Woman says NYC hotel fined her for smoking in her room, but she claims innocence. Then she digs up the hotel’s alleged past

An Australian woman has claimed that she was falsely accused of smoking in her room and handed a $500 fine for her supposed transgression. The hotel guest aired her complaint against the M Social on TikTok, and she isn’t the first guest to make such a claim against the New York hotel.

Stephanie claimed she and a couple of other guests she was with had returned to their room to find that they had been issued a fine for allegedly smoking in their room. The fine was for $500, which Stephanie claimed she didn’t have to spare. “The $500 is for a cleaning fee,” Stephanie said. “How can you charge us $500 for a cleaning fee when you haven’t even stepped foot in the hotel room and can smell smoke?”

Stephanie said neither she nor the guests she was with smoked, so it was impossible that they could have set it off. She reasoned that the smoke detector in their room must have been faulty, but when she went down to the reception to argue the fine, the staff allegedly did not believe that the detector could have been mistaken. 

She speculated that the steam from her Shark FlexStyle hair styler might have set off the smoke detector in her room, as she says she was right next to the detector when she was using it. However, the hotel staff insisted that the device would not have picked up the steam and that only smoke could have triggered it.

This has happened before

This isn’t the first time a guest has accused the M Social of trying to scam them with a $500 fine for smoking. Last year, a guest had the same issue; only she claims she wasn’t even in the room at the time the smoke detector allegedly picked up smoke.

Stephanie did her own research into the matter and learned about the previous guest too. The revelation led to her accusing M Social of intentionally scamming its customers with a fake accusation as a means to charge guests an extra $500. Whether that is true or not has not been proven.

With few choices left, Stephanie claimed she planned to dispute the payment with her bank. In an update video a couple of weeks later, she confirmed that the hotel ultimately sent the refund, although she said, “We haven’t received any response from the hotel, no apology, no response at all to even say that they refunded us.”

Stephanie advised people to stay away from M Social due to her own experience. She also encouraged anyone who receives fines from the hotel to “not stop” when it comes to fighting for a refund.