On April 17, the Quality Inn & Suites in Buda, Texas unilaterally cancelled my seven-month-old confirmed reservation for the MotoGP/MotoAmerica weekend at Circuit of The Americas.

I immediately called the hotel to investigate, and the person who answered the phone identified himself as Mike.

Mike said that “David” had called and cancelled the reservation, but he didn’t know who took the call or when it was received. Mike said I should call back hours later to talk to the General Manager of the hotel.

This wasn’t just any race trip. This trip was to the Red Bull Grand Prix of The Americas and losing this reservation was going to be a big deal. So I identified myself as the highest level of the hotel chain’s customer loyalty program, which I am, and asked Mike if he could get in touch with the General Manager or owner immediately. Mike raised his voice, became very defensive and said he was not going to do anything for me and that I would have to wait to talk to the General Manager.

Hoping that my customer loyalty status would help me, I called the Customer Service and Customer Relations departments at Choice Hotels (the parent company of Quality Inn & Suites, among others). A Customer Relations representative named Josh offered to call the hotel and see what they had to say and what they could do.

Josh called me back and said he had spoken to Mike at the hotel. Mike told him that I had called and cancelled the reservation and that I spoke to him! And according to Josh, Mike told him that they would not reinstate my reservation, they would not offer me any compensation, and that they did not want to do anything else to mediate the situation.

Later on April 17, I called back to the Quality Inn & Suites and asked to speak to the General Manager by name, Robby Patel. Mike answered – the same Mike – and he told me the General Manager did not want to speak to me.

After this, I filed formal complaints with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) in central Texas and with the Consumer Protection Unit at the Texas Attorney General’s office.

I also went into journalist mode and tried to contact the Attorney General’s office and the Public Relations office at Choice Hotels. Multiple attempts over several days to reach Choice Hotels’ Public Relations Directors Sarah Lee and Scott Carman were unsuccessful, and the Attorney General’s press office only responded by sending an email full of links to advice for consumers.

The Attorney General’s office, however, did acknowledge receipt of my formal complaint, as did the BBB. And then thanks to a Roadracing World reader, I also got a call from KVUE-TV, the ABC network affiliate in Austin, Texas. I spoke to investigative reporter Dalton Huey on Tuesday, then on Wednesday I did a 15-minute video chat interview with weekend anchor/reporter Jenni Lee while in an airport terminal in between flights.

After hearing what I had to say, Lee went to the Quality Inn & Suites to speak to the management there. Lee came to find out that the Mike I originally spoke with was Mike Patel, the OWNER of the hotel and not the know-nothing front desk worker he originally portrayed himself to be. Mike Patel told Lee that the reservation cancellation was the result of a “technical problem” and that they had reinstated my reservation at the original rate. Which was untrue, a complete fabrication, a bold-faced lie!

It’s funny how a story changes depending on who is asking the questions.

There are obvious problems with Mike Patel’s story. If a technical problem was to blame, why didn’t he investigate it when one of the hotel chain’s best customers called him to talk about it?

If it was a technical problem, why did it take him three days to figure it out?

If it was a technical problem, why didn’t he call me to explain the situation before a TV news crew showed up at his front door?

If it was a technical problem, why has he still not called me to tell me he corrected the problem?

And if Mike Patel and the Quality Inn & Suites didn’t cancel my reservation so they could rent it to someone else at a higher last-minute rate, why did the hotel go from sold out on Monday to having one similar room available on Tuesday for nearly double the nightly rate I was confirmed to pay?

I tried reaching Mike Patel and his General Manager Robby Patel Thursday at approximately 2:00 p.m. local time to ask some of these questions. I was told that they were out. But as I write this on Friday they had still made no attempt to contact me.

Many of my friends and associates in the MotoAmerica paddock who read about my drama asked if I had found some place in Austin to stay. Sure, I found another room to book, but it did cost more than my cancelled reservation and it was at a hotel 45 minutes away from the track instead of 20 minutes away.

So where do we go from here?

First, we’re going to let as many people as possible know about this situation and make them aware that some hotels are run differently than others. Feel free to like and share this.

Next, we are going to follow up with Choice Hotels, because to this point the company has been unresponsive and ineffective at helping one of its most loyal customers. And I’ll have to re-evaluate my 15-year relationship with Choice Hotels.

If Quality Inn & Suites and Choice Hotels get away with treating customers like this, it will never stop. Reservations will be meaningless and more travelers will be taken advantage of, when Choice Hotels decides to unilaterally cancel valid reservations and resells reserved rooms for more money.