Scammed by a Motel

When I was growing up in New Jersey in the 1960s we drove up to Canada every couple of years for summer vacation. First Ontario and then Quebec, which was particularly attractive to me because of its French-speaking majority. Unlike Ontario, where the only sign of a foreign country I was then capable of appreciating was the Queen Elizabeth Way between Niagara Falls and Toronto, hearing French in the streets of Quebec was the incontrovertible proof I needed that we were truly outside the borders of the United States.
When Expo 67 — the 1967 International and Universal Exposition was its formal name — opened in Montreal, therefore, we knew we’d be visiting. For those who were born since then, Expo 67 was considered one of the most successful World Fairs in history, perhaps the greatest ever. The crowds were enormous. To give you some idea, over half-a-million people attended the fair on the third day it was open, setting a one-day record that still stands.
A visit to Expo 67 was much more than an opportunity to tour pavilions of the 62 nations that participated (although that certainly would have been sufficient). The fair’s motto was “Man in the World,” and that included the famous Habitat 67, a geometrical housing project designed by Moshe Safdie that may have stirred controversy at first but is now recognized as a work of genius and remains one of the most striking and identifiable buildings on the planet.
The Crush of Tourists
In planning our trip, of course, my parents were well aware that every last hotel room in Montreal was going to be reserved well in advance. So a number of months before the fair opened my father wrote to a motel we had stayed at before, and particularly liked, to reserve our room. He received a response soon after confirming the reservation.
Some time later my parents either read in a newspaper or heard from one of their friends who had returned from Montreal, I don’t recall, that the motel in question had opened an “annex” in its parking lot to host even more tourists than it would otherwise have been able to do. That being the case, my father wrote again to the motel to confirm that our reservations were in the original brick building and not in the annex. Once again, he received a quick reply confirming that was the case.
Upon arriving in Montreal on July 26 we went directly to the motel, parked and noticed the annex. It was everything we assumed it was. It was jerrybuilt, ready to be torn down the day after Expo 67 would close. It looked more like a series of chicken coops than anything else. When we got to the registration desk, however, we were told our room was in the annex. My father produced the written confirmation that our room was in the original building, but it was to no avail. We were scammed. So we got back in the car and left.
We inquired with a number of other motels but nothing was available. Montreal as we knew, was inundated by tourists.
A Stroke of Luck: The Anonymous Telephone Operator
The next thing I remember was stopping at an intersection. My father got out of the car and went to a phone booth (remember those?). He decided to call the mayor. He put a dime in the phone and dialed the operator to get the number. Thankfully she spoke English, because apart from simple pleasantries my father didn’t know a word of French. The operator provided the number but asked what prompted him to ask for it. So my father explained the situation. The operator then called city hall while my father waited on the line. She spoke in French with a series of officials, who referred her to some honcho in Quebec City, the provincial capital. So she told my father to keep staying on the line while she called them. Once again she spoke to a series of officials, who informed her that two representatives of the provincial government would meet my father in the motel lobby at 6 PM. After half an hour or so in the phone booth, my father thanked her and his dime was returned. We were all amazed.
We returned to the motel and waited. At precisely 6 PM two men wearing suits and ties entered the lobby with briefcases. One, I remember, only spoke French. The other, who had a moustache, politely introduced himself in halting English. My father showed him the confirmation he received and told us to wait. Then the two of them entered the office of the motel manager, who, no doubt, had been told in advance to expect them. Very quickly the conversation behind the door turned into a screaming match. The manager left, spoke to a reception clerk, and then returned to resume the conversation with the two officials. More rancor, desk pounding, screaming. Then silence.
Finally, the one with the moustache exited and told us that the law required that any hotel that could not honor a written room confirmation had to pay the cost of a similar or even better accommodation in a different hotel. Since the tourist-class rooms were all full throughout the city, our once favorite motel was forced to underwrite the cost of our stay at what was still then the most gloried hotel in the city, the Windsor. They didn’t have any tourist rooms available, either, of course, so they gave us the royal suite. And the manager at our motel had to pay for it. He was visibly upset. We were delighted.
Merci Monsieur de Gaulle
It transpired that the royal suite was suddenly available because its last occupant, Charles de Gaulle, the president of France, had just cut short his visit and hurriedly left the country. Two days before he made an unscheduled speech from the balcony of Montreal’s city hall to a large crowd gathered outside, and at the end he added “Vive le Québec libre! Vive, vive, vive le Canada français! Et vive la France!” (“Long live free Quebec! Long live, long live, long live French Canada! And long live France”). To make sure his audience understood his message, he was careful to accentuate the word libre when he spoke. The speech, it turns out, was planned by de Gaulle, who had long harbored a deep animosity towards the British, with the intention to whip up Quebecois separatism.
The next day, as de Gaulle was touring Expo 67, Prime Minister Lester Pearson issued a brusque statement. “The people of Canada are free. Every province in Canada is free. Canadians do not need to be liberated,” and then reminded de Gaulle of the Canadians who died liberating France from the Germans 23 years earlier. A gruff de Gaulle cancelled the remainder of his itinerary and boarded his plane back to Paris.
We remained in the royal suite for just one night, until the next VIP arrived, so we were reassigned to smaller but still exquisite accommodations on the same floor. We learned who they were when we returned to the hotel the next evening and were caught standing on one side of the cordoned-off red carpet when Nobuhito, formally known as Prince Takamatsu of Japan (he was the younger brother of Emperor Hirohito) and his consort Kikuko, Princess Takamatsu arrived with their retinue and a delegation of Japanese journalists. We waved as they passed us like everyone else and they noticed. We ran into them a few more times during their stay, and once wound up sharing the same elevator. They recognized us, smiled and bowed on each occasion. And to think — none of this would have been possible without de Gaulle and the anonymous telephone operator.
What to Do if You’re a Victim of a Hotel or Timeshare Scam
I’ve penned this story after reading a number of news reports on the growing number of hotel and timeshare scams. I wanted to provide today’s victims of these sorts of scams with personal testimony that can serve to provide some guidance. So here’s what I learned:
Discovering you’ve been scammed is not the end of the story. You can fight back and win. No, the odds are that you’re not going to randomly find a sympathetic telephone operator to help you out. But there are professional fund recovery services that have the knowledge and experience to get your money back. I know that because I happen to work for one, MyChargeBack, which has recovered more than $7 million for clients who were scammed.