Husband and I booked direct with Rhett House on 3/3 for 4/18. Happened to be during a flash promo…read more Got a confirmation receipt and a 2nd email with info about our stay.
I read the reviews. One said check the fine print, you're not guaranteed the room you select. They might move you to another room, as happened to them. I found that fine print. Seemed strange, but I booked anyway. Figured the odds were low, and if they did switch rooms, it's only one night, and all the rooms looked nice.
Jump to 4/18. After a long beach day, arrived at Rhett House at 7:30pm. We knew we had until 8pm to check in.
The woman at the desk looked up our reservation and said it had been canceled. Shocked, we told her we did no such thing. She said we booked with the flash promo and canceled a week prior on 4/10 and we had been refunded. We told her we absolutely did not cancel.
At this time I was scouring my emails for any kind of cancellation notification and my bank acct to find a refund. I found neither. No email (I checked spam), missed call, voicemail, text, or refund. The woman was kind and expressed concern, but I don't believe she apologized, and she had no explanation for us.
She left a message for the owner and gave us a card for the manager, Aimee, in case we didn't hear back. She said we'd be refunded right away. She also called around to other nearby B&Bs to see if there were any openings. It was nearing 8pm, so no one was answering. Only one B&B picked up, and they were full. Unsurprising, as there was a PGA Tour stop in Hilton Head. Not what we were there for but were aware of it.
So she suggested Hampton Inn on the outskirts of town, saying it was newly renovated with great water views. We booked there and headed to dinner. There was pie out for guests. She offered us slices. We did not decline, though they had to sit in the car until after dinner.
We had a reservation at 8pm just down the road. This situation tainted the whole meal. We were left in shock and disappointment and had no time to change or freshen up first. At dinner, Hampton called to say their elevator was out and only had one room open on the 3rd floor. We didn't want to carry all our bags up, so we canceled and booked with the adjacent Holiday Inn, which was definitely not newly renovated nor sat on the waterfront.
After dinner, we tried to make the most of Beaufort. We walked the streets a bit with our pie. We went down to the waterfront park, which I most anticipated. It was said to be lined with bench swings, which sounds romantic. We found the waterfront area was closed due to structural instability. The swings were gone, with just loose chains hanging, and the whole thing was fenced off. With that, we were like, "Let's get out of here."
Our stay at Holiday was fine. It was kinda old and worn and smelled musty, but it was fine. Obviously a far cry from the quaint, beautiful room we had booked at Rhett House in historic Beaufort.
Next AM we decided to head straight to Savannah instead of spending the morning in Beaufort like originally planned. We were put off by the whole town at this point, and we were already on the outskirts. So we continued onto Sav.
In the next few days there, we received no call from Rhett House. I kept checking for a refund, but no luck. We didn't want to spoil any time in Sav over this, so we didn't address it further until home.
We left Aimee a voicemail on 4/23 asking for our refund and an explanation. No response, so we left another VM on 4/27. Just a few minutes later, instead of calling back, she texted us. She simply said she processed the refund, we should see it within a day or two, and to have a nice day. No apology, explanation, or call-back. We did receive the refund within the next 2 days. IMO, they should've compensated us for our stay at Holiday for the hassle and the stain on our trip at no fault of our own. But I wasn't going to push it further. We got our refund.
This whole experience felt sketchy, and because we never got an explanation, we're left to make our own conclusions. We believe they canceled our reservation because we bought at a discount, and they knew they could get full price from someone else because of the PGA stop. The text from the manager all but confirmed this. It felt like she knew what they did was wrong, didn't have any reasonable explanation, and didn't want to have to answer for what they did. She just dodged us. Completely unacceptable. You shouldn't offer a promo if you don't want to honor it. If there was no promo, I would've paid full price.
It seems most reviewers enjoyed their rooms/stays, but I'll never know myself. I won't book here again. This was the most unprofessional experience I've had with a lodging business. Don't give them your money.
But if you want to risk booking here in the near future expecting a romantic stay at a picturesque B&B, maybe look elsewhere until their construction is over. You couldn't even enter from the front when we arrived.
