devforum hotel policy

[Mark Bartelt]

The registration package for the SGI Developer's Forum arrived yesterday,
and I have a complaint+question about the hotel accommodations.  In the
"credit card information" section, it asks for a credit card number to
guarantee the reservation, and goes on to say:

     Because of the special rates, card holder may be charged a
     one night penalty for rooms cancelled after April 19, 1991.

This cancellation deadline is more than a month before the conference!  Am
I the only one who finds this outrageous, or am I just getting cranky as I
grow older?  I've been attending technical conferences of various sorts for
nearly twenty years, three or four times each year, and (1) every conference
has negotiated some sort of special room rate with the hotel, and (2) it has
always been possible to cancel a reservation without penalty until (usually)
one or (at most) two days before arrival.

Since I won't know until early May whether I'll actually be able to attend
(uncertainties about child care arrangements, and such), it seems that my
choices are either to reserve a hotel room and risk getting stuck for over
a hundred bucks if I'm unable to go, or not reserving but paying whatever
the exorbitant normal hotel rate happens to be if I do end up going.

So, two questions that (I hope) someone from SGI might answer:

(1)  Any chance that the "April 19" on the form is a misprint, and should
actually be "May 19"?  [ Note that this would make it consistent with the
policy of other hotels, which require 24 or 48 hour advance notice if one
wishes to cancel a special-rate reservation without penalty. ]

(2)  If not, then how about some clarification of what the statement means?
Does "card holder may be charged" mean that "card holder will definitely be
charged", or "card holder might be charged"?  If the latter, then at whose
discretion?  Who decides whether or not the penalty gets assessed?

Grumble.

Mark Bartelt                                                    416/978-5619
Canadian Institute for                              sysmark at cita.toronto.edu
Theoretical Astrophysics                            sysmark at cita.utoronto.ca