49 out of 1,157 hotels in the survey reported having a mattress stolen.
"Whereas many four-star hotels have taken to tagging their items to trigger alarms when smuggled off the premises, five-star hotels are less likely to confront thieves or to report the theft to police, Keilmann told CNN.
"In a lot of cases, they don't report it to the police, because they don't want to be connected to crime," Keilmann said."
This makes me think that these people are only staying at the hotel to steal things and choosing hotels accordingly, presumably using a stolen credit card as well to make them harder to track.
It’s funny the lengths they’ll go to not have the police walking around the hotels and potentially getting in the news.
People can be so touchy with the thought of crime being done in a hotel. I know the sort of person (hotel guest) who would overreact to that sort of thing.
Hoteliers are always in a balance between seeing or not seeing things. Guests are too. Hotels service the public, and people's outlook on life vary greatly.
If you have a bunch of cops getting to know everyone every time a lamp is stolen at a fancy hotel, they may recognize the escort at the bar, or notice some person of note with someone other than their partner. Usually hotels have security folks who interface with the police only when necessary.
One time I was at a beach resort where there were 4 big groups: an association of retired DEA or FBI agents, Chick-Fil-A franchise operators regional meeting, a (very) large same-sex wedding complete with a troupe of drag queen dancers, and a CBD-oil MLM scheme sales meeting. Everyone was best off minding their business!
Not at a beach, but amusing still - during my student days, I worked at a concert venue which, among other things, hosted an annual Christmas party for the town's emergency services; just about every off-duty cop, firefighter, nurse and doctor inn town were there in varying stages of inebriation.
At which point someone decides to try to break in through a backyard window. We grab him as he's entering, and have security summon a police officer from the dinner.
He shows up, recognizes the offender as a regular, sighs "This, my friend, was a stupid idea even by your standards!", orders him to go down to the police station to turn himself in, then returns to the party.
The poor guy actually did just that - went down and got himself arrested for trying to break into Studentersamfundet... :)
-Trondheim is a small-ish town of some 165,000 citizens or so; the police know most of the small-time offenders well enough that him failing to show up would probably end up being more of a nuisance for him than actually turning himself in.
Besides, whether you are sentenced for twelve or thirteen counts of burglary doesn't matter one iota for the sentence you're given - we don't do consecutive sentencing here.
yeah, but most criminals aren't very smart.
With german law it's the similiar but only when you do the stuff in one got ("in Tateinheit") - then you're only sentenced for worst thing you did, not everything.
As a sidenote: do you know any english or german language sources about the norwegian (or nordish) legal system?
I'm interested in how it differs from napoleonic and germanic systems, because it's often considered to be different but explanations are rare.
While the judge might use Tateinheit to chose the sentence on the "worst" crime, the other things are not ignored but impact where on the range the sentence will be. For many offenses there is quite a range.
The textbook idea of that Tateinheit Thing is that if somebody i.e. robs a house the punishment for the damage to the door is neglectable over the punishment for robbery. (While this is about criminal punishment - the house owner can still request a replacement for the door using a civil case)
Not doing consecutive sentencing seems like it would introduce a moral hazard wherein the criminal feels free to commit lesser crimes than their worst crime in a crime spree (e.g. if he robbed someone at gunpoint, then breaking into houses should be done without fear of additional penalty and only avoided bc it increases the likelihood of being caught).
Of course, my above statement assumes some rationality on the part of the criminal (and econ of crime analysis by Gary Becker, which presumes as such, has been mostly debunked -- most criminals aren't rational)
I imagine turning yourself in for even a felony is not as life-shattering in Norway as it is in America. Considering the number of people who die in jail awaiting trial for misdemeanors, let alone those who lose their jobs or have their property confiscated via civil forfeiture, you might be better off just heading for a border if the police even think you've done something.
Geez, I'm somehow a local now. I've never even been inside the building, but to bus stops around it, and know the park you speak of. Do know a dude that plays jazz (?) there occasionally, though.
Thanks for the accidentally making this immigrant happy :)
I was once at a hotel for a high school quiz bowl tournament. There was also a (very drunk) darts competition, and a Shibari meetup (Japanese bondage + furries?).
