Sunday we began our D.C. vacation, and I'm blogging from the hotel (#2). The flight itself went well, it took off exactly on time and arrived exactly on time. Dean got a bit airsick, but otherwise we were fine. The car rental went okay, and I'm thankful that we decided to bring our GPS/Garmin, because the built-in "NeverLost" that the car has would certainly get us lost! It's just too hard to use. For one thing, it kept telling us "approaching turn" and displaying a graphic of making the turn, even though we were actually 1 mile away from the turn! So I turned wrong twice.
But getting around has been the easy part. The picture above is a picture of the dump of a hotel we got. It looked MUCH better online. It's hard to explain everything that went wrong, but here's a start. The t.v. didn't work, the internet didn't work, the bathroom door didnt shut, the room was tiny, the bathroom was so tiny you couldn't turn around without hitting 2 walls, the pool was closed, and the hotel "management" barely spoke english. It was truly awful.
When we tried to fix the t.v., we noticed that the coaxial cable was broken and the bare wire was just stuck into the t.v. No wonder it wasn't working! Here's how the conversation with the front-desk went:
FRONT-DESK: Hello, front desk
ME: Hi, we're in Room 118, and our t.v. doesn't work.
FRONT-DESK: Uh huh.
ME: Yes, it looks like the cable is broken and the wire is just stuck into the t.v.
FRONT-DESK: uh huh.
ME: Yes, well, can some body come fix it?
FRONT-DESK: you have really bad reception?
ME: Yes! It's terrible reception, and the channels keep randomly changing. It just doesn't work.
FRONT-DESK: Uh huh.
ME: So can you come fix it?
FRONT-DESK: Well, you see, I'm here by myself. The manager isn't here, and I can't leave front-desk.
ME: Okay, when is the manager supposed to come back?
FRONT-DESK: I don't know.
ME: Today? Tomorrow? The day after that?
FRONT-DESK: Um, probably not tomorrow. Maybe today. I don't know. And if it's complicated, we'll have to call a service person to come tomorrow.
ME: It looks like the cable just needs to be replaced, do you have a spare cable?
FRONT-DESK: Um, I don't know.
ME: Okay, fine.
[hangup]
So this is how everything went. Every time we asked about something, we were just told that the manager wasn't there. Finally, at about 8:00pm, I decided that I had had enough and I started looking for a new hotel. The phone book was useless, and I couldn't use the internet, but the Garmin came in handy. We found another hotel, The Comfort Inn, that is actually a hotel, for about $99/day. That's more expensive, but still affordable. A lot more affordable than the $300/day hotel down the street. We got settled into the second hotel at about 10:00pm, and we were just exhausted.
I tried to get my money back when I checked out of the first hotel, but the guy said that I had to deal with expedia.com (actually, he kept saying hotels.com, but that isn't who I worked with). Actually, the guy didn't say that, he called his manager, and the manager said that to him. So I called expedia.com, and they tried to deal with this guy, only to be told the same thing. So now, later today, I have to call expedia.com again in order to try to get my money back. We'll see how it goes.
A lot more happened yesterday, but that will need to wait.
No comments:
Post a Comment