Guest who left $18,000 hotel bill misses own deadline

Convicted fraudster Tracey Gordon is again under scrutiny after leaving a hotel with an $18,000 debt. Photo / Facebook

A Grey Lynn hotel guest who checked out leaving an $18,000 bill has missed her own deadline to pay.

Tracey Anne Gordon told the Herald earlier this month that the bill would be paid within two days.

Gordon was jailed a decade ago for fraud and has a string of ill-fated schemes behind her including one her own lawyer described as "fairyland stuff".

Hotel manager Denise King told the Herald that Gordon, who has owed the money since February, got in touch and indicated she would pay after the Herald first contacted Gordon.

Gordon told the Herald on September 1 that "full payment [would] be made in the next two days". The next day she emailed the hotel that payment would come "from our administration office today New York Standard Time".

Last Saturday the Herald published a story headlined - Hotel guest checks out leaving $18,000 bill.

Gordon promptly got in touch with the hotel saying she'd changed her mind about paying - at least for now.

"Unfortunately we've been advised to hold payment for now as we are seeking legal advice regarding the NZ Herald article this morning."

The Herald hasn't heard from her and she hasn't responded to an email sent this week.

Gordon earlier declined to say where money to pay the bill would come from or how she currently made a living.

Gordon wrote: "I am reluctant to discuss my affairs with the media as the last article published by the NZ Herald concerning me was described by my legal team as 'a gross distortion of the facts'."

That story, published in 2005, was about her pleading guilty to eight fraud charges.

Gordon left the Surrey Hotel in February telling staff she was off to San Francisco on business. She has indicated she is living in Hong Kong.

She had stayed on and off at the Surrey Hotel in Grey Lynn for more than two years and had paid bills with her father's credit card.

But her father, marine explorer Keith Gordon, told the hotel he should have been contacted before the credit card was used, and he had the payment cancelled.

King said she wrongly assumed Gordon's father would pay his daughter's last bill because he always had previously.

Gordon has previously claimed payment had been delayed by ill health and a typhoon.

King told the Herald she would have Gordon and the unpaid bill listed with a registry of bad debtors.