Good Samaritans purchased a motel room in Columbus, Ohio to help keep a homeless couple out of the freezing weather, but shortly after arriving, the motel kicked them out.
George and Joyce Gruss stopped at a Wendy’s to grab some food while they were delayed by whiteout conditions on Interstate 71. While they were eating, they noticed a woman crying at a nearby table and decided to investigate.
“We were thinking maybe it was a Valentine’s Day gone bad or something,” George told ThinkProgress. But when they asked the woman what was wrong, George and Joyce found out that the woman and her male companion were homeless and that they were stuck in Columbus after someone they had been traveling to Michigan with left them behind.
The low temperature outside was a mere six degrees, and no hotels would let the couple stay the night, despite the fact that they had managed to put $60 together, because they had no ID.
“We thought maybe more than a night would be good if we can do that,” George recalled. The Grusses took the couple to a nearby Super 8, where they paid with their own money and used their own IDs to get a room for three nights. They said goodbye to the couple and got back on the wintery roads.
But only an hour later, the good deed was shot down. George received a call from a security guard saying that the couple had been kicked out of their room. The hotel required that guests be at least 21, and because the couple could not produce ID to prove their age, they could not stay. Although George argued back, saying that they had paid for the room and would risk responsibility for any damages, the guard was adamant: the couple could not stay there.
“He ended the conversation by saying, ‘Oh by the way, your repayment is not refundable,’” George said. “I felt like I was robbed,” he added, noting that the money had not been an issue until then.
When the Grusses got home, George posted his story on Facebook, and his sons pushed it out into Twitter. As the story garnered attention, it drew this comment from a spokesperson for the Wyndham Hotel Group, which owns Super 8: “As a hotel franchisor, we consider guest safety and security to be of the upmost importance and as such, require each of the independently owned and operated hotels in our portfolio to comply with not only our own brand standards but also all local, state and federal laws. Please know that we take seriously the concerns that have been shared and are investigating at this time.”
While George acknowledged that there are reasons for the ID rule, he said, “I think they maliciously applied the rule and hurt a couple, put them out in the cold.”
Despite a call from Wyndham promising that they “would try to make this right,” George said the couple was nowhere to be found and “the opportunity to make this right as passed. This poor couple got put out in the cold.”
When the Grusses receive their refund, they plan to put the money directly into funds for homeless groups. After all, that was what the money was intended for in the first place.