Ritz-Carlton: Oops about the bomb. Here’s the bill for your stay.

I wrote about my experience staying at the Ritz-Carlton Jakarta when the hotel was bombed (17th July 2009). At that time, I mentioned rather jokingly that we didn’t get the bill for staying at the hotel. I thought it would be ridiculous for a hotel with their reputation to do such as classless thing. It turned out that I spoke too soon because the bill came on 23rd July 2009.

I should mention that the bill did not include room for the day of the bombing, but we were charged for the previous two nights. Needless to say, the bill was rejected with strongly-worded letter. Ritz-Carlton called two days after that to apologize about the bill and told us that the bill has been waived.

First of all, I don’t know if the PR department talks to the Finance department, but it is unbelievably stupid and thoughtless for Ritz-Carlton to actually expect customers to pay. In our rejection letter to them, I mentioned the following:

• 9 people died and more than 50 were injured. This is the casualty that happened because they couldn’t prevent the bombing from happening. It was their responsibility to secure their property and they failed.
• Forget for a minute that a tragedy has happened. At the very least they have customers who had to rush out of their rooms in the morning of the bombing without the chance to take their belongings. We had to leave our clothes and car behind and we had to go back to the hotel twice to get all of them back. At the very least they have very incovenienced customers who were left several days without clothes and transportation.
• There was no single “sorry” or “apologize” in the letter accompanying the bill. This five-star hotel is incredibly insensitive.
• In the letter accompanying the bill, they refer to the bombing as “recent incident.” It is insulting to the intelligence that they think they can put euphemism to mask this tragedy.
• They also said that they are “looking forward to welcoming you back as soon as the hotel reopens.” Unbelievable. What have they done to give us a reason to come back?

You can bet that I’ll never stay at another Ritz-Carlton hotel.