If this was in Chicago, pretty sure I was there for this. It was indeed a very interesting time! If not, I think it's hilarious that this could have happened multiple times!
I was on a consulting trip to Seattle's Eastside in 1990, during the Goodwill Games. I had to stay at the Bellevue Hyatt because of corporate partnerships.
Unfortunately, it turned out that my room happened to be on a floor where two countries who were not friendly with each other had happened to be assigned rooms on that same floor. There was a virtual riot in the hallway in the middle of the night -- I could see only bits and pieces through my peephole, I tried calling security and the front desj multiple times before I could get hold of anybody. Eventually, things were stable enough such that I could be walked out of the room and off the floor into an open room on another floor... at 5:30 in the morning.
Among other things, it meant I got no sleep that night. Fast forward to the next morning -- my first morning at the client site. While casually talking about my experience with the receptionist, she mentioned that there was a great little hotel right there in Bothell and that they got a great corporate right there. So, I transferred. Turns out that it was a great, modern, quiet property that was much closer to the client... at half the price.
There are also business reasons. Many hotels sell alcohol, usually at associated restaurants/bars. It is well known that having police in sight, or even just their car out front, causes people to drink less.
I worked at a hotel for ten years. You’d be amazed at the number of things that are suppressed. Dead bodies, bed bugs, etc all happen far more frequently than you’d think but are cleaned up quietly and quickly.
Statistically if you have a hotel with 300 rooms and tens of thousands of individual night guest stays over many years, people definitely will randomly die of natural causes. Same as if they were in bed at home.
Suicides are common in hotels because people don’t want to burden their loved ones with the shock of finding their body or having to clean up the mess.
Back in the day they used to have Hotel Detectives, one of whose key roles were preventing premarital sex or affairs from occurring. I think Hotel Detectives are almost totally gone now, but the attitude of protecting the hotel from scandal hasn't.
"Unlike the private eye, he's not a romantic figure; he's paid by the hour and probably on the take. Maybe he has a little drinking problem. He...turns up. He always has, at least as far back as July 30, 1917, when two New York hotel detectives caught then-senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl ..."
Because it was posted to HN a few days ago, I checked the Wikipedia category for "Obsolete occupations"[1] to see if this might have been listed, but alas, it wasn't in the cards.
Good point. This character is a staple of many old novels and films -- Arthur Hailey's novel Hotel (1965, adapted as a movie) has such a detective, who is corrupt and mainly wants to extract bribes from any guest who breaks a rule.
not such great lengths if you ask me. having even one customer turn away from an upscale hotel isn't worth recovering a $700 item, let alone doing this on an ongoing basis.
You can just do a chargeback. Merchant agreements with card issues forbid charging the card for anything other than what the cardholder explicitly agrees to.
I know from personal experience. The issuing bank will state they are not responsible for damages etc etc. Maybe you might win if the cardholder admits to stealing or smoking in a room AND admits to knowing about the fine, but that's never going to happen.
>It’s funny the lengths they’ll go to not have the police walking around the hotels and potentially getting in the news.
Well, not really great lengths. Luxury hotels I know of can charge anything between 1K to 20K for a night's stay. Once in a while having a mattress they've mass bought for like $100 stole is hardly a big inconvenience...
> presumably using a stolen credit card as well to make them harder to track.
Credit card fraud expert here:
It's very unwise to book a hotel room with a stolen credit card — trust me, I would know. Carders aren't stupid either, especially the guys that do in-store stuff. Plus, to check-in, you still need a card for incidentals; you need an ID to check in. Obviously, those can also be acquired, but...
There are lots of other things that are easier to flip than mattresses that could be had with less effort and less risk. Why don't they just card a mattress online? Those lighting fixtures? There are thousands of small online stores with bad/poor/non-existent fraud prevention practices outside their processor that would love to ship them to non-billing.
Not necessarily - it depends on the hotel. I've twice booked a hotel in London recently, with a card that is not in my name, and checked in with nothing more than giving my name.
