Short: Like Mr. Burns covering up the sun, the Tinker Gnomes of Silicon Valley Balrog it again by making the Lost and found for Profit; because of course they did.
Medium: I don't know which of the many slimey disgusting for profit lost and found companies "stole" my hat that I left at the fabulous rooftop inn of the Hotel Salem, but TLDR we ate there, loved it and I forgot a hat I liked. Showed up to get it and they gave us a card, which I threw away in disgust. On investigation, it is now pretty common practice in the hotel industry to save costs by shifting their lost and found to these companies that charge you money to get your own stuff back or then they sell it. Every year they make tens of millions of dollars at YOUR expense and prove yet again that Corporate Personhood only serves the rich. Just because you can do a business model and make it work, doesn't mean you should be allowed to or that you don't just plain SUCK if you do.
Maximum Verbosity: How much do I hate $ilicon Valley? Let me count the ways. I am not the only one who thinks this of course, but I always admired Stephen King for his ability to turn ordinary innocent objects like Dogs, Cats, Cars, Clowns etc into objects of horror. Meanwhile, Capitalism and Silicon Valley manages to do the same thing with Friends, Water, Waiting Your Turn, Sleep, Privacy, Tax Payer Funded Science, Basic Customer Service, Going to the Bathroom, or just taking a walk. And goodness knows that they have tried and failed to privatize even more things for a very long time.
But of course, this isn’t just about a hat. It’s about the kind of world being built under the banner of innovation.
Capitalism is Batshit. It only works for a few people and works less for less people the longer it runs. It is inherently corrupting and antidemocratic. And we can come up with plenty of better arguments than mine from the lofty to the profane; the logical or the emotional; or the just plain stupid. But nothing to me makes it as personal as Chargerback. Have you ever lost your keys or your wallet? How much of us have had time or vitally important things saved at the last minute because a good samaritan found what we misplaced and returned it to us?
Just about all of us.
So unless you are some kind of sociopath or a sadist who likes people to suffer, you like me or another rational actor might take pause at the temerity of a company deciding to set up a profit model in this sector. Most of us don't even know it existed let alone cheered it. But there they are since 2010 like the big fat spider that put a web in your toilet when you wanna dump a load at 2am where you least wanted it to be.
Back to Chargerback.
I loved that hat. It was neither the nicest hat I own (a gift from my wife from NOLA) to my favorite (a leather brimmed fedora from Helen, GA) but it was my "everyday hat" comfortable, looked good and cheap enough to easily replace if it gets lost. I wanted it but I'm not going to pay ransom money for it. I can already hear the developer capitalism pervert advocate in the back saying "So?" So? That hat was MINE and any previously decent hotel would have kept it for at least a little while as part of the cost of doing business.
One can hear the smarmy corporate thug saying "Well its a liability reduction + logistics outsourcing matter for us so we had to" and if we had a functional media that worked for the public instead of the oligarchs the first hotel dumb enough to do this would have been out of business forever but because you only find out about the Theft of Our Stuff model Chargerback likes to have and because the media are hot garbage eaters we didnt know and can't use the supposedly superior "capitalist market" to do business because now ALMOST ALL HOTELS do this shit. How is that "market place of ideas" working out when rat profit models like this creep up on us?
Normally when I write a review I write it from the perspective of being a customer. But I'm not here. I am not Chargerback's customer. That's hotels that need to compete with Airbnb and its clones and are ALREADY suffering a contuing loss of market share. Every year people choose to stay at hotels less and other places more and maybe that's because an Airbnb rental isnt going to FUCKING SELL MY HAT TO THE FLEA MARKET THREE DAYS AFTER ITS GONE FOR A FUCKING BUCK.
Chargerback is going gangbusters for its customers; hotels. That fat tick is drunk on the blood of the rest of us and doing quite well thank you very much. On my very limited research, I found no fixed length of time from when that lost wallet with $500 becomes yours vs the guy who found it, but I AM PRETTY DAMN SURE ITS SHORTER THAN THREE FUCKING DAYS. We are local consumers who wanna help smaller local companies like Hotel Salem do well. And this is about the dumbest thing a hotel chain can do.
Does this bother you? Then the next time you make a reservation, and are torn between two areas, ask them "do you use a for profit lost and found company?" Pick the hotel that doesnt.