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Comment by neaden | Hacker News Reader

For the actual information from the survey see this link: https://www.channel3000.com/lifestyle/the-surprising-things-...

49 out of 1,157 hotels in the survey reported having a mattress stolen.

"Whereas many four-star hotels have taken to tagging their items to trigger alarms when smuggled off the premises, five-star hotels are less likely to confront thieves or to report the theft to police, Keilmann told CNN.

"In a lot of cases, they don't report it to the police, because they don't want to be connected to crime," Keilmann said."

This makes me think that these people are only staying at the hotel to steal things and choosing hotels accordingly, presumably using a stolen credit card as well to make them harder to track.

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It’s funny the lengths they’ll go to not have the police walking around the hotels and potentially getting in the news.

People can be so touchy with the thought of crime being done in a hotel. I know the sort of person (hotel guest) who would overreact to that sort of thing.

not such great lengths if you ask me. having even one customer turn away from an upscale hotel isn't worth recovering a $700 item, let alone doing this on an ongoing basis.

My guess would be the hotel just charging their credit card for the cost of replacing the item.

You can just do a chargeback. Merchant agreements with card issues forbid charging the card for anything other than what the cardholder explicitly agrees to.

It’s probably in the agreement. There might even be a price list in the unit somewhere too.

I know from personal experience. The issuing bank will state they are not responsible for damages etc etc. Maybe you might win if the cardholder admits to stealing or smoking in a room AND admits to knowing about the fine, but that's never going to happen.

I have very different expectations on how Marriott reacts to me smuggling in a bit of booze vs the TSAs reaction.

Couldn’t you openly carry booze into a Marriott? It would never occur to me to worry about it in the least.

I worked at a hotel for ten years. You’d be amazed at the number of things that are suppressed. Dead bodies, bed bugs, etc all happen far more frequently than you’d think but are cleaned up quietly and quickly.

Bed bugs sounds like the cost of doing business, but are you serious about dead bodies? How do you clean those up “quietly and quickly”?

Betty fetches the lye will Jim brings up a barrel from the custodial locker?

Statistically if you have a hotel with 300 rooms and tens of thousands of individual night guest stays over many years, people definitely will randomly die of natural causes. Same as if they were in bed at home.

Suicides are common in hotels because people don’t want to burden their loved ones with the shock of finding their body or having to clean up the mess.

Pick a time during the day while most guests are out. Put the body in a body bag, load it on a stretcher. Take the service lift to avoid the lobby.

No hotel deals with bodies themselves. They will call the police.

Morgue units blend in a lot better than police.

There is a Nathan for You episode of this that is quite brilliant.

Hoteliers are always in a balance between seeing or not seeing things. Guests are too. Hotels service the public, and people's outlook on life vary greatly.

If you have a bunch of cops getting to know everyone every time a lamp is stolen at a fancy hotel, they may recognize the escort at the bar, or notice some person of note with someone other than their partner. Usually hotels have security folks who interface with the police only when necessary.

One time I was at a beach resort where there were 4 big groups: an association of retired DEA or FBI agents, Chick-Fil-A franchise operators regional meeting, a (very) large same-sex wedding complete with a troupe of drag queen dancers, and a CBD-oil MLM scheme sales meeting. Everyone was best off minding their business!

I love that beach situation ;)

I was once at a hotel for a high school quiz bowl tournament. There was also a (very drunk) darts competition, and a Shibari meetup (Japanese bondage + furries?).

There were some awkward elevator rides.

If this was in Chicago, pretty sure I was there for this. It was indeed a very interesting time! If not, I think it's hilarious that this could have happened multiple times!

Once a year, the furries gather in Chicago.

It's quite a sight.

Yes, Chicago. I doubt it has happened again, the quiz bowl organization took steps to prevent similar conflicts.

Quiz bowl. Right.

Not at a beach, but amusing still - during my student days, I worked at a concert venue which, among other things, hosted an annual Christmas party for the town's emergency services; just about every off-duty cop, firefighter, nurse and doctor inn town were there in varying stages of inebriation.

At which point someone decides to try to break in through a backyard window. We grab him as he's entering, and have security summon a police officer from the dinner.

He shows up, recognizes the offender as a regular, sighs "This, my friend, was a stupid idea even by your standards!", orders him to go down to the police station to turn himself in, then returns to the party.

The poor guy actually did just that - went down and got himself arrested for trying to break into Studentersamfundet... :)

Trondheim?

Yup. One of the windows to the stairwell on the left (towards the park) when you're standing behind it, if you are a local.

Geez, I'm somehow a local now. I've never even been inside the building, but to bus stops around it, and know the park you speak of. Do know a dude that plays jazz (?) there occasionally, though.

Thanks for the accidentally making this immigrant happy :)

I was sceptical about the turns-himself-in part. But in norway... yeah, plausible.

(I only know norway as a tourist, but I'm there pretty often - once or twice a year)

-Trondheim is a small-ish town of some 165,000 citizens or so; the police know most of the small-time offenders well enough that him failing to show up would probably end up being more of a nuisance for him than actually turning himself in.

Besides, whether you are sentenced for twelve or thirteen counts of burglary doesn't matter one iota for the sentence you're given - we don't do consecutive sentencing here.

yeah, but most criminals aren't very smart. With german law it's the similiar but only when you do the stuff in one got ("in Tateinheit") - then you're only sentenced for worst thing you did, not everything.

As a sidenote: do you know any english or german language sources about the norwegian (or nordish) legal system? I'm interested in how it differs from napoleonic and germanic systems, because it's often considered to be different but explanations are rare.

While the judge might use Tateinheit to chose the sentence on the "worst" crime, the other things are not ignored but impact where on the range the sentence will be. For many offenses there is quite a range.

