Guest User
February 22, 2024
** I take no pleasure in writing this but you need to know ** On arrival I locked my noise-cancelling headphones, passport and house keys in the room safe, setting a new pin code. 2 days into our holiday I went to get my headphones, found the safe door to be unlocked but pushed closed with only my passport and house keys. When I notified the reception team of the theft and noted their disappearance from a locked safe, they dismissed my claim as “impossible” as only the manager has the administrator code. I was so aghast by the lack of empathy I almost started to think it might have been something I’d done, did I / didn’t I lock the safe; I absolutely know I did lock it btw…. With hindsight I wished I’d asked how often the manager code is changed and later one of our party researched the type of safe and noted there is audit trail for lock/unlock actions that I should have asked to view. Their follow-up odd advice was to re-check the room and “…maybe they reappear somewhere in the next days”; they never did. To support my insurance claim, I asked for help to submit a police report; they were not interested in helping and gave conflicting (and incorrect information) regarding the local arc2000 police with me finally told to visit arc1600. I used the free shuttle (good to know if wanting to visit the other resorts by foot) but the reception team neglected to tell me thefts can only be reported between 3pm and 5pm to the Gendarmerie with no exceptions. This resulted in a wasted morning when I could/should have been skiing; I was on holiday after all. I eventually filed my theft with the Gendarme who also believed my claim to be improbable from a locked safe, wanted me to sign their ‘deposition’ without having read it first and then concluded with “are you sure about this? I hope for you, this information is correct or there may be problems”. I put (some of) this down the language barrier but I wasted a full day skiing, was made to feel like I was lying and left for home feeling quite upset by the experience and total lack of support. All I know is I locked things in the safe when I arrived but expensive things were missing when I checked later and the safe had been unlocked. A room safe is supposed to offer increased security but in my case it didn’t. To make matters worse the hotel staff were completely disinterested, seemed indifferent to there having been a room theft and refused to believe there might be a security issue in the hotel.