We've enjoyed going to the Claremont for many year...

We've enjoyed going to the Claremont for many years and it had been our hotel of choice in the San Francisco Bay Area. But no longer, not after the awful reservation experience we had this time.

I reserved through Expedia as part of a longer trip through Northern California. About 10 minutes after making the reservation I noticed my departure date from the Claremont was wrong, so I canceled and redid the reservation. Too late: by the time I noticed it would charge me a full night's stay as penalty it had gone through.

My wife called the reservations desk at the Claremont twice to sort this out. Both times they insisted that this was an Expedia charge, not theirs. The second time the reservations manager, calling himself "Anthony", asked who she had talked to before and then claimed no one by that name worked in reservations.

A week later my wife wrote a letter to the general manager of the Claremont and they canceled the charge, saying they would make an exception to their policy of charging one night penalty for cancelations. So it was not Expedia then, as TWO Claremont reservations agents claimed!

We're grateful for the cancellation of the penalty charge but this will NEVER excuse the rude and dishonest manner multiple members of the Claremont reservation staff treated my wife over the phone.

Once there, we had more disappointments: the beautiful breakfast and dining room overlooking the Bay is now reserved for conferences and not open to individual guests of the hotel. We had our ($40/person) breakfast in a smaller room with poor views instead. Other nice public rooms overlooking the Bay are now also closed to individual guests.

And guest checkout time is 10am, fine if one is attending a conference but obviously inconvenient for any individual guests like us, who have been coming to the Claremont for years but never will again.