Seahunt
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2002
- Messages
- 4,979
I posted this on the Community Board, and thought I should list it here too. Just trying to save someone from a scam!
This was on the local (Orlando) news, and I thought I should pass it along to anyone considering ordering a pizza delivery from a handbill in your hotel room:
KISSIMMEE -- It sounds silly at first.
Brightly colored, glossy fliers for pizza bargains are inundating the hotels that line the tourist strips in Orange and Osceola counties.
But complaints come just as quickly as the handbills are slid under room doors.
Guests get food of questionable quality and origin. Orders never arrive. Some who pay with credit cards return home to find thousands of dollars of charges they never authorized.
Worse, police investigating complaints say, some of the folks distributing the advertisements are using the papers as a ruse to scout for burglary and robbery targets. There have been reports of scuffles and threats against hotel staffers and some guests.
In other words, it is exactly the sort of headache the region's wobbly tourism industry doesn't need, and lawmakers are working on a measure to help.
"You have people on your property, in your hotel, in your hallways, who could be looking for an opportunity to take advantage of guests or the hotel," said Duane Winjum, general manager of the Quality Suites Maingate on U.S. Highway 192 near Walt Disney World. "It's a real problem."
Police agree. They say that some of the pizza parlors are run by entrepreneurs hoping to make a quick buck in a lousy economy by selling heated-up, warehouse-club-brand frozen pizzas. Their crime is no crime at all -- simply bad business. But with at least one operation shut down for lacking the proper permits, there are worries about health and other code violations.
The darker side of the problem dates back to the late 1990s, when a Tampa man running a fledgling pizza company supplemented his income with a burglary ring that hit hotels in Tampa and Orlando. He ended up with probation, but police said his legacy is a business model of sorts that relies on crimes of opportunity as much as food sales.
"I was told by an engineer at one hotel about a guy delivering a pizza who felt the guest didn't give him enough of a tip. He followed him back up to his room, demanding more money," said Orange County Sheriff Sgt. Doug Sarubi. "Understandably, the guy was worried he was going to be hurt. He could have been."
The Central Florida Hotel & Lodging Association also worries about a serious incident. Members have been lobbying for state legislation that would put teeth in trespassing laws, to go after both those who deliver the fliers as well as those who own the businesses being advertised.
A bill that would have done just that passed the House but died in the Senate this year. The association is gearing up for a second go at the bill next year while encouraging members to crack down as much as possible until that happens, said organization President Richard Maladecki.
For Winjum, that means updating monthly the list of phone numbers that cannot be called from the hotel, using numbers lifted from the fliers. He also has hired maids to make sure the handbills don't stack up in vacant rooms and added security to catch the deliverers and write them up for trespassing.
Such measures slow, but don't stop, the problem. The companies change phone numbers with ease. And since a warning is required for a trespassing charge, offenders simply swap with another deliverer and go to one of the many other hotels clustered near the attractions.
State Rep. Ed Homan, a R-Tampa, said he will reintroduce a bill that will eliminate the need for a warning, and also create a level of first-degree misdemeanor for trespassing for both those caught on property and those running the businesses.
The bill also would call for creating a felony battery category for anyone who scuffles with a guest or hotel employee while trespassing -- another charge that would be levied against the business owner, even if he or she is not on site.
"The key to thwart this activity is to get at the people behind it," said Homan's aide, Lynda Barrow.
If a bill passes in the next legislative session -- set for March -- it wouldn't become law until July 1. That can't come soon enough for Jay Leonard, general manager of the Radisson Orlando on International Drive.
Every day, fliers flood in from as far as Kissimmee for his hotel at the entrance to Universal Orlando. It's like nothing he has ever seen, although he worked in other tourist hotbeds such as California, New York and New Orleans.
Tourists who have been promised pixie dust, roller coasters and sunshine are less tolerant of problems, he said. And given that those who arrived by plane already have gone through an ordeal in security to get here, Leonard thinks they shouldn't be expected to put up with people in their hotels who don't belong there.
