08 October, 2007

Update on the Horror Inn... I mean Holiday Inn

As if this place was not bad enough, when we returned home from Champaign, Libby got online to do some banking and discovered that the Holiday Dump had charged our debit card $75 dollars more than our receipt says. Libby called them and got the usual, "I'm just a desk clerk, I can't help you" routine. Having worked for Holiday Inn for many years as a night auditor, I can tell you that all that this person had to do was re-open our portfolio and make an adjustment. The person either just was not wiling or had been poorly trained. (I'm betting that the later is true.) On top of that, I can tell you that the proper way for that shift manager to have handled our complaint this morning was either to comp the room for this nights stay, or at bare minimum cut the bill in half. I can tell you that any of the motels I had worked for, with this kind of complaint, the bill would not only have been comped out, the General Manager would have followed this up with a letter of apology and a certificate for another free night to the motel.
This shift manager basically just blew off the complaint as if my wife had said nothing.

I will be sending a letter to the Holiday Inn Corporate offices on this, but I seriously doubt anything will be done. Holiday Inn has gone so far down hill that it is a shadow of what it once was.

What really makes this hard to swallow for me is that a few months ago, we stayed at a Holiday Inn Express in Marion, Illinois and it was worse than this stay. The pool area, which was enclosed and supposed to be non-smoking and no food or drink was just filthy with cigarette butts and beer cans from a party the night before, and the pool and hot tub were so nasty we refused to get in. When we complained the desk, we were told that there was no maintenance man working on Sunday. When we complained to the manager, she wrote me an email which basically called me a liar. I was steamed and swore off Holiday Inns. The corporate office sent me a letter of apology with $60 worth of guest certificates, which was the ONLY reason we decided to try this Holiday Inn in Champaign. I know now that Inter-Continental has ruined what Holiday Inn had built. I'm done with them.

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