Black Bear Inn, Bolton Valley

My husband & I rented a “deluxe room” for 3 nights. The inn was initially disappointing – kind of generally run down. Our room had a ceiling fan/light, neither worked and hadn’t for a while according to a staff member. Without enough lights the room was dark and the wood on our balcony was literally rotting! Our room was very close to the road, I didn’t think traffic was going to be a problem on a mountain road. WRONG! I was awakened about 6:00 a.m. with traffic! Numerous condos and houses up the road from the inn, so everyone going to work drove past our window! Also huge construction dump trucks were grinding their way up and down the road.

The day after checking in we had a great day 'sight-seeing'! Returning to the inn about 3:30 p.m. we found our room door open as well as door to our balcony open with 2 young men there painting. They were upset for disturbing us and apologized for being there. Ken the inn keeper told them the room was empty.

My husband went with one of the painters to ask what was going on. The worker said “there were people in the room” Ken said "people sleeping in there?" the painter said "no, staying in there"; Ken's reply was "oh, that's not a problem". When my husband asked what was going on, Ken said he had been there all day. My husband explained that wasn't the issue - the door to our room was unlocked and there were strangers in our room without our consent or knowledge - a complete invasion of our privacy. Ken got angry and defensive and approached my husband saying "are you accusing me of being a thief? Let’s go upstairs right now and check it out!” My husband tried to explain our concerns but Ken didn’t want to hear it – he just got angrier and more aggressive! At that point Ken basically told my husband that if we didn’t like the way he ran the inn we could just check out. To avoid any more confrontation he returned to our room, we packed to leave.

Paying for one night’s stay I asked Ken for a receipt – he threw a hand written one to me. To protect ourselves from any question of payment, I asked for it to be marked paid in full. Ken got angry! He said “you’ll get a separate credit card receipt that will match the dollar amount” and that was all he was going to provide; I had to ask him FIVE times to get the receipt marked paid! He kept refusing - telling me the charge receipt amount would match. He finally snatched up a pen scribbled “PD” on the receipt. I asked, “please initial it so there is no question who marked it with “PD”, he refused! I told him I wasn’t leaving until he initialed it! He made a snide remark and initialed it, but he was so angry his face turned red!! It was totally unsettling and a little frightening to be confronted with such anger!

I told him I would tell everyone I knew about the disrespectfulness, rudeness and aggressive behavior we were subjected to! His reply – “go ahead, we’ve been here for 34 years, you don’t matter”!