A few weeks ago, my husband and I sent a $191 deposit to book the Wavecrest for this weekend, which turned out to be very rainy. Despite the horrible weather, we attempted to make the trip yesterday. An hour into our 3-hour drive, the driving conditions became extremely dangerous. My husband could barely see. We decided it was not worth risking a car accident, so we pulled off the road, waited a bit, and ultimately drove home.

Wanting to be courteous, my husband called the Wavecrest in the evening to let them know we weren't coming. The girl who answered suggested we call back this morning and ask the manager if we could apply the deposit to a different weekend.

My husband spoke to the manager, Pam, this morning. Pam was extremely defensive and rude, talking over him and interrupting him. She said we could not get our money back because they had not re-booked our room to other guests. He asked if we could apply the money to a different weekend, and she said no because she would then have to do it for everyone else who was in our position.

My husband called back a few minutes ago and spoke to a different woman. He asked her if we could at least drive out and stay in the room tonight, since it was vacant. She just kept saying, "No, you lost your money." So he asked her matter-of-factly if they would rather have an empty room and unhappy potential customers than let us stay in the room, since they have our money anyway. She said yes.

We just can't believe that people who run a business would be this rude to potential customers. We weren't asking for our money back or asking for anything more than what we paid for. We just thought that since we paid for the room and it was empty anyway, we could use it. It was not our fault that we couldn't drive there in the rain; we'd even attempted to make the trip knowing the weekend would be a wash.

If they couldn't do anything for us, at least they could have been sympathetic. On top of losing $191, we had to deal with their nastiness. They are not running the Ritz-Carlton. I stayed at the Wavecrest several times with my family when I was younger, and while the location was great, the hotel was nothing to write home about. We only booked it because the hotel we wanted to stay at had no vacancies.

We will be spending many weekends and weeks in Montauk for years to come, and needless to say, we will NOT book the Wavecrest. It is not because of their rules regarding deposits, but because of their total disregard for their customers. One of the basic traits of a hotel should be hospitality, and if they can't even get that right, they don't deserve our business.