Last week we spent a couple of nights at the Radisson Blu Bucharest during our current trip Back to The Balkans.

I booked our two-night stay for a total of 38,000 Gold Points. (38,000 points is the cost for one night but thanks to the stay 1, get 1 bonus for Club Carlson credit card holders that is all we paid for our full stay.)

During check-in there were some issues which seemed to be poorly handled by the staff. Official check-in time is 3:00pm and we arrived at around 3:30. Upon check-in we were given a choice of which floor we’d like to be on and a silly question of whether we’d like a king or queen bed.

After all of this nonsense, it turned out that our room would not be ready for a half hour. Initially, I thought no big deal, but then I got be a bit annoyed. We were tired & sweaty and just wanted to get to our room so we could use the remainder of the day to check out a little of the city.

At 4:00 I went over to the check-in area and asked about our room. I was told (with a smile) that it would be another 15-20 minutes! I then stated that this was ridiculous and mentioned how check-in time was 3:00pm.

I decided to send a tweet to @clubcarlson and @RadissonBlu:

Hours later I got a response:

I responded with:

And then @RadissonBlu asked me to:

I sent an e-mail with my account number and booking details like I was asked. I then received a response that my comments were forwarded to hotel management and they asked the hotel to contact me during the stay.

The e-mail also stated that if the hotel did not reach out to me by check out to let them know so they could follow up.

Well surprise surprise, Radisson Blu Bucharest never got in touch with me during our stay so I decided to let customer care know about it. I sent them an e-mail after checking out and received a response back the following day.

Here is part of it:

And then the best part, how Club Carlson made up for our troubles:

Once again Club Carlson’s customer service team impressed me more than I could’ve imagined. Giving me 10,000 bonus Gold Points is definitely an amazing and overly- nice form of compensation due to our annoying situation.

Getting 10,000 points back works out to over 25% off of our award stay!

(Last September we stayed at the Radisson Blu Berlin and did not receive an in-room welcome gift. After contacting Club Carlson through Twitter I was given 10,000 Gold Points.)

I then decided to turn my bonus points into a 2 night stay at the Park Inn Sofia (where we are currently staying).

One night goes for 9,000 gold points and thanks (once again) to the stay 1, get 1 credit card bonus, this became the total for 2 nights. (We booked an additional 2 nights at the property from Kim’s account.)

Had I paid for the 2 nights that I booked, the cost would’ve been $115.81 per night which comes to $235.98 for the stay. Not a bad value for 9,000 Gold Points!

In the end Club Carlson’s social media/ customer relations team came through to turn a negative experience into a positive. It might not always seem like individual properties aim to please their customers but at least the company as a whole does.

If you fail to receive an in-room welcome gift from a Club Carlson property what do you do? Lucky from One Mile At A Time can’t bring himself to ask for one, do you?