Our Reservations in Siena

T. Lord

New member
Hello,
I cannot seem to find a Better Business Bureau for the City of Siena. I want to share with you the rude treatment my mother and I received from the Villa Elda Hotel in Siena. I booked a 6 night stay for September and arrived to find that the hotel had incorrectly booked our stay for July. I believe the booking engine on the website simply captured the dates incorrectly. They had charged us for the complete stay prior to our arrival and when we arrived they refused to work it out with us. WE had generated 6 emails total between myself and the hotel reviewing details of the stay but the hotel did not re-confirm the dates on any of these subsequent details. They had rooms available and refused to let us stay there. WE had traveled by bus, a long day arriving in Siena at 9pm at night. I thought the City of Siena would like to be aware of this situation and of our disappointment. We had planned on enjoying 6 days in Siena but the difficulty with Villa Elda was so unexpected and disappointing that we left 2 nights after, which was as soon as we could secure a hotel in another region of Italy. We both feel so badly about it that it has tainted how we feel about Siena. Before this incident, Siena was my favorite city in Italy. Thank you for the opportunity to share this information.
 
I am very sorry to hear of this mix-up in your reservations, it is very strange with today's modern technologies for them to make such an error.

Unfortunately it happened --- so at this point you have to decide, aside from sharing so hopefully it doesn't happen to someone else, what you would like to obtain: a refund? a coupon for a future stay?
I just underline this part so that you are clear when you write to clearly indicate what you'd like the outcome to be, otherwise they might read it and shrug their shoulders instead of trying to help you out.

I agree that Villa Elsa uses a booking engine that doesn't make it clear that they use the day-month system and it's possible that there was a mix up for that reason. Many other booking systems make sure the months are spelled out to ensure the dates are clear.

So what to do: I would suggest you write to Villa Elda directly, to their manager or owner, to share your disappointment and treatment. I agree that if they had free rooms when you arrived, they could have tried working something out with you. At the very least, they have very badly trained staff as far as customer service goes.

Second, I'd write to the hotel consortium in Siena to which they are belong - Federalberghi.
Contact info is here, maybe contacting the president directly and his secretary: http://www.federalberghisiena.it/chi_siamo.asp

Third, you could write to the Siena tourism office and ask them for assistance, especially if you would like to return to Siena. This is the main email address siena@terresiena.it (and more emails here: http://www.enjoysiena.it/it/informazioni) but you can ask whether they can direct your request to a more appropriate channel.

There is no better business bureau per se, so I'd try these channels and see how it goes.
Remember there are bad apples everywhere, I really hope this doesn't turn you off Siena as a city because it is also one of my favorites towns in Italy!
 
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