Why isn’t this Hotwire resort fee disclosed?

Qmandatory extras charged to your folio, often after you’ve agreed on a rate. Hotels charge resort fees to make their prices look lower than they are. Resort fees are unfair and deceptive, and should be illegal. You were doing everything you could to avoid a Hotwire resort fee and still failed. That’s because Hotwire didn’t disclose the fee.

One of my researchers called Hotwire three separate times to see if that was a fluke, if maybe you’d misunderstood. And all three times, Hotwire still didn’t disclose the mandatory $35 per night resort fee. I list the names, numbers and email addresses of Hotwire’s customer-service executives on my nonprofit consumer-advocacy site: www.elliott.org/ company-contacts |

Last week, I booked one of Hotwire’s blind-booking “hot rate” hotel deals in New York.

Many of the hot rate deals I was looking at fully disclosed the hotel’s resort fee without revealing the hotel’s name. I chose one that did not make such a disclosure. I received a room at the InterContinental New York Barclay.

The day after I made my reservation, I called Hotwire customer support to inquire about the type of room I was getting. I also wanted to confirm that there was no resort fee. However, the customer-service agent informed me that I would, in fact, have to pay a $35 resort fee for the night.

I explained that I did not know, or have reason to know, of this resort fee at the time of booking. She referred me to Hotwire’s terms and conditions, which say that Hotwire rates do not include special fees charged by hotels upon checkout, such as energy charges, convention fees, resort fees and parking fees. Customers are required to pay these fees directly to the hotels at checkout time.

I understand the terms, but they do not state how or when these fees are disclosed, nor do they give me a reason to know that I could potentially be liable for mandatory, undisclosed resort fees. I am appalled by the way Hotwire has handled this situation.

I have spent hours on the phone with the company over the past week. I’ve probably talked to nearly a dozen customer-service agents. I was even hung up on by a supervisor after politely refusing to take “no” for an answer.

All I wanted was for Hotwire to subtract $35 from my bill. Can you help me with this Hotwire resort fee? /hotwire/. (Expedia owns Hotwire.)

I contacted Hotwire on your behalf. Separately, you also reached out to Hotwire. “Mr. Stack indicated that the hotel informed Expedia of the new resort fee on June 4,” a representative confirmed. “Unfortunately, due to a technical glitch that we are investigating, the fee did not flow to our systems until July 2. Because Mr. Stack booked on July 27, we have decided to reimburse him for the full cost of the resort fee.”