"It's not about a pizza flier," Leonard said. "It's about the protecting the people and the image of Orlando and Florida."
This was on the local (Orlando) news, and I thought I should pass it along to anyone considering ordering a pizza delivery from a handbill in your hotel room:
KISSIMMEE -- It sounds silly at first.
Brightly colored, glossy fliers for pizza bargains are inundating the hotels that line the tourist strips in Orange and Osceola counties.
But complaints come just as quickly as the handbills are slid under room doors.
Guests get food of questionable quality and origin. Orders never arrive. Some who pay with credit cards return home to find thousands of dollars of charges they never authorized.
Worse, police investigating complaints say, some of the folks distributing the advertisements are using the papers as a ruse to scout for burglary and robbery targets. There have been reports of scuffles and threats against hotel staffers and some guests.
In other words, it is exactly the sort of headache the region's wobbly tourism industry doesn't need, and lawmakers are working on a measure to help.
"You have people on your property, in your hotel, in your hallways, who could be looking for an opportunity to take advantage of guests or the hotel," said Duane Winjum, general manager of the Quality Suites Maingate on U.S. Highway 192 near Walt Disney World. "It's a real problem."
Police agree. They say that some of the pizza parlors are run by entrepreneurs hoping to make a quick buck in a lousy economy by selling heated-up, warehouse-club-brand frozen pizzas. Their crime is no crime at all -- simply bad business. But with at least one operation shut down for lacking the proper permits, there are worries about health and other code violations.
The darker side of the problem dates back to the late 1990s, when a Tampa man running a fledgling pizza company supplemented his income with a burglary ring that hit hotels in Tampa and Orlando. He ended up with probation, but police said his legacy is a business model of sorts that relies on crimes of opportunity as much as food sales.
"I was told by an engineer at one hotel about a guy delivering a pizza who felt the guest didn't give him enough of a tip. He followed him back up to his room, demanding more money," said Orange County Sheriff Sgt. Doug Sarubi. "Understandably, the guy was worried he was going to be hurt. He could have been."
The Central Florida Hotel & Lodging Association also worries about a serious incident. Members have been lobbying for state legislation that would put teeth in trespassing laws, to go after both those who deliver the fliers as well as those who own the businesses being advertised.
A bill that would have done just that passed the House but died in the Senate this year. The association is gearing up for a second go at the bill next year while encouraging members to crack down as much as possible until that happens, said organization President Richard Maladecki.
For Winjum, that means updating monthly the list of phone numbers that cannot be called from the hotel, using numbers lifted from the fliers. He also has hired maids to make sure the handbills don't stack up in vacant rooms and added security to catch the deliverers and write them up for trespassing.
Such measures slow, but don't stop, the problem. The companies change phone numbers with ease. And since a warning is required for a trespassing charge, offenders simply swap with another deliverer and go to one of the many other hotels clustered near the attractions.
State Rep. Ed Homan, a R-Tampa, said he will reintroduce a bill that will eliminate the need for a warning, and also create a level of first-degree misdemeanor for trespassing for both those caught on property and those running the businesses.
The bill also would call for creating a felony battery category for anyone who scuffles with a guest or hotel employee while trespassing -- another charge that would be levied against the business owner, even if he or she is not on site.
"The key to thwart this activity is to get at the people behind it," said Homan's aide, Lynda Barrow.
If a bill passes in the next legislative session -- set for March -- it wouldn't become law until July 1. That can't come soon enough for Jay Leonard, general manager of the Radisson Orlando on International Drive.
Every day, fliers flood in from as far as Kissimmee for his hotel at the entrance to Universal Orlando. It's like nothing he has ever seen, although he worked in other tourist hotbeds such as California, New York and New Orleans.
Tourists who have been promised pixie dust, roller coasters and sunshine are less tolerant of problems, he said. And given that those who arrived by plane already have gone through an ordeal in security to get here, Leonard thinks they shouldn't be expected to put up with people in their hotels who don't belong there.
"It's not about a pizza flier," Leonard said. "It's about the protecting the people and the image of Orlando and Florida."
)ps the pizzas are yummy
