www.CostaRicaTicas.com

A friend of mine who is not a CRT member, told me an unbelievable story yesterday. He is a young married guy who has been doing an annual trip here in CR for several years. (married for 2 years) He told me (and I certainly believe him) that when he returned home from his last trip,that his wife was suspicious of his trips here. So she contacted the DR where he stay, and got them to send her copies of all his charges during the trip....INCLUDING THE NAMES AND VISA NUMBERS OF EVERY CHICA THAT HE HAD IN THE ROOM. He even joked with the security guard that he and his black chica had just been married. The all laughed about the married comments BUT....that conversation was included in the e-mail material sent to the wife. He says he almost shit his pants when she confronted him with specific names and dates. The wife even had a friend who works for the CIA who got her PICTURES of all the chicas from their VISA numbers.

He brought the situaltion to the hotel manager (Gabriella) and just shrugged her shoulders and said she would look into it. To you married guys and those in a serious relationship.....BE CAREFUL

No problem, just tell her it's a preexisting condition.

VB, you had me until the part about the CIA friend.

Sorry O but that's the story he told me,without any reason to make shit up. I believe him.

Not that it at all excuses the HDR's gross indiscretion (and violation of its guest's privacy rights) but how stupid does a married guy have to be to go to CR, on multiple trips no less, stay at a hotel that is known the world over as essentially a brothel, and then to put it on his credit card (instead of paying cash or staying somewhere else)? Even if the hotel had NOT released the details of his stay, this bozo would STILL have had a lot of explaining to do. I've heard of married guys getting tripped up over small, easily-overlooked or hard-to-foresee mistakes, but this guy was just asking to get caught.

As for the HDR, this might have been somewhat excusable as the thoughtless mistake of some rookie desk clerk, rather than normal hotel policy. Well, maybe not excusable but at least explainable. HOWEVER, the manager's reaction says even more about the general attitude of this hotel toward its guests. It doesn't really care about them one iota, at least not beyond the money they can extract from each one of them. However, even with just those goals in mind, I think it is very shortsighted. I hope they got a lot of money out of this guy over each of his past annual trips because I think we can bet he is never staying there again (assuming his wife will ever even let him return to CR or assuming his wife doesn't divorce him and take half the money he needs to make these trips). And that says nothing about the possible lost business if many of the OTHER married guys who stay there get wind of what happened.

I realize that this is the preferred "monger hotel" for a few vets around here. And maybe those guys will pass off this incident as irrelevant to them because they pay cash or aren't married.* But, despite its truly amazing pickup bar in the lobby, I've always wondered how anyone could really consider a place that charges $10 to bring a chica back up to their room to be truly and completely "monger-friendly". Now on top of that long standing complaint we can add their shocking disregard for the privacy of its guests, which would be a serious breach of discretion at any hotel, but is even MORE egregious at a hotel which is built almost entirely on guys coming there to have trysts with prostitutes.

I realize this story may be a little hard to believe for those die hard supporters of the policy, but whether the story is true or not the mere fact that so many of us are ready to believe it is possible, says nearly as much about the true nature of this hotel and the reputation it has among CR vets as anything else.
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* btw, for those diehard defenders of this place, just because you pay cash or aren't married doesn't mean they don't have a record of your transactions with your real name from the passport you showed them when you checked in and evidently doesn't necessarily mean they wouldn't release that record to your wife or possibly someone else, such as your employer, if they called asking for it. But even if you still don't care about any of that, how can you be supportive of a hotel that would treat any of its guests in this way.

note to self; don't get married

I'm with Orange on this one.

If the wife has a friend in the CIA I find it difficult to believe that the friend would put not only put their job on the line but risk jail time, or at least a heavy fine, for unauthorized use of of CIA files. If the husband makes a complaint to the CIA it is very easy to track down the employee "friend".

Like most stories once one piece begins to fall apart then you question other parts of the story. I also find it difficult to believe that the HDR would have a security guards comments in a guests file unless they were relevant to an incident that occurred. From what has been reported the guards conversation with the husband was simply small talk hardly memorable enough to be filed away in the guest file.

I would think that before we start pillorying the HDR we get some verification that they indeed did violate the guests privacy. What would be the upside, for them, of doing that?

As too why he made the story up, if he did, who can explain why people make things up? I believe there is no blanket explanation as every individual marches to the sounds of a different mental drummer.

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I always thought that Vegas Bob was a pretty good story-teller....

EdB

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that stuff would never go on at the Nuevo Johnson

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(export version only, some restrictions may apply, some assembly required, not valid where the sun don't shine...

if you live in the states of Poverty, Darkness or anywhere outside of The Blessings of Civilization Trust, Inc...other rules may apply)

1) I'm not sure they even TAKE credit cards at the NJ or, if they did, why anyone would feel the need to use one to pay a $10 hotel bill.
2) I'm not sure they really keep any records, beyond your handwritten signature and scrawled out passport number, but certainly not any computerized easy-to-access/lookup ones.
3) I'm not sure the lone security guard speaks any English, let alone reports conversations to be written down in any book.
4) The Hotel NJ may be a complete dive, but is little known for anything even in SJ and so at least wouldn't be easily picked out on anyone's credit card bills as a world-reknowned mongering den like the HDR.

