Costa Rica hotel hits wrong note as it charges us for pre-paid rooms

We have just returned from an enjoyable choir tour to Costa Rica. When our party of 54 arrived at the hotel in San José that had been booked by our Costa Rican travel agent, we were asked to give credit card details as normal. When we checked out five days later we each settled our bar expenses etc. But a week later we found our credit card accounts had been debited by the hotel for the equivalent of $400 (£300) without notification.

The hotel says the travel agent, to whom we had paid more than $50,000, had not paid it for our rooms. The agent keeps promising she will pay “soon”, and the hotel has assured us that it will refund the charges once paid.