My sister and nephew and I are just heading back from what should have been three quick days in Amish Country after only TWO days because we just had arguably one of the WORST hotel experiences of our lives.
We booked for the first time at a hotel called The Berlin Encore, which is a newish hotel that boasts an Amish Theater and what-not as their attractions, but basically, we stayed there because it's in the heart of the Antique Malls, and there's putt-putt golf and a pool for my nephew. We should have known when we walked into our suite to an industrial fan drying whatever had happened on the carpet before we had even arrived that things were going to go downhill from there. But we were still wearing our rose-colored glasses at that point.
As you might expect, things got worse. I dared to use the restroom. Maybe it's just me, but when I go the the bathroom, I prefer to end the experience with some toilet paper. But no. First call down to the front desk was for one roll of one-ply sandpaper, *ahem,* toilet paper.
I'll be writing all day if I go through a point by point of all the things we discovered the longer we were in the room, so I'll just give you the highlights: dirty bowls in our "full kitchen," filthy STANDING DIRT in our jacuzzi tub, two bath towels and two hand towels for three people, noise disturbances from paper thin walls walls and a hoard of Dothraki children stampeding above us, attitude from the front desk associates, and more.
And maybe it's just us, but we prefer to have housekeeping and clean sheets and towels every day in a hotel that we're paying for. But not at the Berlin Encore. Apparently, we must make our own beds and reuse our two towels for the entire trip. Even after we specifically asked for housekeeping. And here's the thing: we're willing to pay. And TIP. My sister and I have both worked in customer service, and we are willing to compensate and tip appropriately when our expectations are met and exceeded. This was not one of those experiences.
After two days of putting up with sub-standard rooms, bad attitudes, people who cannot seem to under what "clean sheets" mean, and more, I decided to call the manager this morning. After our day was destroyed from 9 am on with calls and inflexibility from the manager, who claimed that the "industry standard" was no housekeeping unless you plan to stay four or more days, (even though I asked if we could get housekeeping when I made the reservation originally), his final solution was he would permit us to leave tonight and not charge us for the night we would not be staying. WHAT? How is that a solution??? Oh yeah, and this was AFTER there was a mixup with our original reservation on their part ANYWAY to begin with! It was nuts.
I highly recommend that if any of you are heading to Amish Country, avoid the Berlin Encore like the plague. Because it's filthy and you might get some sort of a plague there, anyway. But oh, if you do...they'll let you go home and not assume any culpability for giving it to you. You're welcome. read more