Family stranded by Hurricane Beryl back in Georgia
A metro Atlanta family says they’re just thankful to be home after their dream vacation in Jamaica turned into a nightmare.
“We were so happy to get back home and land here. Everybody was so relieved,” said Tawanda Jones.
They were originally scheduled to fly out on July 4, but then weren’t able to fly out until four days later.
They had no power and no air conditions on hot nights in which mosquitoes flooded into their rooms if they opened their windows. Jones tells us shortly after we spoke to her, they found out they had to evacuate their hotel with hardly any warning.
“They were like, ‘yeah, you have to evacuate. We’re evacuating you.’ I said, ‘at what point were you going to say something to us?’” Jones said.
Luckily they were moved to the hotel’s sister facility that had already had their power restored. But the hotel had still charged them more than $3,000 for the extra days they stayed, even though there was no power in their rooms.
“They holding us hostage and would not let us leave…until the $3,000 was paid,” Jones said.
Beryl strands family in Jamaica
She felt like she had no choice but to pay up so they wouldn’t miss their flight on July 8, forcing them to spend thousands of dollars more than they budgeted.
“When we came back to the states we came back empty, with no money. So this has been hard, the last week, till I get paid this Friday,” she said.
But since they’ve been home, the hotel has now offered to refund them two of the nights they stayed in the suite without power, which Jones says would equal around $3,000.
Jones believes it was in part due to the attention from our previous story. And she says she and her husband have now learned that paying a little more upfront for peace of mind is well worth it.
“We will have insurance, there is no way, no reason to take the cheap way out next time. Because we could have got our money back from the insurance,” she said.
