Primetime at the Apollo

Don't ask about the title - it just came to me.

William calls me at about 4am, having problems balancing the credit card machine with what we've got in the computer. I was wide awake, and told I'd be there in a few minutes. He'd already been working on it for 2 and a half hours when I got there. Basically, we had one room that had checked out and paid a certain amount, but the credit card hadn't been charged... instead another one had. The card that had been charged didn't have a signed receipt, though... the other one did. The uncharged card matched the name of the guest in the room... it was hard for us to figure out what exactly had transpired close to 16 hours ago.

So we have this other charge, the unsigned one, with a wholly different name - no one under that name in the hotel, nor has anybody checked out by that name. So i start looking back through our records... and it takes me a while... but I find out this guy had stayed and checked out TWO WEEKS AGO... and had paid cash at check-out.

So now I'm confused. Why in the world was this guy's card even charged? And, for that matter... for a wholly different amount than he paid originally? I don't really know. We left a note asking that same question. The ONLY thing I can think of is that our intrepid morning clerk was attempting to delete his old preauthorization (should have been done a long time ago), and instead charged his card. Those two procedures are TOTALLY different.

We tried to set a fairly even tone to the letter, but I think our intense aggravation may have shown through. This is not the first time this has happened - this time the totals were off by about $90, but sometimes it can run into several hundreds of dollars. I just don't know what she's doing up there. Not showing up on time, that's for sure - she's usually about 20 minutes late. EVERY DAY.

Sorry... this may seem kind of agitated. It is. Just thought people might find it interesting.