This is the first "Lazarus" thread I've seen.

actually I could easily see how something could be hidden under a bedskirt.

notice she didn't say under the "bed".

notice that when you get out of bed - "bedskirts" have a tendency to not be in the 'all made up pretty' position.

in fact, not to go too far down this path, but a 40th birthday party - just how neat do you think that bed was the next morning?

poor woman, had so many people practically calling her a liar - when it could well have been hidden under a bedskirt - which coulda been thrown (heh heh) halfway across the room even.

or at minimum just the act of throwing back the covers to get out of bed - half covers the blade... other half pokes out and OUCH there you go.

Oh,gee, Patrick, How sweet of you to do that for us. I am going to say a bad word so they dead-end it again. @#$%&$#*

Hooray! The razor post that had a life of its own is back. I still think this would make a fine whodunit.

wagonwheel posted a follow up to this post that would have made the original posting make sense.