Location: Miami, USA. This happened over 3 years ago so I understand I don’t have any foundations to do anything legally but I’m curious if we ever did at all.
Long story short (sorta): my wife and I rented a Vrbo at a 5 star hotel in Miami City. It was Super Bowl night so we ended up just watching the game in our room and going to bed. The room was in the thirteenth floor. I have PTSD due to childhood traumas so I always make sure the doors and windows at any place I’m at are closed. I remember latching the balcony door and assuming that meant it would be locked. Around 1 am I wake up to a man walking by our bed and out of our room. I gasped in fear and that woke up my wife (who was pregnant at the time and we didn’t know yet) and she also gasped. Before I came to my senses after waking up so suddenly the man was gone. I honestly thought we had witnessed a ghost or something. The man walked from the direction of the balcony, by the bottom of our bed and out the door, while pulling a small rolling suitcase. I decided to go outside and make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me. I confronted the man as he was waiting for the elevator and asked him “what were you doing in our room” he asked if I spoke Spanish and I said yes so he proceeded to tell me that he “was trying to get away from his wife”, gives me a fist pump, gets in the elevator and he’s gone. I came back to my room to see my wife shaken up, and the balcony door wide open. It turns out that the latch was broken and not completely locking the balcony door. The balconies are very close to each other but divided by a wall so we thought the man climbed from one balcony to outs with the suitcase to perhaps steal our stuff not expecting us to be there.
I immediately call the front desk and ask them to send security. They sent one guy, I explained what happened to him. He didn’t show concern at all so I go down to talk to the manager and he doesn’t believe what happened. I asked him to check the cameras if they have them and he says that they will. We check out the next morning and I talked to their head of security, he promises to check the cameras and call me but he never does.
We were treated like liars and there was no reassurance of safety. I didn’t ask for a refund or any type of compensation. Just for another room, they never did. I made the mistake of not calling Vrbo to ask for a refund. The room owner didn’t offer one either so that was the end of it. Any thoughts on what I could have done differently? Was there a legal case at all against the hotel for how it was handled?