, , , in order to ask to switch hotel rooms? (or even hotels)
I'm writing this now having just returned from a two week trip during which I stayed in 7 different hotels, a couple for 3 or 4 nights, a few for one night only. I know this is no big deal for the high flyers on expense accounts or even government per diem (which I suffered with for 35 years before retiring), but now I travel on my own nickel, of which there aren't a lot. I try to avoid the real flea bag hotels and stay in a lot of Comfort and Hampton inns - that's pretty much my standard nowadays.
So anyhow, maybe things are just getting worse or I had some bad luck on this trip, but I was really annoyed by too many little things that just shouldn't be as they were. And they're things that I don't discover until I've unpacked and settled into the room. These aren't things that are easy to take care of like I need more towels or hangers or softer pillows or another blanket or there's a burned out light bulb.
These are things like I have to run the hot water for several minutes before it gets hot, or I have to fiddle with the flush level on the toilet to get it to stop running, or the radio or coffee maker sucks, or the WiFi internet access is poor or gets spotty when the rooms fill up, or the wet bar sink where I make coffee drains slowly. Maybe tomorrow they can bring me another radio or maintenance can come around and pour in some drain cleaner, but I'll be gone by then. And if I pack up and switch to another room, will it be any better there? Will I find quirks that are the same, or different and just as annoying?
Actual annoyances (technical things, which is why I posted here):
- Useless coffee maker (I posted another thread about this here and got some good suggestions). I've had some satisfaction here in the past by asking if they could find one of the older style coffee makers, but that's drying up. Maybe if I was paying $250/night for my room the manager would send someone out to Target and buy a $12 coffee maker for me, but not in a $75/night room.
- Barely lukewarm water in the vanity sink (though the shower was OK)
- Crummy Internet performance
- Motion sensitive light switches that didn't work sensibly (I found these in three rooms this trip, all a little quirky). In one, when I got out of bed in the middle of the night to powder my nose, the light across the room near the front door turned on, and I had to turn on another light near the bed in order to see my way back after manually turning off the rogue light switch. And did the motion sensing light switch near the bathroom work when I needed it? Nooooo!
- Hot and cold water faucets reversed in the sink - hot on the right, cold on the left. (does anyone think that the maintenance staff will ever fix this?)
- Refrigerator makes a lot of noise. I don't need it so I just unplugged it, though once (not this trip) the freezer hadn't been defrosted in years and left a puddle on the floor - serves 'em right!
- Shower head badly clogged - this is a no brainer for me. I learned a long time to bring my own and a pair of pliers to switch them out, but it's amazing how little water comes out of most of them.
And I could go on. None of these things bothered me enough to go to the trouble of switching rooms, but it sure did get annoying. Since I know that there's nothing that they can really do but give me a different room, particularly after 7 PM when maintenance and housekeeping have gone home, I didn't report the problems until I checked out, and of course I have no idea if they ever took any action or that the next guest in that room will have the same experiences as I did. They of course apologized, though none offered me a discount or a free night (so much for the 100% guarantee).
Am I just being too crotchety in my old age? Should I just expect to put up with stuff like this? What kind of little annoyance do you complain about, if any, and what's your record for satisfaction?