Dear Crowne Plaza,
I stayed over the weekend at the Royal Crowne Plaza in St. Louis, MO downtown. To say the least, the experience was horrible.
For reference, the reason for my staying in St. Louis was for a family wedding. The entire family - which should have totaled near 40 people - booked rooms in the hotel at a block rate. These reservations were made months in advance, and went relatively smoothly. As far as anyone was concerned, we were headed to a great celebratory weekend.
Me and my wife were actually coming a day late because I had to work, so the majority of the family arrived on Friday. We were monitoring the family's facebook activity to keep tabs on all the fun they were having, and the first update we saw was this:
"Worst stay ever...and we aren't even in our room. After three hours in the lobby we have made friends with the other 100 people that are waiting to check in."
We saw similar updates coming from the rest of the family. We were hoping this was just an unfortunate coincidence, and that our stay would go smoothly the following day. We arrived around 11:00 AM on Saturday and checked with the front desk. Our room wasn't ready - but checkin wasn't until 3:00, so that was to be expected. They told us to check in periodically. We had to head out for the wedding, and didn't get back until around 3:00. Certain that our room would be ready, we checked with the front desk again. They said it wasn't quite ready, but confirmed that housekeeping had already started our floor and the room would be ready very soon.
Instead of waiting around and letting the poor service be a downer on our weekend, we headed up to a family member's room and spent some time with them. There was a terrible storm, so we ordered some pizza (which, by the way, was suggested by your concierge regardless of their exceedingly awful service. Bad start, St. Louis) and watched the storm out the windows. While semi-enjoying our pizza some other family members joined us and proceeded to tell horror stories about their stay so far.
I won't list them all, but there's one that stood out to me. One of the families has three children (ranging from 0-4 years). After their mess of a checkin, they finally made it up to their room and started unpacking. Suddenly, the middle child exclaimed, "Daddy, what's this?" He turned around to see her holding a small pill - upon further inspection it turned out to be a strong blood thinner - that she had found on the floor. It must have been missed when the room was cleaned. For the record, we have some nurses in the family, and they indicated that if the girl had taken the pill it could have been fatal.
Anyways, the storm passed, the pizza settled into our bellies, and it seemed that the night would progress well. The room was getting a bit warm (because of the crappy air conditioners, by the way), so we thought to open one of the windows. Note this was a corner room on the 20th floor, and the windows in that room are at floor level, and are the sort that open from the top and fold down. The first thing we noticed was that the floor around the window was wet. Apparently there is a leak in the window - hope that doesn't cause mold! Anyways, we opened the window and were significantly surprised that the window opens completely horizontal, making it flush with the floor, and doesn't have any screen. One of my cute 8-month-old cousins was in the room and has taken to rolling all over the place, so we promptly closed the window (and dealt with the rising temperature).
At this point the time to leave for the reception was approaching, so my wife and I thought we would go get checked into our room so we could change. We walked into the lobby, and our eyes went wide. There was a line wrapping around the table in the lobby and overflowing into the elevator area. The line consisted of some very annoyed people that appeared as if they hadn't moved in a long time. We stood in line for awhile, until finally it made it through the grapevine that "the system was down" and that there was no ETA. Now, I work in I.T. and know that "the system is down with no ETA" means "We have no idea, and you're going to be here forever." Great.
Finally the system "came up", and the line started moving. Let me note at this point there were probably 20 empty beer bottles on the lobby table - I expect the nearby bar deserves all the merit for avoiding a riot. We made it through the line, got to our room, and finally checked in. It was pretty late at this point, so we quickly changed our clothes and ran off to the reception.
I've recently moved to an online bank which I love, because they send me notifications whenever I get charged for something. In the middle of dinner, I received a notification that I had been charged $575 from "Royal Crowne Plaza Downtown". Wow. My room was only supposed to be $119 - certainly they don't have a $450 deposit. There wasn't much I could do at that point, but after the reception I headed straight to the front desk and explained the situation. The lady assured me that the system only showed they charged me $165. I assured her my bank said differently. Met with a blank stare, I told her I would check with my bank again in the morning and hope that it cleared itself up.
The morning came (and was met with terribly low water-pressure in the shower), and the charge still showed $575 on my card. After going out for breakfast - I had heard reviews that your breakfast was way overpriced and pretty gross - we promptly packed our stuff and went to check out. I again brought up the $575 charge, and was told that they had charged me $200 for the room, tax, and a deposit. Weird - she said $165 last night. A few minutes later, she told me it was $180. Part of me feels like she was just making up numbers. Anyways, she provided no solution or explanation, but seemed to just assume I was wrong.
For the record, I emailed my bank and had them check exactly how that $575 charge was broken up. They said there was a $409 tolerance on the charge. That means $166 for the actual charge - which is a confusing number - and $409 seemingly just for fun. So now I'm out $600. It's the end of the month, and I have rent coming up. But I guess Crowne Plaza has made the safe assumption that $600 certainly won't make a dent in anyone's bank account.
I think it's safe to say that I won't be traveling to St. Louis anytime soon - and certainly not staying at any Crowne Plaza hotel anywhere. Thanks for the piss poor service - I appreciate feeling as if my business means nothing to you.