I wish I had the money to stop needing to stay in cheap motels. I'm currently staying in another "cheap" motel in Atlantic City, trying to have a relaxing weekend on the beach but failing. My room is overpriced under the best of circumstances, but with a shower that alternates between ice cold and scalding, it most certainly is way more expensive than it should be. (What is with it with me and showers?)
Learning my lesson from the Super8, I did talk to the front desk. They've adjusted my rate slightly, but not nearly as much as circumstances and fairness would call for.
I've thought a lot about my Super8 post since I wrote it, and in some ways self-critically. It is a bit whiny. Of course, lately *I've* been a bit whiny. I've been stretched thin for a long time, and I'm beginning to show signs of fraying. And it isn't quite fair to hold it against these businesses for my condition. On the other hand, given that this is the hospitality business, it's not unreasonable to expect to come away from the relationship feeling good. In a sense that's what you're paying for. But in any case I shouldn't be coming away feeling WORSE than when I started. Yet that's what's been happening a lot lately, when I've been coming away more tired, more stressed, and poorer. I don't think it's because I've got unachievably high standards, however; I think by any objective measure these defects are worthy of concern.
I also wish to restate something I wrote in the Super 8 post. I said that "no great injustice" resulted from my dealings with the motel. But that's not completely true. Yes, it is true that neither life, limb, or significant amount of property was at stake. But like many customer-business relationships, there is an unequal bargaining power manifest in the relationship. The consumer can try to find a good price beforehand, but once he shows up at the establishment to enjoy what he has bargained for, his options immediately become limited. For instance, this weekend's motel told me that if I hadn't liked my room when I checked in I could have refused it. Oh really? And then done what? Been in a far off city with no housing? Been forced to pay even more to get a room somewhere else? It doesn't seem unreasonable to expect that, when agreeing to pay these prices, you can trust the establishment to deliver a room that fulfills even the barest minimum of hospitality standards.
And what do you do when you don't discover the defects until after you've already spent some time there? If it wasn't already too late to leave before I settled in, it certainly was by then. At which point I was over a barrel, because lacking an interest in good customer service as an investment in future business, there's nothing a customer can really do to enforce the implied agreement of value for money. Any leverage the customer might have had in the market has been lost, now that the establishment has won the business. It's therefore only the threat of losing future business that the customer still has to compel performance. But when confronted with recalcitrant or irrational business managers, sometimes that threat carries much less weight then it should.
Backdated due to lack of Internet access. Actually posted 9/2/05.