Crisis Averted... Barely

[Draft Guitar]

Originally Posted by Stonehauler

Unfortunately, the hotel business has changed. No longer do people need to go to the front desk to check out. Often times, you just leave your room key card in the room and head out. They have no way of knowing if you have checked out or not.

That said, they do have cameras in the hallways of most hotels these days. I say most, because I have not stayed in all of them, but all the ones I have been in (and I travel extensively for work...or at least, used to) have had multiple cameras in them. When they see someone coming out of the room with luggage, especially a luggage cart, they just assume it's to check out and the supervisor watching the floors will send out the cleaning crews.

My advice.

• Take everything in a single trip or ask for help.
• Never take nice instruments into a hotel. Hotels are magnets for thieves, and some of those thieves work at the hotel. This will tempt the cleaning crews. Now, because they can't easily carry it out, like say..the cash in your safe that every employee has the override code to...it will only be "disposed of" when cleaned for the final time upon checkout. They probably saw you coming and you were probably targeted. They did it the way they did so that if someone saw the video of it in court, it would look like an honest mistake instead of a planned theft. Also, remember that hotels have clauses in their posted contracts (the one on the back of your door listing that outrageous cost per night they can charge), saying that they are not responsible for theft. If they had gotten away with it, there is no way they would have payed out for the guitar. After all, you say it's a 3k guitar, but it could have easily been an 89 dollar guitar in that case. You would have gotten hosed.
• If you have to travel with the guitar and you can't get everything at once, take the guitar down and ask the front desk to hold it. This has other risks though, so I would not do it this way. I would rather have them hold my luggage while I go back up to my room for the guitar.

Good advice that I'll probably use next time. Also, that is the reason that I didn't take a guitar that cost significantly more than the Smeck. The Smeck and a J-45 are the least expensive guitars I own, so it had to be one of those two.

In the end, I couldn't spend 4 days without a guitar! Still worth it.

[SingingSparrow]

i hardly think they were going to throw those items away. sounds more like an attempt at thievery. glad you got your stuff back!

[The Bard Rocks]

Amazing story. I'd think the hotel would have a huge liability problem if they allowed their people in before someone has checked out. And any fool would know a guitar would not be just abandoned. Forgotten, perhaps, but that's "Lost and Found", not trash. Nor would anyone with any sense just throw one away. And they are pretty recognizable, even in their cases, so there's not that excuse.

[stljtg]

If you had a small body guitar, maybe it would have been right side up in the garbage!

[Pura Vida]

Crazy story! Time to find another hotel for future visits. And I have the feeling that guitar would have found its way from the trash bin into someone's car before the end of the day. Glad you were able to recover everything, but definitely heart-racing!

[jschmitz54]

You’re to be commended on your self control. I’m not sure I could have handled it as well as you seemed to.