You don't need a "fake" credit card; just one from these online debit card "fintech". Luxury hotels, if you are business-dressed, will not ask for the bill payment until checkout (at least the few I tried). So you can get away with paying the bill without even needing to steal a credit card.
>This makes me think that these people are only staying at the hotel to steal things and choosing hotels accordingly, presumably using a stolen credit card as well to make them harder to track.
If they have a stolen credit card capable of getting charged into an expensive luxury hotel, they can do far lower risk / higher reward things than go into a hotel, use the card and risk arrest, to steal a mattress.
People really do steal things, even if they are rich. Tons of rich cleptomaniacs, and lots of others who are not addicted to stealing, but wouldn't think twice about getting a matresss from a hotel.
> The club offers more than a 100 resorts in North America and the Caribbean to their owner-members.
The caption explains a lot. It seems these aren’t necessarily the full service luxury hotels with the fully staffed reception and bell service 24 hours a day. These seem to be time shares which are glorified condos. I have stayed at these before. While they are nice, there is not the level of service that you get at a full service hotel. For example, There is no bellman, instead they provide trolleys for you to being up your own luggage. The cleaning staff only come between stays, the reception desk is only open during business hours, etc.
Given this, a lot more stuff make sense. It would be trivial to load up a trolley with the mattress and take it where you want it. At night, there is not a lot of people around so it would be easy. The cleaning staff don’t come everyday so it would be be some time before the missing mattress was noticed.
I returned to my room in a hotel I stayed at frequently while housekeeping were still in there. I chatted to the staff got an extra towel and more tea and only when they left realised I was in the room one floor below mine, that I'd stayed in the week before. Housekeeping don't know who the guests are if you walk into the room confidently they won't say anything at all.
Proper procedures are for all doors to always be closed, even while working in the room, and never to let anyone into a room without verifying their identity unless they have their own key.
Use a stolen CC or use a stolen identity to open a new CC and use that. And if they did track you down but the mattress was already sold off, can they prove that you even stole it? You could easily just say someone must have slipped in after you checked out and stole it.
The stealing remotes / batteries line bugs me a lot more.
If I'm in a hotel room, and something has dead alkalines, I'll toss the batteries, and try to make it very obvious the batteries were removed so they can be replaced for the next guest. That's not theft. I really can't imagine anyone stealing batteries.
I've never taken a remote, but I do sometimes find a hotel keycard in my luggage when I get home. I stay at the same hotels, so I tend to return them, although sometimes a few months later. Small items like that tend to be misplaced or lost by absentminded guests (and possibly even employees). I can't imagine anyone taking a remote on purpose. What would be the point? Most are specific to a given TV model, and wouldn't even work with a TV back home.
There is natural shrinkage which happens everywhere (especially my sock drawer). If someone takes a mattress, coffee machine, or towel, that's theft. If someone tosses dead batteries or misplaces a small item, calling that theft just seems mean. It's attributing bad intentions to something which is just part of life.
> If I'm in a hotel room, and something has dead alkalines, I'll toss the batteries, and try to make it very obvious the batteries were removed so they can be replaced for the next guest. That's not theft.
I agree it’s not theft, but the correct thing to do is probably to ask the front desk if they could replace the batteries, like you would for a light bulb. That way, the batteries can (hopefully) be disposed of properly and you get a working remote control.
In my city, the current recommendation is to simply throw alkaline batteries in the garbage - no special disposal. Only rechargeable batteries require special disposal. This goes against what I was taught growing up, but then most recycling isn't as green as we were led to believe.
Well I remember a handyman who came to our room to fix an AC remote. He found that the batteries were dead and the brand the hotel does not use. He sort of shrugged and told me it happens all the time - guests just swap their used batteries for the hotel ones.
Remotes can fetch nice prices on eBay. If someone is desperate enough for that particular model of remote you can easily sell it for $20 used.
I know because I used to buy boxes full of them from the local thrift store hoping to fetch gold some day. I didn't but did earn nice money for a teenager.
I've always thought it was weird how people have no problem sleeping on a hotel bed that has been slept on by potentially hundreds/thousands of people (and will even steal those mattresses), but they would never dream of buying a used mattress that even one person has slept on.
