I got up and packed my stuff. I wasn't about to stay in a room that was expensive and without amenities like hot water. I was going to find a new place to stay. So I headed down to the front desk to take care of formalities. They asked if I was leaving. I said, uh, yes. It's expensive and I don't want to pay that much. So then they asked me how much I wanted to be paying. I humoured them and said that I wanted to pay 300 to 400 rupees. Then they told me they had another room that I could have for 400 rupees, if I wanted to see it. I said fine. So they got a key and took me up to the third floor. I was shown a room that was exactly like one of the rooms they showed me the night before. It was just on the third floor instead of the second floor. It had a view. And they gave me access to the roof, which had a view out over the river. Um...
When I got back down, I was a bit flabbergasted. I started with, “Um, so how was that room different from what I was shown and what I stayed in last night?” The guy hemmed and hawed about it, trying to tell me that it was going to be vacated later and they could offer it to me. That not being what I asked, I pressed him further, telling him that it seemed that the only thing that was different was that it was daytime and I was going to leave and go to another guest house, rather than it being 10 o'clock at night having been brought to the guest house by an auto-rickshaw driver and having not much other easy choice. He fought the characterization for a while, but eventually conceded that, yes, because I had no choice, I was at his mercy. And that because he had to pay a commission to the auto-rickshaw driver, that also made the price higher. So they were offering me a better room with more to it at about half the price because now it was day, I had lots of other choices and there was no rickshaw driver expecting a commission. He even had the temerity to suggest that if we had discussed more than one day the night before, the rickshaw driver would have expected commission for four days. I was amazed that he would concede all this to the customer who was feeling ripped off and angry and taken advantage of. And I did tell him that because of all of that I did feel taken advantage of and mistreated. I told him it was not good to treat the customer that way. I actually had less problem with raising the price because I had less choice at 10 at night with few places open than I had in the light of day with lots of places to go and check. I still found it reprehensible, but I could understand it better. What I couldn't understand was that it was likely that, having arrived at 10 at night, in a town that is known for foreign tourists who stay awhile, they would choose to do something like raise the price when I had no choice, and to pass on the commission they paid to the driver to me, the customer, when I would have a choice the very next morning. I asked him how he could choose to and justify passing on the commission to the customer, in effect having me pay the driver twice. He just fell back on the most twisted logic I have ever heard. He pointed to the rate table above the front desk and told me that the tariff for the rooms were actually 1000 rupees and that they could reduce it as they please, but they couldn't go higher than that. So since I had paid 700 for the room, everything was fine. But, I asked, the rate table was for high season, which it wasn't at the moment, and now they were offering me the room for 400, which is what anyone would pay for the room if they bowled on up on their own, so how did it make sense to say that the rate for the room at the moment was 400. He pointed to the table and said that was the rate. For when, I asked. For the high season. But it's not the high season. So they can offer discounts on the room rates. But nobody who comes in the low season pays the high season rate, which you are referring to as the high season rate, so it's not really the current rate of the room. Yes, it is, and I can offer you any discount on the rate. I did that. But when you offered that discount it was to build in the commission that you paid the driver and thus you made me pay the driver twice. Well, yes, but there are people out there who cheat people. YES, AND YOU'RE ONE OF THEM BUDDY!!! I don't see how he couldn't understand that he was passing on a business expense, because these hotel owners choose to pay these drivers a commission, to their customers. And he didn't see anything wrong with it. And he admitted to it. And then he thought it was fine, so now I was going to be okay with renting a room from him for longer at a much reduced rate. And I would just rent from him. I just shook my head and told him the system was screwed up and I walked out.
I wasn't sure if I would find a cheaper place to stay or whether I would end up paying more for a room than he was offering me, but I was adamant that he was not going to get any more out of me than had been basically extorted out of me the night before because I had chosen to go with the auto-rickshaw driver and he had taken me there.
And I really, really can't understand why these hotel owners (and I am not naïve enough to think that what happened at the one hotel wouldn't have happened at any other hotel in the town, that I would have found a hotel owner somewhere that would choose the goodwill of the customer and not take advantage of them) would choose to alienate the customer to retain the goodwill of the auto-rickshaw drivers. The pool of customers who can spread whatever reputation the owner builds with their treatment of guests seems so much larger to me than the pool of auto-rickshaw drivers who, in the end, will take the customers wherever they are told to take them (or face the consequences). And in the low season, that hotel owner chose to have an empty room and a pissed off client rather than treat him fairly and make three to four times as much as he made on the one night and having me leave the next day. But that is the unassailable logic of the short-sighted who can only see the goal of as making as money as possible at the time rather than building a reputation that will make far more later.
I would love to find someone who will help me write that in Hindi to present to him before I leave.
And, incidentally, the name of the hotel you should never frequent in Rishikesh, if you ever come here, is Hotel Shiv Ganga
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