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Thanks to the solar flares that happened this past weekend, Joe and I saw….absolutely nothing. Although “cool sky stuff” happened further south than us in Central Florida, we live in the suburbs and had entirely too much light pollution for anything to be seen around here.

That being said, all the hoopla (and photo after photo of friends who COULD see the cool colors in the sky) reminded me a little of last month, when the solar eclipse was coming, and people were traveling everywhere to be in its path.

I mean, airlines were selling flights to be able to see the eclipse from the sky months and months in advance, people were planning road trips to be able to see the event, you name it. And once hotels got wind that they were going to be in the path, especially if they were going to be in the “path of totality,” well, some of the unscrupulous ones did whatever they could to price gouge as many guests as they could. I even read that one Texas hotel was charging $1,325.56 for a room, 10 times its usual rate, ahead of the April 8th eclipse.

One hotel decided they hadn’t charged enough

In the days and weeks before the eclipse, one hotel decided they hadn’t charged enough, so they devised a plan to get more money from those who wanted to see this potentially once-in-a-lifetime event. Isn’t that special?

In a post on Reddit, user @VictoriaEuphoria99 wrote that they had a hotel booked (to their credit, they said they wouldn’t give details – so we don’t know the brand or state) and the hotel cancelled the reservation because of a so-called, quote-unquote “computer error.”

Computer error. Riiiiiiiight.

The room they had made a reservation for months ago was suddenly available for $700 per night.

Suggesting that the updated price was significantly higher than what they had originally paid, @VictoriaEuphoria99 mapped out their revenge plan.

The revenge

They, along with some friends, booked the entire hotel, until they had no availability. That way, the hotel couldn’t get any “real” customers since all of their rooms were apparently reserved and spoken for. Oh, and all the rooms were going for a much higher rate than what would be typical…and much more than what @VictoriaEuphoria99 was originally going to pay for the room when they made their original reservation.

But their plan all along, of course, wasn’t to go through with it. About 30 minutes before the cancellation deadline (which was 4 p.m. the day before the eclipse), each person proceeded to cancel all their reservations.

@VictoriaEuphoria99 added that as of midnight that evening, the hotel still had plenty of availability, which meant they didn’t rebook those rooms last minute.

Too bad, so sad.

And lest you think this person was the only one who the hotel screwed, it looks like probably not. Although they never mentioned the hotel’s name, @VictoriaEuphoria99 did mention that the hotel suddenly had all sorts of bad reviews online that hadn’t been there before. So although no one can be 100% sure, it looks as if the hotel had “computer errors” with other people as well, and suddenly started charging hundreds of dollars for their rooms, too.

You can read the entire thread here on Reddit. As always for Reddit, heads up for the potential for NSFW language.

As one Redditor replied, “I hope their losses eclipse their greedy gains.”

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