In August 2000, I stayed at the Oakland Airport Hampton Inn while visiting the Bay Area on vacation.

The hotel is located right off I-880, near the Oakland Coliseum (home of the Athletics and Raiders), and, obviously, Oakland Int'l Airport. The Coliseum BART station is less than 5 minutes from the hotel and provides easy access to Oakland and San Fran.

Food options are pretty scarce; there's a fast food joint on the corner and a Denny's off the nearby intersection. I found only one pizza place in the phone book that would deliver to the hotel.

The continental breakfast was fine. The usual fare: cereal, muffins, bagels, coffee, juice. It was kept well-stocked through the entire breakfast window, so I didn't have to pick from the bottom of the barrel if I showed up at 9:15am. The breakfast lounge area was clean and comfortable.

The room was clean and basic, with a good-sized TV set and a nice table & chair for doing desk work.

There was a decent-looking little swimming pool in the back of the hotel, but I never used it. It was supposed to be closed at night, but one night I came in at about 1:30am and there were a bunch of teens using it. They weren't making much noise, though, so I didn't alert the staff.

Halfway through my visit, the towel rack came out of the wall in the bathroom when I pulled a towel off it. I notified the desk, but they told me that the towel racks "are always coming out of the wall" and that I should just put the towels on the top of the toilet tank. Okay, then.

Now the bad stuff.

While staying there, I frequently used my laptop to dial up to Earthlink. I got an access number from Earthlink, and checked the Pac Bell white pages in my room to make sure it was local to the exchange that the hotel was in. It was.

I stayed at the Hampton for 9 days and 8 nights. On Day 7, I got a call from the front desk. They wanted a credit card to secure the billing for the $900.00 plus worth of phone calls to the Earthlink number. Until I did, the phone service to my room was being discontinued. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I went down to see the manager.

She presented me with a breakdown of the bill, which showed me how I'd been charged (at a whopping $.75/minute) for calls to a local number. The ensuing conversation went on for about 30 minutes, but it boiled down to the following exchange, repeated over and over with different phrasing as I sought to be understood:

Me: "This is a local number."
Mgr: "No, it's not."
Me (holding up Pacific Bell white pages): "Yes, it is. It says it right here. The instructions on your phone say to consult the phone book to see which numbers are local. Well, this one is."
Mgr: "But it's not local. This bill is printed directly from the hotel's phone system, which knows which calls are local and which are long distance. It says it's not a local call, so you have to pay for these."
Me (still holding the phone book): "The phone system is a computer, right?"
Mgr: "Yes."
Me: "So, at some point, someone programmed that computer with information about which exchanges are local. Obviously, that information needs to be updated. It doesn't know about this exchange, so it assumes that it's a non-local exchange."
Mgr: "Sir, I don't know, I just know that the system says it's not local, so it's not local."
Me (wanting to throw the phone book at her thick head): "The PHONE COMPANY SAYS IT'S A FREE CALL. The Hampton Inn will NOT BE CHARGED FOR THOSE CALLS."
Mgr: "I'm sorry, sir. Will this be Visa or Mastercard?"

I eventually gave up and demanded to speak to someone higher up the ladder. I was given the name and home number of a "district manager". I called him and left two messages, but didn't hear back from him.

I never got phone service back in my room. The evening before I was to leave, I skipped out of my room without checking out. The room had already been paid for via Priceline. I had absolutely no intention of paying their bogus phone bill, and I had no interest in a checkout hassle that could cause me to miss my flight (or worse).

The experience was extremely stressful and tarnished my vacation in the Bay Area. I never heard from the Hampton Inn again, and I doubt I'll ever stay at another one.

Recommended: No