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Choice Hotels: That Room Safe Could Cost You

A regular Mouse Print* reader, Bob, recently returned from a cross-country car trip and wrote to complain about what he calls the “hotel safe scam.” Here’s his story:

You check into a hotel, and you are asked to initial a registration form in several places and then sign it. You initial to accept the hotel’s rate. You initial to acknowledge the non-smoking policy. And again for the no-pets policy. Some hotels also ask you to initial the “optional” safe fee. Then you sign at the bottom.

People are tired, distracted, in a hurry, or perhaps their English isn’t so good. If you stay in enough hotels, it all becomes routine. Many consumers just do as they are asked without reading.

The safe fee is usually $1.50 per day, but sometimes a different amount. Supposedly, it’s for the use of the safe. In some cases, I found the safe locked and unusable, but that made no difference to the charge.

An “optional” fee is rather extraordinary. The hotel form often says that you can ask for the fee to be removed. Some say they will remove the fee up to 60 days later. If you ask up front that the fee be removed, some tell you to ask again at checkout. In every case, when I insisted that the fee be removed, it was, although I had to ask twice sometimes.

The safe fee is a hidden-in-plain-sight scam. The hotels expressly tell you about the fee and rely on inertia to get your money. The hotels know that most people won’t notice or won’t object. Checkout at most hotels doesn’t require any action by a consumer. The hotel often slips a bill under your door, and you can leave without stopping at the front desk.

Sure enough, some Choice hotels tack on a “safe with limited warranted” charge of $1.50 a day onto your bill:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Choice safe charge

Mouse Print* contacted the PR folks at Choice Hotels to ask for an explanation of this charge and why they chose a sneaky way to raise the cost of a hotel room. The company did not respond.

The lesson here is clear: don’t blindly initial all the Xs on that card when you first register at a hotel, and scrutinize your bill for “optional” charges that the hotel might tack onto it.

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T-Mobile’s “Unlimited?” 4G Service

Few services advertised as “unlimited” are truly unlimited. And T-Mobile continues to be a case in point.

When T-Mobile began advertising “unlimited” data on its cellphones in April 2011, the fine print indicated that only the first two gigabytes were truly unlimited. Any use beyond that would be slowed down or “throttled.” And of course, that fact was not as prominently disclosed as their unlimited claims.

Fast forward to September 2012. T-Mobile published full page ads with a new unlimited claim:

T-Mobile unlimited

However, at the bottom page in almost unreadable type was this:

*MOUSE PRINT:

T-Mobile unlimited fine print

Not obvious on its face, the new unlimited plan is not considered “Ultra” or “Premium” where customers’ data transmission speeds will be given priority when traffic is heavy. That could put those on the new unlimited plan in coach and thus they may not experience the same fast speeds.

Beyond that, on T-Mobile’s “test drive” website, the company seems to proclaim a list of benefits to those who select the new 4G unlimited service (note: graphic has been compressed to fit this page):

T-Mobile

The top-listed benefit is the ability to create a wi-fi hotspot so that data can be shared with other devices nearby such as a tablet. However, when clicking on that benefit, one discovers that this is NOT a benefit of the new unlimited 4G plan.

*MOUSE PRINT:

TM

NOTE: MrConsumer is a member of Verizon’s Consumer Advisory Board, and often criticizes that company for its advertising missteps.

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Carbon Monoxide Detectors: Guaranteed to Fail in 7 Years

Kidde alarmTo help prevent illness and death, some states require carbon monoxide alarms to be installed in various parts of your home.

Kidde is one of the large, recognized brands of smoke alarms and other fire prevention products. Certain of their carbon monoxide detectors, however, come with conflicting promises and warnings.

In the manual’s introduction for one of their basic carbon monoxide detectors, it reassures customers they have made a good choice:

“Thank you for making Kidde a part of your complete home safety program. With proper installation and use, your new Kidde CO alarm will provide you with years of dependable service.”

Buried on page 8, however, is some starting news:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Kidde 7 years

A similar disclosure appears in fine print on the box itself. On one hand, the company seems to take safety seriously and doesn’t want to give customers a false sense of reassurance that their detectors are working when they have really lost the ability to sense carbon monoxide. On the other hand, one would not normally expect to have to throw out a $25 to $70 product after only seven years.

What’s going on here? The answer is that carbon monoxide detectors do indeed have a limited life. Inside many detectors is an electro-chemical cell that reacts in the presence of carbon monoxide. It tends to be very accurate. But, over time, the chemical can degrade and its performance is diminished. Accordingly, a national safety standard for carbon monoxide detectors published by Underwriters Laboratories (UL) requires that manufacturers build in a warning system to alert consumers that the unit is no longer functioning properly.

*MOUSE PRINT:

8.1 The unit (including the sensor) shall have a specified lifetime of at least 3 years from the date of manufacture, or from the date the unit is placed into service.

38.1.6 The unit shall indicate end-of-life, based on the manufacturer’s specified lifetime, with an end-of-life signal (see 3.11). This signal shall be triggered either by an internal timer or by a self-diagnostic test(s).

3.11 END-OF-LIFE SIGNAL – An audible signal, differing from the alarm signal, intended to indicate that the device has reached the end of its useful life and should be replaced. … The end-of-life signal shall repeat once every 30 – 60 seconds ±10 percent. — UL 2034, Standard for Single and Multiple Station Carbon Monoxide Alarms.

So, no matter what brand of carbon monoxide detector you buy, the unit will automatically commit suicide at the end of its useful life.

Note: MrConsumer is a member of UL’s Consumer Advisory Council.
 

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