Bed bugs, spotty wireless = don't go.
By Brian, 09/26/09
I used to live 5 blocks from this hotel from 1998 - 2005. It was always clean, basic, and sufficient, with a great location. Things have changed.
I checked in and was tired from a cross country flight and flopped onto the bed. Within 30 minutes my itchy skin told me there were bed bugs. I jumped out of bed and took a hot shower, and planned to ask to change rooms. I got online first to do some work, and the wireless came on initially, but it always kicked me off every 3-5 minutes. This went on for hours. Clearly it did not work.
Also, the bed linens and comforter were very old and faded, there was brown, gooey stuff on the foyer and bath floor. When I asked the front desk to have someone scrape this off the floor, they said, "we really don't have anyone to do that."
I was on a brand new Macbook Pro, my girlfriend got on her work PC, and neither would stay online. We went to the front desk to see about a new room. There was one roomavailable, but it looked exactly like our old room. It had faded bedding, and a tired appearance that led us to believe there were still bed bugs. And we also could not get online in this room. Although it was nice of them to try and get us a new room, with fears of bedbugs and no ability to work (which makes a work trip difficult), we told them we'd leave, and that we would pay for the one night, although we had not been there for more than a few hours we did check-in, and felt we owed them one night.
The front desk clerk said the manager would have to charge us for all 6 nights we had reserved, since we were past the 7 day cancellation window. We ask to speak to the manager, and the clerk said that he would not be back for several days, And that he was taking a few days off. We did not argue, and said that we would come back to discuss later. As soon as we left we saw the clerk get on the phone in a hurried fashion, and were sure he was calling the manager who lives only a few blocks away. In a later discussion, the manager whose name is James, admitted that he rushed right down from his house to check out our room, and found no bedbugs, and said that he got online immediately in our room. He said that the wireless signal is so strong that he uses it at his house several blocks away. So I believe that that would either make us incredibly stupid technology users, or it would make him a liar. You decide.
The manager was babbling about spyware, and how Macs have a problem getting online sometimes on private networks, and things that I could just not follow because he was talking so fast. He was clearly making it up as he went along. I have had my Mac book Pro on dozens of different networks, both open and private, and have not had one problem until this event. We had both a Mac and a PC in the room, and neither one of them could stay online. And he said that someone had just stayed in that room and had not complained of bedbugs. That may be true, but did he stop to think that that family may have brought the bed bugs with them?
He eventually agreed to reduce the number of nights that he charged us to 2 nights. It was indeed nice of him to negotiate the number of nights down and we did not want to argue any further. However, there was further cost to us.
We had to impose on several different friends and stay in their homes. Apparently the bed bugs got into my bag, and I brought them into one of my friends homes. So after throwing out my garment bag, and bringing in cleaners to clean his bedding, I spent another $300 on a new garment bag and cleaning my friends bedding. So the two nights and the additional $300 totaled over a $600 debacle for a few hours, in a poorly run hotel.
I would like to say that with a small outlay of money for new linens and bedding and a massive "professional" cleaning, this would be the fun, efficient, clean and very well located Beach Hotel that it always was. For right now I am afraid I have to give it a horrible rating, I hope that changes soon.