There's no practical option for sleeping on a non-used mattress while traveling. It's not weird that people settle for it rather than refuse to travel altogether.
If I'm going to sleep on something for the next 5-10 years it doesn't make sense to compromise and buy anything other than a new mattress if I don't have to. The hotel scenario is an exception, this is everyday. It's logical when you put it in context.
Is that a regional thing? I was under the impression they just popped up every now and then, though I've never heard of any except in stories on Reddit. Don't think I heard anyone mention that it only occurs in a certain climate, and we do have airplanes so it's bound to spread to any place it can.
That said, I would totally buy a second hand mattress. People buy used clothes all the time, isn't that similar? Could contain anything (including bed bugs, the top ddg hits seem to suggest).
If you buy used clothes you would (hopefully) wash and dry them thoroughly not just for bedbugs but for other parasites like head lice, chiggers, crab lice or whatever. Good luck cramming a mattress into the wash though :-P
They thrive in 70F-80F temperatures and they die in freezing temperatures. Obviously they won't instantly die when transported to high latitudes but they won't be nearly as problematic.
Bedbugs are easy to kill. Just steam ‘em long enough. Or some other fumigation method. Or an autoclave. Or ethylene oxide if you want to sterilize it. Or freezer temperatures for enough days.
That’s an easily industrializable problem for mattresses. They’re standard size.
Seal them up in plastic when you’re done.
Getting them out of furniture or behind floorboards is harder.
Yes, and that might work 99% of the time, but if one customer even THINKS he/she got bedbugs at your hotel, the PR hit and reputational risk hit eliminates all benefit.
It's illegal to sell a used mattress in most places, so we don't really know if people care. I personally wouldn't have a problem with a used mattress.
The Salvation Army have a good trade on used mattresses in Australia. They get them from individual donations and many of the hotels, put them through a rigorous cleaning process (that they have posters about in their stores) and sell them at a quite reasonable price.
For a person who normally can only afford a foam mattress one of the salvo's second hand inner spring mattresses is a 10 year investment that they will cherish.
Which jurisdictions are these? Googling "used mattress illegal" returns this post as the seventh result, and most of the other results (such as https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0099-shopping-used-mat...) seem to indicate there are only restrictions on labelling or processing.
“For example, in many places, old mattresses that have been recovered with new ticking (strong, tightly woven cotton or linen fabric) can be sold as long as they are sanitized or disinfected in some way before sale. In other states, only certain parts of mattresses, such as the springs, can be reused.“
The usedness of the mattress is masked by the niceness of the room. Used mattresses, when they are sold on Craigslist or otherwise, tend to generally not be in the most pleasant of surroundings.
I bet you can move a lot of used mattresses if you dress them up like a fancy hotel room.
I think every mattress I've ever used has been used. Paying a tenth of the price for something that is good enough is a no brainer when you don't have a lot of money.
In that case RFID is used to keep track of how many times the linen was washed. This way, you'll never get premium linen/towel if you are in an eco room =]
Friends of mine recently opened an Italian restaurant. It's not low-end, $20-25 plates. They have a huge problem with people stealing salt and pepper shakers, silverware, ($1 IKEA) candle holders...
Honestly, or just looking and acting like you're supposed to be somewhere. It's surprising how many people just don't question you as long as you act like you're doing something you're supposed to be doing.
Ditch the clipboard for the kind of tools an electrician or HVAC tech would carry. Best to look like you're there to be helpful, not to snoop around and impose fines.
I've gotten into trade shows at Moscone for free by pushing a hand truck into the loading dock. If you look exasperated, people will get out of your way and point you in the right direction.
Depends on the exact circumstances and local trespassing and fraud laws. Ask a lawyer for details if you get a chance- perhaps reach out to LegalEagle, who makes Youtube videos about interesting laws and legal situations.
Thinking about any of the high-end hotels in Orlando (we have a few of those ;) ), they are all mini-cities with DOZENS of entry points. You can spend walk 15 minutes walking from one non-main entry point to the main entry / reception area.
