“Mistakenly”

?

No, mistakenly. What makes you think it wasn’t a mistake?

Unless the lodge has a commercial shredder, a person cannot feed all the passports at once into a shredder. 1 or 2 maybe, but 44? No.

Is it common to have to surrender your passport to a hotel?

Yes. I've never liked it. It is usually done to prevent you from skipping out on the bill.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume it was deliberate.

Usually they just make a copy. I have never given a hotel my passport.

Agreed

To what end? More likely a Night Auditor misread a note in the FD journal.

Jeesh. What kind of shredder is this? Must be a beast.

Also, I had to look it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Country

My guess is they were mistakenly given to a bulk shredder.

Or maybe someone assumed they were fake because they weren't red. Enjoy your Brexit kids.

Exactly. I don't think a family run lodge has a shredder capable of shredding 44 passports at once.

The hotel should, at the very least, be refunding their replacement costs.

I have had it tried on me. Told them no, they said you have to if you plan to stay here. I said by and turned to leave. Almost to the door when they said, ok you can stay.

No, not common to surrender your passport to a hotel. In fact it is illegal in the US. I’ve had my passport taken in Europe while the front desk fills out paperwork but I either wait, or they bring it up to me within the hour.

That's why I question "mistakenly". Someone would spend several minutes shredding 44 passports. No contacting the group to see if they forgot them, nope, straight to the shredder.

I can't open the link, is this at a hotel in NH?

And all the extra hotel costs.

Happened at the Kancamangus Lodge. A British school group traveling here went to checkout and were told 44 passports were "mistakenly shredded". The group then had to travel to NYC to get replacement documents so they could board the plane back home.

Thank you very much.

That was my understanding too. Illegal in the US. Restricting someone’s travel sounds a lot like kidnapping.

Who takes a perfectly valid passport and says hey let me shred that. I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to tamper or destroy a govt document.

For what it’s worth, it’s very common on school trips with minors for the school staff to collect all the student passports and put them in the hotel safe for safekeeping. Kids lose shit… I doubt the hotel demanded them. It’s more likely they are asked to hold them, with unfortunate results.

That’s my thought. Those passports could sell for big money!

And the travel costs to New York and all additional expenses for changing flights, lodging in New York, as well as meals and incidentals.

There is zero reason for a hotel to shred any passport. Zero.

Give me one legitimate reason for a hotel to shred any passport. Passports are the property of the government that issued it. If lost or found (which, is hard to do inside a hotel) they are to be sent back to be destroyed. So give me your one good reason any passport should ever be mistakenly destroyed, let alone 40

Neither of these are legit. Why were passports anywhere except under lock and key. Second, again, no private citizen has the authority to destroy a passport. “Oh look at all these passports, they must be fake” is ludicrous and criminal because again, property of the government that issued. So no mistake here

> Give me one legitimate reason

Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

This couldn’t be less relevant in this instance.

Why wasn't this on WMUR?

They're too busy with the misparked trailer in Manch.

> So give me your one good reason any passport should ever be mistakenly destroyed, let alone 40

One hypothesis: The hotel routinely collects sensitive documents to be shredded by a service. The front desk clerk put the passports in a large envelope, and another employee, possibly new in their position, mistakenly sent the wrong envelope to be shredded. Nobody knowingly shredded passports.

You never should leave your passport out of sight

How is it not?

Can't have real news... in 20 years the ghost of Fitz Weatherby will be telling the tail of the misparked trailer at 7.

This is most likely, IMO

They were probably stolen to be used illegally. I would want every piece of paper supposedly from them

What does a hotel need with a shredding service?

Why was the hotel holding the passports in the first place??

It was a shredding company so it just gets dumped into a large industrial shredder. Takes a second or two to shred. More likely the hotel person set it on the recycle box because they were busy and planning on putting them away later and just forgot.

They routinely collect personal information about their guests?

That's why you pre-authorized with a credit card.

very common overseas. I did this in Russia, Ukraine, Dubai, Yemen, Bosnia, Turkey, Korea,....

Interesting. I have been to a little over 40 different countries. Have never and would never.

Why the police won't comment? Because minors involved?! I call BS. Local cops are buddies with the owner, would be my guess.

it's more common in authoritarian governments that want to keep track of you.

Agreed this is the most likely scenario.

No, because there's going to be a TON of lawsuits following this debacle. That's why.

Minors are asked to provide them to the chaperones, who in turn provide them to the front desk manager to be locked in a safe. Clearly the "safe" part didn't happen here.

Businesses that deal with a lot of sensitive documents routinely have a bulk shredding company collect large bags (or at my current job, locked trashcans that have a small slot on top) of shredding. This almost certainly wasn't someone hand-feeding them through a wastebasket-sized shredder.

Not sure why I had to get to the last comment to read the same question I had. I'd never turn my passport over to anyone