Taj Property Boycott

I am boycotting all Taj hotels, properties, and restaurants. For those of you reading this in the U.S., you may not be familiar with Taj. I believe that they are based here in India. They are a chain of fairly nice hotels throughout India with a few properties in other countries in Asia and even a few hotels in the U.S.

Now when I was booking our trip to Dubai, I picked the Taj Palace because there are 3 Taj properties here in Chennai that have a fairly good reputation plus the Taj Palace in Dubai received good ratings on the internet for a 5 star hotel...and it wasn't that expensive compared to some other 5 star hotels in Dubai.

Overall, our stay was really good. Our room was nice (we even had an outdoor balcony)...the lobby was nice (we popped into a couple of other 5 star hotels and the lobbys were really bad)...the breakfast buffet was good...so you are probably asking, what's the problem then?

Well we didn't have any problems until we went to checkout. Our room was prepaid, so our bill should have only included the couple of room service meals that we had plus S had used the telephone line to dial up to the internet connection through his company. Well then, you can probably imagine our surprise when the internet charges were about $500 (U.S. dollars). We were only there 5 days/4 nights...there must be some mistake.

Nope...the bill was $500 for S to use his own computer to call his own company's telephone line. The way his company works is that they have local telephone numbers set up in every major city around the world. Broadband internet connections in hotel rooms often aren't compatible with the company's system, so it's fairly common that S has had to use the telephone number to dial in. Up until this point all he had ever been charged was for a local telephone call.

Well as we were in a hurry to get to the airport, we didn't really have time to argue the charges. But as we thought more and more about it, the whole situation just really pissed us off. When S had tried to use the broadband connection, it had told him that the most he would be charged would have been $30 per day...so the bill would have been $150 not $500. Anyway, to make a long story short...after calls to the hotel management and to the Taj corporate offices...the bill stands. Supposedly, in the room somewhere, there was some notice about these charges. Well, I don't know about most of you, but I actually read everything in hotel rooms, and I don't remember anything about this...so my best guess is that it either wasn't in the room or that it was worded badly and therefore didn't register in my brain or that it wasn't clearly posted for us to see.

The sad thing is that for $100 per day...you would think that S had used the telephone line nonstop...this isn't the case...he really didn't use it much at all. The reason being is that the dial up connection was so very sssssslllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwww. So I can't even imagine what the bill would have been had the connection been quicker causing S to have used it more.

It still just floors me that Taj can't better cater to business travelers. S says that he will submit the charges as a business expense, but that's not the point. I don't like to be ripped off...even if it is the company paying. These charges are ridiculous and outrageous! Anyway, I now refuse to ever stay or go to another Taj hotel including their restaurants...this really is unfortunate as two of the better restaurants that we have tried here in Chennai are at Taj properties.