MIAMI – After Hurricane Irma struck, Luis Cano and his family were without power.
Seven days passed and Cano decided it was time to check his family into a hotel that had power and air conditioning.
So he went to Expedia and found that the Mayfair Hotel in Coconut Grove was available.
"We went ahead and booked it," Cano said. "Paid for it in full."
Cano said despite the fact he had a paid reservation, when he went to check his family in, he was told unless he paid more, he couldn't get a room.
"The lady behind the counter says, 'Oh, you booked this through Expedia. We're not honoring the Expedia bookings,'" Cano said. "She said that the general manager had decided not to honor the Expedia booking because they're able to sell it for more money.'"
The catch was, there were rooms available at the hotel.
"We have plenty of rooms available, and if you want to pay the higher fee, we'll give you one of those rooms,'" Cano said the woman told him.
Cano took his family, walked out and called Expedia.
"Expedia was shocked," he said. "Expedia tried to contacting the hotel multiple times."
To get them a place to stay, Expedia found Cano and his family another hotel nearby.
In a statement to Local 10 News, a representative from Expedia said it was glad to help Cano in his time of need and is looking into the incident with the Mayfair Hotel.
As for the Mayfair, general manager Jim Mauer called the incident an "unfortunate mistake."
"He told us he was told if he paid more he could get a room," Local 10 News investigative reporter Jeff Weinsier told Mauer.
"That is not the case. That is not the case," Mauer said. "We had the same rate pre-storm. We had the same rate post-storm. We actually had a discounted rate for local Grove residents that were displaced."
"So what happened to him? We just interviewed him and his story is totally different that yours," Weinsier said.
"Yeah, I haven't spoken to him directly. We've been reaching out to him," Mauer said. "That is not the case. It wasn't a manager. It was a front line associate. ... There's a lot of service failures in here -- ones we are correcting right now."
Mauer claims he didn't want a situation where he was overbooked.
"We didn't want to have an event where I have 179 rooms and 189 reservations," he said.
Mauer said the employee has been disciplined and he has since called Cano to apologize.
Cano said what makes matters worse is that he and his wife, Teresa, stayed at the Mayfair on their wedding night 25 years ago, so the hotel has a special place in their hearts.
At least it did.
"To me, that's just as low the looters that were trying to take advantage of the disaster stealing from people all over the neighborhoods," he said.