‘I Don’t Recommend Hilton Hotels’: Woman’s Door Opened Without a Keycard, Then the Hotel Tried to Charge Her for a Full Night
"What world is it safe for a woman to be staying at a hotel by herself?"
Dominique Breyana checked into a DoubleTree by Hilton in Largo, Maryland, expecting a normal stay. According to BroBible, the door to her room opened without a keycard at all. In a video documenting the incident, Breyana closes the door, jiggles the handle, and it swings open on its own. “What world is it safe for a woman to be staying at a hotel by herself where the door can just open when you open it?” she asks.
She notes that she could double-lock it from the inside, but that wouldn’t help once she left the room the next day. Breyana says the hallway smelled like mold and the sheets smelled old, so she asked for a refund and tried to find somewhere else to stay. The hotel told her that since she’d checked in at 4 p.m. and it was now 8 p.m., she’d still be charged for the full night, even though the room was barely used.
Reviews of this specific location echo her account. Guests on Expedia and TripAdvisor have separately described a musty or mildew smell in the rooms and hallways, and one other reviewer claimed they saw evidence of mold that had been painted over. Others on Kayak have reported unclean sheets, with one saying they bought their own after the hotel repeatedly failed to replace theirs.
The hotel did offer a fix, and that changes the legal picture
Breyana was offered another room but declined, since she no longer wanted to stay at the property at all. That choice complicates a refund claim, since she turned down the fix the hotel offered. She later said in a comment that she was able to get half of the charge back, which she called unsatisfying. A broken lock isn’t just a customer-service issue, though; it touches an actual legal duty hotels carry.
Under longstanding innkeeper liability law, hotels have an affirmative duty to keep guest room locks in proper working order as part of their general obligation to provide reasonable security. A hotel can be found negligent if it knew, or should have known through reasonable inspection, about a hazard like a malfunctioning lock and failed to fix it, and that duty applies independent of whether anything ends up stolen or anyone gets hurt.
Since Breyana booked through a Chase Sapphire card, she also has a federal consumer protection option most people don’t think to use. Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, a cardholder can dispute a charge with their card issuer, not just the merchant, when they’re billed for a service that wasn’t delivered as described.
That dispute process requires the purchase to exceed $50 and generally must be filed within 60 days of the statement showing the charge, and it puts the burden on the merchant to prove the charge was valid rather than the other way around. The outlet reached out to Hilton and Breyana for comment.
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