Heck, I was just as a small 50 room hotel this past weekend that had 3 points of entry, only 1 was in view of the reception desk.
Any of those non-primary entry points would be extremely easy to walk a bed out of without anyone noticing (assuming no one had eyes on the camera at the moment you walked out).
I guess the actual transportation isn't the problem. But why doesn't a 5 star hotel have even one guard on duty in the areas that could serve as exit for freight (presumably the reception area / front entrance since the reception is mentioned as not having service at night)?
If one can walk out with something as big as a mattress then they can walk out with anything that fits through the door. It's a bit ridiculous that they imply anything in the hotel could just be taken at night with little to no effort, other than actually carrying the thing.
Like many other things, it depends on some combination of which hotel you're staying in and where you are in the world. There are plenty of places that would be suffocating if you couldn't open a window.
That said, if this were my mattress theft scheme I'd probably prefer to source a suite that had a usable balcony rather than worry about the windows.
What the hell is the point of all this effort and drama for a used mattress? You can find a great online order mattress for the price of a night at one of these hotels.
I'm more likely to believe that its employees stealing the mattresses than guests. And not because of social economic reasons, but because I think it's a lot easier for employees to sneak out a mattress than a guest.
There is no link to the actual data in the article (https://www.wellness-heaven.de/wellness/study-theft-in-hotel...) and even it claims that mattresses were the least commonly-stolen items on the list. It also provides no information on frequency of theft. Are there 300 pens stolen for every one mattress? Fewer than 1 in 20 4 and 5-star hotels even reported mattress theft. Bereft of meaningful data and fluffed up with speculation, this is out of place on HN.
I haven't actually measured, but I would swear the mattresses are smaller than standard sizes as well. Every king bed hotel room I've stayed in for the past decade is certainly smaller than my king bed at home.
Timeshares and resorts are hit or miss, personal rentals like AirBnB are often normal mattresses, but hotels must be buying some weird hotel only stock where they undersize the mattresses enough to save money in volume but little enough where they feel like they can get away with still labeling them standard sizes.
I'm disappointed given the headline that there wasn't any mention of the make of mattresses that are being stolen. We bought a new mattress about a year ago and sampled some in the $20K+ (yes!) range just for the fun of it. If these are legit 5 star luxury hotels experiencing mattress theft, they could be of the same cost variety. We like our much less expensive one a lot better, even if it isn't the same model that was on the Titanic or used by royalty.
There's a local retailer that sells "natural" latex mattresses for about $2200.
You can find sites online where you can buy all the components and make your own latex mattress ("make" being stack the components in the outer shell and zip it closed) for under $500 shipped.
Unless we're getting somewhat kinky, I don't think that counts as the biggest deprecation of mattress values. I'd rate sweaty obese salesman higher than a short spout of bonking.
Unless we're talking about "impure" from a moralistic pov. In which case I'd recommend slipping your local priest a few bucks to have it blessed.
why would anyone want to sleep on a mattress that just recently was being used by someone else possibly also for the sex, perhaps imperfectly cleaned afterward, and get overcharged for the experience?
Presumably they steal them to sell them on, not because the thief needs mattresses for every one of their 14 bedrooms. As long as it's reasonably new and clean (or maybe even if not) it can be sold on eBay. New mattresses are quite expensive too - £1500 for really nice ones - so I suppose this plus the TV makes for a worthwhile evening of grifting.
Yes, nobody would buy those knowing they've been used in a hotel. But the question is, do they have to know? Mattresses can be repackaged and sold as new or they may have a network to place those mattresses to other hotels, BnBs etc. I even heard of cases where people were picking mattresses off the streets in NYC and "refurbishing" them, whatever that means and selling them as new.
They are choosing a 5 star hotel. The mattress is probably only a couple times before they sell it to a 4 star hotel that uses it for a month before it is resold to a 3 star hotel... Eventually it ends up in a 0 star hotel for a couple years (which is why all the beds are lumpy in 0 star hotels - they are well used before they end up there)
I know the above happens with sheets. It isn't a stretch to believe it happens with other things as well.
Absolutely not true. There is no Marriott/Hyatt/IHG/Hilton hotel that would bother with used mattresses. Mattresses alone are only $250 to $500 a piece, and the labor and logistics to transport mattresses is huge. They are sold with 10 year warranties from Tempur Sealy and Simmons. There is no way any half decent hotel risks getting bed bugs or any other issues from another hotel to save a few thousand dollars.
The idea of using a mattress a couple times and then moving it to another hotel is laughable, much less for a "month". They easily last 5 years, if not longer, and it's a huge capital expense when they need to be replaced as it's usually done all at once since it disrupts operations quite a bit.
people who already crossed a line by stealing have shown they are not rationale decisions in their life. it never ceases to amaze me how much effort people will put into stealing something that truly isn't worth the time expended if they had instead focused that time on working
So five star hotels don't have... security? cameras? How can someone move something big like a mattress or a tv out of the hotel without being noticed?.. That's a horrible security mistake on the hotels' side!
How stealing a mattress likely works at a 5 star hotel in 1 act:
"Are those assholes stealing a mattress?", "Yep. Should we stop um?", "Nah, its probably some crazy rich asshat that'll complain to management about suing for harassment. We will just blacklist the name on the card from the room missing a mattress."
Is the cloning of the chip actually necessary if the POS device is a swipe only unit? It is amazing how many retailers/vendors still do not accept chip. My current debit card is chip enabled, and works fine using the chip. However, it is now old enough that the mag stripe is worn off enough that the swipe only readers cannot read the information. I'm constantly being asked if I have another card to use. I always sarcastically ask if they have a different POS device to use that is modern with a chip reader.
I'm not sure what causes it, but Australia always seems to be really homogeneous regarding tech at the POS. As soon as NFC enabled EFTPOS was available from the banks, it felt like everyone already had the POS machine that could read them and chips.
I can't imagine going somewhere and having to use the swipe. Even some dinky rural bodega will have a swanky touch screen EFTPOS machine. I am thinking the banks must cover the cost.
May be a similar system to Denmark, where one of the major POS system sellers operator sort-of on a subscription basis. The retailers don't own the card machines themselves, but the machines are swiftly replaced when card standards are upgraded.
Wonder if you can slip it off the balcony. From one story up, I bet it lands fine into the back of a pickup. Heck, you could probably haul another one up with a winch, and cover your tracks or at least have plausible deniability.
If you can drop something that big from balcony without getting noticed, the opposite with something getting in through the balcony is also possible then, still a major security issue.
That was my thought, but I’m guessing the housekeeping staff would notice that pretty easily when they swapped the sheets. They see hundreds of that hotel’s usual mattresses per day.
I assume they just put it in their suitcase when they leave? At least here they don't check the room until you're gone. People stealing sheets and towels is a classic.
My Ikea mattress came rolled up very small. Not quite suitcase-sized, but if you find a way to get close to such a size using simple tools (something you can fit in a backpack or carry-on), I can see this happening. One wouldn't need a human-size suitcase to pull that off.
Note that this is based on mental estimations of a ten year old memory. I may be off about how small it was, but I think the estimation should be accurate in essence.
Sheets and towels can fit in a suitcase. I don't know of anyone who has a suitcase large enough for a mattress.
I also find the comment guests "guests will most likely attempt to take the mattress at night when the reception desk isn’t open" odd, since most four/five star hotels usually have a front desk that is staffed 24 hours.
Actually I was wondering that too ... but I've also gotten several mattresses in the mail, and while the package isn't precisely "suitcase" sized, it's not that much more than "extra-large sports duffel" sized.
49 out of 1,157 hotels in the survey reported having a mattress stolen.
"Whereas many four-star hotels have taken to tagging their items to trigger alarms when smuggled off the premises, five-star hotels are less likely to confront thieves or to report the theft to police, Keilmann told CNN.
"In a lot of cases, they don't report it to the police, because they don't want to be connected to crime," Keilmann said."
This makes me think that these people are only staying at the hotel to steal things and choosing hotels accordingly, presumably using a stolen credit card as well to make them harder to track.