After long late night transcontinental flight, I arrived at the hotel at two o’clock in the morning—exhausted, eager to check in an and collapse on the hotel bed. To my shock, hotel staff informed me it informed me the hotel was oversold for that evening and no rooms were available. “But I have a reservation…,” I explained. “Yeah, I know,” explained the front desk staff. “Believe me. It happens a lot. And it puts us in a difficult position too when people show up, and we have to tell them they don’t have a room…” Mind you: this is 2 am in the middle of a not-very-safe area on the edge of downtown Oakland. I contacted Expedia to ask them to help me find another room—ANY hotel room—in the area. Expedia staff informed me this would be impossible: It was two o’clock in the morning, and there was no way for them to book me a same-day reservation at a hotel that would allow me to check in that early in the morning. And there was no way to book a room for the remaining hours of the previous night. Mind you, it’s two o’clock in the morning in the middle of a very area on the edge of downtown Oakland… The hotel (a Marriott hotel) also would not help me find a room at another Marriott location.