The textbook idea of that Tateinheit Thing is that if somebody i.e. robs a house the punishment for the damage to the door is neglectable over the punishment for robbery. (While this is about criminal punishment - the house owner can still request a replacement for the door using a civil case)

yes. I left out the details...

Not doing consecutive sentencing seems like it would introduce a moral hazard wherein the criminal feels free to commit lesser crimes than their worst crime in a crime spree (e.g. if he robbed someone at gunpoint, then breaking into houses should be done without fear of additional penalty and only avoided bc it increases the likelihood of being caught).

Of course, my above statement assumes some rationality on the part of the criminal (and econ of crime analysis by Gary Becker, which presumes as such, has been mostly debunked -- most criminals aren't rational)

> assumes some rationality on the part of the criminal

My somewhat minimal experience with criminals is that part of their brain doesn't work very well.

I imagine turning yourself in for even a felony is not as life-shattering in Norway as it is in America. Considering the number of people who die in jail awaiting trial for misdemeanors, let alone those who lose their jobs or have their property confiscated via civil forfeiture, you might be better off just heading for a border if the police even think you've done something.

There are also business reasons. Many hotels sell alcohol, usually at associated restaurants/bars. It is well known that having police in sight, or even just their car out front, causes people to drink less.

I was on a consulting trip to Seattle's Eastside in 1990, during the Goodwill Games. I had to stay at the Bellevue Hyatt because of corporate partnerships.

Unfortunately, it turned out that my room happened to be on a floor where two countries who were not friendly with each other had happened to be assigned rooms on that same floor. There was a virtual riot in the hallway in the middle of the night -- I could see only bits and pieces through my peephole, I tried calling security and the front desj multiple times before I could get hold of anybody. Eventually, things were stable enough such that I could be walked out of the room and off the floor into an open room on another floor... at 5:30 in the morning.

Among other things, it meant I got no sleep that night. Fast forward to the next morning -- my first morning at the client site. While casually talking about my experience with the receptionist, she mentioned that there was a great little hotel right there in Bothell and that they got a great corporate right there. So, I transferred. Turns out that it was a great, modern, quiet property that was much closer to the client... at half the price.

But boy, that lack of security was scary.

I like the irony of this happening with Goodwill Games teams.

It was seriously scary. First, my doorknob would be tested/rattled. Later, knocking. Later, pounding. Next, a body hurling itself against the door.

Eventually, quiet.

Back in the day they used to have Hotel Detectives, one of whose key roles were preventing premarital sex or affairs from occurring. I think Hotel Detectives are almost totally gone now, but the attitude of protecting the hotel from scandal hasn't.

Because it was posted to HN a few days ago, I checked the Wikipedia category for "Obsolete occupations"[1] to see if this might have been listed, but alas, it wasn't in the cards.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obsolete_occupations

How does one add a category to an article to get it listed? Just figured it out. Should show when approved.

Here's a humorous take on the old stereotype.

"Unlike the private eye, he's not a romantic figure; he's paid by the hour and probably on the take. Maybe he has a little drinking problem. He...turns up. He always has, at least as far back as July 30, 1917, when two New York hotel detectives caught then-senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl ..."

https://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/behind-closed-door...

Good point. This character is a staple of many old novels and films -- Arthur Hailey's novel Hotel (1965, adapted as a movie) has such a detective, who is corrupt and mainly wants to extract bribes from any guest who breaks a rule.

During a longer stay a FS property planted a bunch of ozone generators and an IQair unit outside our suite to cover up the weed smell.

They never said anything, didn't even charge a smoking fee.

Jerk

Nah, when I'm spending 60k at a property I can vape in my suite. If the hotel management disagrees I'd expect them to voice their opinion to me.

>It’s funny the lengths they’ll go to not have the police walking around the hotels and potentially getting in the news.

Well, not really great lengths. Luxury hotels I know of can charge anything between 1K to 20K for a night's stay. Once in a while having a mattress they've mass bought for like $100 stole is hardly a big inconvenience...

Luxury hotel beds are not $100

Wow, they cost even less? Amazing.

I imagine there's a big price difference between buying one mattress and buying a hundred of them.

I didn't say beds, I said mattresses. I don't think people steal beds.

As for mattresses now, with bulk buying it can be even less.

> presumably using a stolen credit card as well to make them harder to track.

Credit card fraud expert here:

It's very unwise to book a hotel room with a stolen credit card — trust me, I would know. Carders aren't stupid either, especially the guys that do in-store stuff. Plus, to check-in, you still need a card for incidentals; you need an ID to check in. Obviously, those can also be acquired, but...

There are lots of other things that are easier to flip than mattresses that could be had with less effort and less risk. Why don't they just card a mattress online? Those lighting fixtures? There are thousands of small online stores with bad/poor/non-existent fraud prevention practices outside their processor that would love to ship them to non-billing.

You don't need a "fake" credit card; just one from these online debit card "fintech". Luxury hotels, if you are business-dressed, will not ask for the bill payment until checkout (at least the few I tried). So you can get away with paying the bill without even needing to steal a credit card.

> you need an ID to check in

Not necessarily - it depends on the hotel. I've twice booked a hotel in London recently, with a card that is not in my name, and checked in with nothing more than giving my name.

>This makes me think that these people are only staying at the hotel to steal things and choosing hotels accordingly, presumably using a stolen credit card as well to make them harder to track.

If they have a stolen credit card capable of getting charged into an expensive luxury hotel, they can do far lower risk / higher reward things than go into a hotel, use the card and risk arrest, to steal a mattress.

People really do steal things, even if they are rich. Tons of rich cleptomaniacs, and lots of others who are not addicted to stealing, but wouldn't think twice about getting a matresss from a hotel.

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