Hilton HHonors - Doubletree Guest Suites Atlanta Perimeter

I'm staying at the Doubletree Guest Suites Atlanta Perimeter next month. Any comments? Words of warning?

The property is up to the same standards as all other Doubletrees I've stayed in, and the extra room was nice. I can't recall them ever giving me anything special as a Gold, no free water or anything like that. Standard hot breakfast and evening reception. It's also relatively near a few malls, and a little strip mall area. Alas, the Harry's in a Hurry (grocery store) was closing last time I was there. I really like the little soup and salad place in the nearby strip mall, it's family-owned. Lots of restaurants up and down 41 (Cobb Pkwy).

That said, the hotel is on my "never stay here again" list for frustrating me. Here's my tale of woe. I checked in, got up to the room, and had a lot of work to do on my laptop that required me to be continually online. Normally I work out of the bedroom, so I went back there. No summary of phone charges by the phone, so I went out to the front room and found the directory. Aha. $1.00 per call, unlimited, fine fine. I settled in for a long night of about 7 or 8 hours of work, and stayed connected the whole time.

Woke up the next morning, and my checkout bill was substantially higher than I'd anticpated, to the tune of 30 or 40 bucks. Turned out they'd charged me a 'ten cents a minute' connection fee for just about the whole time I was logged in. So I go downstairs to see what's up.

Well, turns out they'd changed their phone rates to 'by the minute' instead of unlimited. I discussed it with the front desk, then asked to speak to a manager. I argued that this was highly deceptive as there was no info by the phone, and their hotel information book said something to the contrary. Well, it turns out there was something by the phone -- but just the main phone, which I never touched, not the one in the bedroom. And their directories were just out of date.

I must have debated this for ten minutes before the guy caved, and removed the charges. He warned me that if I came back to remember about the per-minute charge. I assured him I wouldn't be back. Since then, I've had a couple dozen stays in the Hampton Inn & Suites at the Galleria -- smaller, and the breakfast isn't as nice, but it's really grown on me. Too bad for Doubletree.

The kicker is that had I known about the phone charges, I would have had no qualm paying them. The work absolutely needed to be done, and I absolutely needed to be online. The fact that there wasn't a card by the phone and that the one source of information I had lied really annoyed me, though.

Thanks for the information and sharing your phone "adventure." I'll have to double check this. I was excited when I saw on the site, "The suites include complimentary high-speed internet access." I'll have to make certain that they and I have the same definition of "complimentary."

If I recall, there are some rooms with High Speed internet access. I stayed there a couple of months ago and they had just turned it on. You may need to ask for an appropriate room.

A couple of other notes. The restaurant (all the way downstairs) had friendly service but was out of a lot of things on the menu. You can take a shuttle (free, but don't count on prompt service) to and from the perimiter mall where you can find a range of restaurants.

A tip: There are refrigerators in some of the meeting rooms with free bottled water and soft drinks. It's definitely worth grabbing some for your room if they are still there!

[Edited for grammar immediately after post]

[This message has been edited by Oregonflyer (edited 06-30-2002).]

ebell, you may be talking about a different hotel than the Perimeter location. Cobb Pkwy (Hwy 41) is on the other side of town, so perhaps this is a case of mistaken identity?

-Sabrina

Cobb Parkway is the Galeria location, which is not the Perimeter (mall) location.

This is why you are all so helpful. I could have ended up in the wrong location.

Ack, you're right! I got my malls confused, Galleria and Perimeter. Off by 7 or 8 miles. Sorry about the confusion.

Never been to the one at Perimeter (though my aunt lives near there, as your useless fact of the day.)

Oregonflyer, thanks for the tip. I'm visiting the Atlanta Wine Summit for an article (http://www.bellaonline.com/site.asp?name=wine). An extra bottle of water would be welcome http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

FWIW, Galleria is a better location if you are driving to downtown/midtown--straight down 75. Perimeter is better access to Buckhead if you know which backroads to take (Ashford Dunwoody to Peachtree).

Thanks, the Wine Summit is actually in Roswell, Ga. I guess if it was billed as the Roswell Wine Summit everyone would go to New Mexico http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif