Uncaring to the point of meanness
By A Yahoo! Contributor, 12/30/07
The New Haven Hotel was the worst hotel experience of my life.
I stayed there for the night prior to taking my law school admissions test. I examined the (rather old) clock-radio in the hotel room to make sure that it worked, then set its alarm for 7am. I also arranged for a 7am wake-up call. Well, thank god I got nervous at the last minute and also set my cell phone alarm. Not only did the alarm on the clock-radio fail to go off, but I also never received my wake-up call. I can understand that maybe I set the clock-radio wrong, but I was shocked when I called to ask about my missing wake-up call and the operator told me that the call-making computer had been malfunctioning for about a week. I asked her why the hotel didn't just do the calls by hand until the computer was fixed, but she said staff wasn't assigned for that task.
Sleeping through that test would have caused me a serious, expensive problem. Only my taking that third measure of setting my cell alarm saved me. Even if my waking up weren't so particularly essential that one morning, in general I think that if a hotel knows there's a good chance that guests' requested wake-calls will not come through, at minimum it should inform the guests.
The hotel administration was not responsive to or apologetic about this wake-up call problem. They also refused another service I had requested and offered to pay extra for -- a late check-out at 2pm instead of 11am. The front desk told me that they never let guests check out after 11am. I find this to be unreasonable. I've never stayed at a hotel that would not let you check out late, whether for a fee or for free. No hotel needs every single check-out room empty by 11am.
The hotel was perfectly clean and my room was comfortable. Unfortunately, the restaurant is shut down and you could not even get coffee in the lobby. You can go out to buy food, but given the hotel's lack of a bellman/security person out front and its surroundings (a medical building that is empty at night, the notorious Temple Street Parking Garage, the abandoned Macy's, and some empty parking lots on Church Street), I did not feel comfortable walking outside to buy food at night or early in the morning. I dearly love the city of New Haven, but every town has a few places where it isn't a good idea to walk around by yourself at certain times, and the NHH's block of George Street is one of them.
The bathroom sink was located in the bedroom, and the decor runs to pink rosebuds on the wallpaper (with matching ones on the carpet!) but these are just eccentricities that I would have found cute under other circumstances. However, given the awful, uncaring service, I remember everything about the New Haven Hotel with loathing.