Women can get a little crazy with there suspicions which makes me think this story is crazy enough to be true.

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If this story is only 1/2 true, it's still a great cautionary tale. OTOH this guy (we'll call him "the bozo") was for some deep reason asking, no, begging to get jammed up.

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"Amen, brother"-ED

Many years ago on my first trip to CR I decided to book a room at the Del Rey. It was a huge struggle to simply book a room with the person on the other end of the phone. I can't even imagine trying to obtain the credit card and chica information of a past guest over the phone. Since when did the Ticos become so efficient and cooperative?

Devo

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Better said, "This tell was plausible until the CIA part."

Plus the part about the security guy writing down 'notes about jokes on the way to the room'. These people don't even make grocery list. You think they are gonna be writing stuff in a little book ?

OTOH. If you check into ANY hotel using your real name THEN ANYONE can call and ask for you . Duh. Right ?

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* RENT but, "Don't Buy a Home in Costa Rica" until you have lived here for THREE years.

He certainly IS a good story-teller and it certainly IS possible VB was just pulling our legs with this one. Or maybe it was VB's friend who was having VB on and Bob got fooled as well. As I read through it, I too had to wonder if it all was just a story that VB or his friend made up. But, while certain parts of the story seemed almost too incredible to believe, the basic heart of it, that the HDR indifferently violated its guest privacy, was only all too credible to me.

This is certainly true and other parts of the study ARE more or less credible than others, HOWEVER that doesn't mean the ENTIRE story is untrue. The most believable lies are the ones that have a basis in truth. This guy's story could be entirely made-up OR it could be entirely true. I suspect (and have all along) that parts of the story were made up or embellished while other parts really were basically just as stated.

ID rhetorically asks why the guy would make-up a story like that and "answered" his own question with another question - "who knows?" (basically, he doesn't know but guys do). I would ask another question, why a guy would tell the truth about one thing and then make up something else to go along with? I could offer the same answer as ID gave for his question, but I would offer another. Perhaps, he felt it somehow bolstered his complaint against the HDR.

Let's start with that CIA part and work backwards. Maybe that part really WAS completely made up and she really only had their names and ID #'s from the hotel print-out. Would that really make the case against the HDR any weaker? Also, did VB's friend say he actually SAW the pictures? Maybe he was telling the truth about what his wife SAID and SHE was the one making up that part (again, as an embellishment or bluff that she thought would strengthen her case). OR perhaps he got the story mixed up and the wife's friend worked with some other government agency or had other connections she could use in CR itself to gain such detail (that sounds exactly like the sort of work tht DougPI gets paid to do). Sure, those friends or connections may have been running some legal risks in using their position in that way, but it wouldn't be the first time confidential government data was ever leaked. As I recall, someone hacked into the presidential candidate's travel records during the 2008 campaign, and the data on a few central american hookers is certainly not as sensitive as that.

Next let's look at the purported inclusion of his private conversation with the guard. Maybe he did just add or imagine the part about the conversation with the guard showing up in the hotel records or maybe the wife was able to add that to her dossier through other sources (e.g. hiring someone like DougPI to dig up some more dirt on the guy). ID finds it difficult to believe that the HDR would have a security guards comments in a guests file (as do I) UNLESS they were relevant to an incident that occurred. ID added "From what has been reported the guards conversation with the husband was simply small talk hardly memorable enough to be filed away in the guest file." I added the bolding because those are key parts of ID's statement. From what has been reported there was no special incident involved that would have led to that conversation being reported, but that doesn't mean there wasn't some sort of incident. The same guy who we are now accusing of adding falsehoods to his story or outright lying about the whole thing, could just as easily by lying about the circumstances surrounding his conversation with the guard or leaving parts out. Maybe something else happened that he's not telling us about because he found that too embarassing or weakening to the rest of his case. In fact, if he was involved in some sort of incident at the hotel and involving its staff where HE behaved badly that could also explain why the people working there were so easily willing to rat him out. Of course this is all speculation and it could be something else entirely, but any of these explanations are just as credible as that he just had a vivid magination and made the ENTIRE story up.

Which brings us to the very beginning of his story. Even if we dismiss the latter parts as lies, distortions or embellishments, that still doesn't necessarily mean he lied about the most basic part (that the hotel gave up private information). The actual photos of the chicas would just be icing on the cake, if the wife already had the names, ages, ID #'s and check-in and out times that could be part of the HDR's computerized records. Similarly, how much really does this guy's conversation with the guard really add to his wife's already very solid case. My memory is a little weak on this but wasn't there another incident a year or two ago, that some guys were complaining about where the HDR was trying to drum up business through a special promotional rate and they INDISCRETELY contacted former guests directly in the US. While the latter part of this guy's story may be less credible and may or may not be true, the initial part, which is really the core part, of his story while seeming incredible to some of you, seems eminently believable to me. ID may be right that we should get some verification before we start pillorying the HDR. OTOH, we are talking about the great pink devil here and I'm ready to pillory them now.