I've tried handling it like an adult, now it's time to handle it like a blogger

A few weeks ago, I was home alone on a Saturday night. I had offers to go out but nothing seemed appealing. Dawn and I were chatting on Instant Message when I typed 'wanna go to Atlantic City?' She asked if I was serious and well, I wasn't but now that she wanted to go, I was! At around 10pm, we were in her car on the way to AC.

(Funny sidenote: neither of us have written about that trip because we're really thinking of turning it into a screenplay, it was that insane.)

We had called around to various hotels and they were pretty booked up. We were fine with playing for a little while and then heading home but, of course, preferred to stay the night and not have to worry about the driving. Also, whether or not we had a room would determine how long we'd stay at the casino. I started calling different hotel chains to see if they might have something under 30 miles away from Atlantic City. Marriott had nothing. Then I called Hilton.

There was no availability at any of their bigger hotels but there was a Hampton Inn Bayside not two miles away from Atlantic City that could be ours for the night for a mere $89. Before I yelped 'we'll take it!' I realized there could be a problem. See, it was 1am. Technically, that made it Sunday. But I didn't need the room Sunday-Monday the 17th-18th, I needed it Saturday-Sunday the 16th-17th . I confirmed and reconfirmed and rereconfirmed that the operator understood this. I stressed that we would be checking in in about 4 hours. I repeated again and again 'so that's the 16th-17th and not the 17th-18th, right?'

Right.

So, we played for a few hours and when we started to get delirious from all that pumped in oxygen we called it a night. We got into Dawn's car as the sun rose over beautiful Atlantic City. We pulled out of the Tropicana parking lot as the hookers counted their money, the dealers were just heading to bed and the homeless people were finding comfortable stoops.

I had dutifully written down all the hotel information, including its phone number and our confirmation number. I called the hotel to get directions. The guy that answered was confused. 'You've already checked in, right?' 'Uh, no, we're going to be checking in now.' 'But, we're completely sold out.'

You know how to take a reservation, you just don't know how to hold a reservation.

I read the desk guy our confirmation number and he found no such number in the system. I called the main Hilton number and told them our story. The woman put me on hold as she tried to figure out the error. When she came back she knew the answer to what had gone wrong: Because we had made a reservation for a date that had already passed, the computer automatically went to that date in the following year. So, we had a reservation for July 16, 2006. Terrif. She suggested we go to the hotel and get the half-asleep desk guy to get us a room at a nearby hotel, which we knew were all booked up because we had tried calling the main Atlantic City hotels number earlier in the night. We did not feel that sounded promising, especially since it was 6am and we were surrounded by the dregs of society in the ghetto of Atlantic City (I'm sorry commenter Jay, I know it's your hometown but you have to admit the strip is nasty, particularly at dawn).

So we drove the 2+ hours home, through the heaviest rain I had seen since I saw flooding in Scotland, cursing Hilton the whole way. Since then, I've sent three emails and have gotten zero response beyond the promise to forward my complaint to the relevant department. What's funny is that Hilton really is/was my favorite hotel chain. It's the one I would seek out while on roadtrips and the one I had logged the most stays at. But this was a big mistake and the fact that they haven't even responded to our complaint is ridiculous. So, here you go Hilton, a couple of thousand people reading this when it could've just been between you and me (and Dawn).