Whether or not a hotel has self-parking is an individualized decision. Most hotels that offer valet parking give their guests the option to valet or to park their car themselves. But sometimes the only option is to valet. When that’s the case and you leave your car with the valet, you’re trusting that the valet employees will be responsible with your vehicle. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.
Dr. Betsy Grunch is a board-certified neurosurgeon specializing in minimally invasive spinal surgery and artificial disc replacement in Gainesville, Georgia. She has a TikTok channel, @ladyspinedoc, where she posts videos about health and wellness. She has about 2.8 million followers.
A few days ago, Dr. Grunch posted a video while she was in Orlando. She was staying at the Conrad Orlando, and she shared the dashcam footage that caught the disturbing behavior of the valet who was supposed to be parking her car.
“Just curious how you guys would feel if someone was driving your car like this in a valet parking lot?” asked Dr. Grunch.
As she spoke, dashcam footage of a car speeding through a parking lot played in the background.
“Watch the driver do complete stops and then pedal to the metal starts to see how fast he could get our vehicle to go,” Grunch said in the clip. She also pointed out that the seat belt alarm was sounding in the vehicle as the valet drove.
“Also notice you’ll hear the seat belt alarm dinging ’cause he’s not wearing a seat belt,” she continued.
Dr. Grunch explained that she had handed over the keys to her Cadillac Escalade-V to the valet and returned to her room. But she said that not long afterwards, she started getting text alerts from her car. The app reportedly warned of “heavy breaking” and “heavy acceleration.”
To her credit, although she wasn’t happy with the valet’s actions, she did say that she understood why they decided to floor it.
“I mean, it is a hot car,” she said. “It’s got a 6.2-liter supercharged V-8 with a zero-to-60 in 4.4 seconds.”
Still, Grunch cautioned that it was imperative for the driver to ask permission first. She also said the hotel did not offer a self-parking option.
Then, she returned to the dashcam footage that showed just how recklessly the valet drove the car in the hotel’s parking lot.
“He gets it up to 41 miles per hour in this small parking lot,” she said.
A man’s voice was also recorded in the vehicle, saying, “That is fast!”
Dr. Grunch said once she received the alerts on her phone, she returned to the valet and demanded her car be moved. She also reportedly showed the camera footage to hotel staff.
“Supposedly, this employee was terminated,” she said.
She also said the hotel apologized and compensated her with a free night at the establishment.
Still, the hotel’s gesture didn’t make her feel better about the valet’s reckless driving. “I’m more concerned about the safety of other pedestrians that may have been in the area or even the driver, himself, who clearly was not wearing a seat belt,” she said.
Before ending her video, Dr. Grunch advised viewers to keep the footage in mind when visiting Conrad Orlando.
@ladyspinedoc Replying to @longnovember13 what would you do? #valet #conradorlando
Most of the responses to Grunch’s video were on the side of safety or at least caution:
- How are people comfortable to just do this to a strangers car😭 — Tanner
- It’s even crazier because the Escalade V is fast AND heavy and he could have really hurt someone tremendously — sethcolletti
- i would have been LIVID. — Liz
- did he not see the dashcam???😭 — dime
- I got hit by a valet driver doing the same thing in a parking lot — Em
- Imagine if you had one of those insurance trackers in there to keep your rates low. I’d be livid. — WhoIsJusticeBeaver
And few seemed to take the side of the valet driver (or confirm that it wasn’t an isolated incident):
- i mean you do own a Escalade V 😬 — Isaac
- They absolutely do that on the regular — menty b barbie
- as a retired valet, i did this all the time — delus.inal
- I worked for a high end hotel ( four seasons ) and they used to do this a lot it’s so crazy . — PreciousintheDFW
- I lived in a building with valet and caught a worker joy riding a Mercedes around once lmao 😭 — Kiera Bridget
- Supercharged v8 you say? I forgive bro — Elysium
I’m not naive enough to think this doesn’t happen all the time (although Joe and I have a Jeep Wrangler and a Subaru Forester—they’re not joyriding in our cars, LOL). But with dashcams a reality in higher-end cars, it’s a little surprising that a valet would take such a chance nowadays when there’s so much more likelihood of getting caught.
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1 comment
This seems to be a chronic Hilton issue. Last Fall when I stayed at the Canopy by Hilton Philadelphia City Center, my car sent me a message that it was more than a mile from me. When I checked out in the morning, the car had 15 miles added since I dropped it off. (I took pictures of the odometer.) The Canopy by Hilton ignored my repeated complaints, so I could only dispute the charge.