My experience at Americinn in Princeton, IL was horrible. The hotel appearance was overall nice however what I have gone through since I left the hotel is worth telling about. I got to work Monday morning after my stay and decided to check my online bank statement because I had forgot to log the charges in my checkbook register and wanted to be sure of the actual amount. As I looked, they had charged me an extra $300!!! So, of course, I called to find out what was going on and they said that $200 was from my 2nd room and someone had smoked cigarettes in it. I took full responsibility for that and so did my friends that actually stayed in the room. The other $100 they said was a charge towards a $900 fee for a broken tv! The tv was broken when I got into the room but I failed to report it because I didn't get into the room until 1:00am after I had been at a wedding reception all night. When the tv was turned off you could not tell that it was broke, so when I checked in at 5:00pm I did not even notice it was broke until 1:00am when I turned the tv on. Did I fail to report it?-Yes I did, but did I break it?- no I didn't. The hotel staff claims that the tv was completely shattered when they walked in and that someone had clearly punched it with a knuckle. Bottom line is that the hotel took money from my checking account without informing me of any of the charges before they did it. I spoke with a hotel manager from a different hotel that had been in the business for many years and he had never heard of such a thing. How can they prove that I did it? They cannot prove it but yet I still have to pay $900 for a tv that I didn't break (nor did anyone with me) on a 21 year old, female, full-time college student salary! Now I have to go through a bunch of legal stuff to try to get it straightned out. I signed papers saying that I was liable for damages done to the room while I was staying there, I am not about to pay for something that the person before me or before them obviously did. Maybe someone reading this may think that I am lying to try to get out of paying for it, which is fine, I am not concerned with what others think when I know what is true but I want to warn everyone staying in this hotel to watch your bank account, and if anyone has had a similar exerience to mine I would love to hear about it.
