this is a long story, so please bear with me while i rant.
normally, i would never stay in a hotel in nyc. there's tons of people living all over the 5 boroughs that i could easily crash with. HOWEVER, over labor day weekend, a bunch of out-of-state friends were congregating in the big apple for a 5-day vacation, and we opted to get a hotel room together rather than try to squeeze into someone's tiny manhattan apartment for an unbearable 5 days.
hotels in manhattan are normally ridiculously expensive, but even worse so on holiday weekends. and being cheap (frugal?) early 20-somethings, my friends and i opted for a hotel out in queens - one that was cheaper than living in manhattan, while not sacrificing too much distance or a much worser neighborhood. and on top of that, it was a freakin quality inn. normally, i don't stay at choice hotels, but they are usually clean, albeit motel-looking, but liveable.
my friend booked the four-person room on expedia for roughly 250/night. he even called to make sure that the doubles rooms would be able to sleep 4. so we were set and off we went to the city! we all came in at separate times and agreed to meet at the hotel at a specific time.
the hotel was easy enough to find. located only 2 blocks from the 7 line and in a mostly residential neighborhood, it looked pretty safe.
the problem arose when we got there for check-in. we didn't end up checking in until around 9pm because we were waiting on our last friend to get in. when we got to the desk (there was no real lobby area), the night manager and his assistant were working the desk. upon check-in, the manager informed us that they no longer had any double bed rooms, only single king beds. fine, we would take that.
but no, he says that the single king bed can only sleep 2 people. well, duh. but originally we booked a doubles room, so why the hell was it not reserved for us?! i guess there was some glitch in the system between expedia and the hotel. there's always some sort of glitch when working with a third party i suppose.
so then how much would it cost to get a rollaway bed? 35/night. fine, we were tired and needed to get ready to go out at night, so we said we'll take the rollaway beds and the king bed room.
but no, again the manager says. the room + rollaway can only sleep 3 max. can we put in more than one rollaway bed? absolutely not. why not? because it's against hotel policy apparently to have more than 3 people sleep in a room that has a king sized bed.
at this point, we were like wtf. so what do you want us to do? the manager says the only rooms that can hold 4 people are the doubles, and those are all gone. well.. is that really our fault??? ok, so we checked in late and we got shafted. BUT HOW IS THAT OUR FAULT!? as the hotel management staff, aren't you supposed to accomodate the guests as best as possible?
neither the manager nor the assistant even bothered to be helpful in the least bit. they basically said our only option was to book another king sized room so that we could have beds for all 4 of us. that's effectively paying twice what we intended. well, with that budget, we could've just booked a room at a real hotel in manhattan and we wouldn't be in this craphole of a hotel in some random neighborhood in queens, now would we?!
by this point, it was about 30 mins later. we were still at the check-in desk and all four of us were pissed off as hell. my friend tried calling expedia, but obviously there was nothing they could do from over the phone since they weren't affiliated with the hotel. the best they could do was offer my friend a refund on his booking.
but obviously, we had already made the trek. we were tired, we were annoyed, and we needed somewhere to leave our stuff, fast. we weren't going to just pick up and leave and try to find another hotel somewhere. where the hell would we have gone without knowing the area?!
so we begrudgingly paid for the extra room and gave the management staff death stares whenever we left/came back and had to see them.
i understand that a hotel has policies that it has to follow, but their customer service was just terrible. they could've at least offered some sort of compensation for the mix-up as this was clearly not any particular party's fault. usually when something like this goes wrong, any decent hotel takes the fault upon themselves. they don't penalize the customers.
this entire experience was completely unforgiveable. i'm still seething when i think about it, and it's been over 2 months since this happened. if i never see this place or another quality inn for the rest of my life, it'll be too soon. read more