The claims of a woman who says she was erroneously hit with a $500 "smoking fee" after a stay at a Las Vegas hotel have been refuted by the CEO of the company that supplied the hotel with its smoke detectors.
Jocelyn Harper went viral on TikTok after posting about what happened during her stay over Labor Day weekend at the Westgate Las Vegas on Paradise Road. As she went to checkout, Harper discovered she had been hit with a $566 charge for allegedly smoking in her room.
Harper has continually denied smoking in the room, but the founder of the company responsible for Westgate's smoke detectors told Newsweek it was "unquestionably smoked in."
Under Westgate Resorts' terms and conditions for booking a room, "any guests found to have been smoking in the room will be assessed a fee for additional cleaning."
Newsweek has reached out to Westgate on several occasions for comment.
Harper told Newsweek that when she first challenged the charge, which saw the cost of her stay more than triple from $200 to $730, she was told the smoke detectors they have are "super accurate" and "there's not much they can do" once someone is charged.
"I got pretty upset because that's a lot of money to just have taken away," she said. Harper refused to back down, though.
In a video posted to her TikTok @travelingwithjoce, she claimed that the charge was unjust as she not only does not smoke but was not in the room when the smoking was alleged to have occurred.
Harper said in the video, which has been watched 1.3 million times, that others had complained about the same issue when staying with Westgate. As a result, she said they reached out to "apologize" and start the refund process.
Harper said she got her money back and was offered a free two-night stay. She also said she received an apology from the hotel's general manager and Westgate's head of public relations.
"They said their smoke detectors are extremely accurate and had been tested over a million times and they also sent me a document about the smoke detectors they use," Harper said. "They also said they refunded the people who appeared in my video via their TripAdvisor reviews."
In a new development, however, Jack O'Toole, the founder and president of FreshAir Sensor, has rejected Harper's version of events.
"The room was unquestionably smoked in," O'Toole told Newsweek. "The FreshAir 2.0 device uses a molecular sensor which is the first and only technology capable of monitoring for and specifically detecting airborne molecules from tobacco and marijuana smoke. When smoking occurs, the patented sensors detect molecular compounds found only in actively combusting tobacco or marijuana."
O'Toole said the device uses additional sensors that deliver "100 percent scientific certainty that smoking has occurred."
"This technology has been proven in court and through peer-reviewed scientific articles," he added. "The Smoking Alert is scientific proof of smoking."
O'Toole even provided times as to when the alleged smoking began.
"In this event, the guest entered the room via guest keycard at 6:06 p.m. PT, engaged the privacy lock from the inside, and did not open the door again until 9:42 p.m. PT," he said.
"The smoking commenced at 6:08 p.m. PT. Peak molecular activity from smoking occurred at 6:16 p.m. PT, and the Smoking Alert was reported electronically to the property at 6:38 p.m. PT."
Newsweek put these claims to Harper but she maintains that she did not smoke in the room.
"Continuing to assert these smoke detection devices are 100 percent accurate is not only scientifically unsound, it's really harmful to the guest experience at the property," she told Newsweek.
"The Vice President of Hotel Operations and the Head of Marketing have already spoken to me, apologizing for the errors the smoke detector made."
Harper pointed to "numerous examples" online of people claiming a smoke detector charged them incorrectly, with these claims dating back to June. "This reflects a pattern and not an isolated incident," she said.
She also noted that the hotel informed her the other customers she found complaining about the same experience on TripAdvisor were also refunded.
"I never received an official locks report showing I entered the room at 6:06 p.m., and even then, that is not evidence of any smoke in the room. A proper procedure would be to call or visit the room upon the alert to see if any substantial evidence of smoke is there," she said.
"Guests should never be charged incorrectly due to faulty equipment or lack of proper procedure. As a hospitality and events manager myself, I know this could have been handled infinitely better, and it is a shame that the Westgate continues to make mistakes regarding service failure recovery."
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