Ya know, tho, sometimes guests are just difficult. With no provocation whatsoever we had a guy start arguing with us about paying. He insisted we were wrong to ask for payment on arrival and that if we expected him to pay 'in advance' he should have been informed BEFORE he arrived.
Well, quite clearly in all of our verbiage is that fact. You pay when you arrive. Website says it, online rez system says it, confirmation says it. He went so far as to pull up his confirmation on our computer to rub our noses in it. We said nothing and let him stew when his wife pointed it out to him. Right there. In black & white.
No way we could have managed his expectations any differently than we did. We can't make guests read.
We probably could have handled HIM differently, tho. And it was a lesson learned. Each innkeeper has a different flash point.
What I will never understand is why guests don't get that a hotel HAS their cc info on file, stored in their computer, to charge whenever they damn well feel like it, for however much they 'say' is on your bill. We are simply asking for the card to 'imprint', as the old fashioned language states..