Best Western Hotel, Elgin, IL - room air conditioning didn't work - rude service experiences

# 5 for July 14, 2003

Complaints.com received the following on July 13, 2003:

From: didn't work - rude service experiences

We stayed at this hotel on July 11.2003. The staff including the manager was extremely rude and unprofessional. I called when we checked in because our air conditioning was not working in one of our rooms. A security man came to check it and said maintenance would be up to look at. 4 hours later I called to find out where the maintenance person was and I was told nothing could be done until morning.

Also during this stay the front desk staff accused me of having a party in our room. I paid for 2 rooms and had 4 people in each. Room 237 had myself, my 10 year old son and my 12 year old niece in it. Room 239 had my 16 year old daughter (her birthday) and her 18 year old female friend, a 14 year old girl and a 16 year old girl with her.

They wanted to play pool and they were told a 18 year old had to check out the pool sticks, so her friend tried to give the front desk an id, it was thrown back at her and she was told she was not registered there, and get out while the clerk pointed the antenna of his radio in her face. Shortly after that I received a call from the Manager, Cindy, asking me how many people were in my rooms. Cindy was accusatory and threatening stating if I was allowing a party to go on we would be kicked out.

I could not figure out what was going on and went down to talk to her. I thought we were squared away. I had the room door open until 1 am as the room was hot and humid and I could also keep an eye on the kids in the other room. These kids did not play loud music, did not cause problems and stayed in their room except get pop and ice.

When I checked out I was confronted by the same manager saying there was noise complaints about my room, yet she had no reason why no one contacted me at that point. She told the clerk I would just have to deal with the air-conditioning problem and she wanted nothing to do with me.

She did this in front of other hotel guests and left them wondering what kind of place this was also. I refused to sign for my charges on my room so the manager "Cindy" finally sent the maintenance man to my room to check the air-conditioning because she did not believe me that it did not work all night.

The maintenance man came back and reported there was indeed a problem with it. At that point Cindy gave me a gift certificate to come back. I will not be using it, I was already insulted and treated poorly when I paid to stay there, I can only imagine how I would be treated if I presented the certificate.

In addition to all these problems the pool was closed because some kid whose parents where not watching him started vomiting in the pool when he choked on water. The parents were in their room with the door open and music blasting, yet we were treated like low class people by this hotel. We are the people who clean their room up as much as possible because we don't think it is fair that the maids be treated poorly at hotels.

Yes, despite the poor treatment we cleaned our rooms this time, as the maid was the only decent person at the hotel.