Recently had a three night stay at the Residence Inn (Times Square). The location was great. The bed was very comfortable. That's where the plusses ended. As Titanium for life we expected an upgrade. I guess we did get one - corner room on 15 floor. View was nothing. I wouldn't have cared but what transpired next was not good. We left the room at 8AM on Fri only to return at 4PM to the room NOT made up. I put the tag on the door in the morning. Making sure that the Privacy side was NOT showing. When I phoned to ask why the room wasn't cleaned (we'll talk about the phone in the next paragraph) I was told it was because of the sign. I stated that the Privacy side was not exposed and was told that the side that was exposed said 'All set" no housekeeping needed. Who knew both sides meant stay away. They did send up housekeeping. The two women cleaned the room. They unplugged the clock radio and took the remote control with them. Neither which I noticed until we returned from dinner at 10:30.
Phone ISSUE
Thur afternoon - phoned to report cleaning needed (see above) must've rung about 30 times before anyone answered. Then later that night I phoned the front desk at about 10:30 to ask about breakfast and the about printing a speech I needed for the next morning. Phone must've rang about 30 times NO answer. We tried again. Still no answer. Gave up.
Fri -- I then phoned the front desk at about 10PM to tell them housekeeping took remote. This time 50+ rings before any one answered. I was told maintenance would bring up remote. Maintenance never came. I tried calling but again no answer so I gave up. I told front desk about issue Saturday morning at 7:30 when I left the hotel for the day.
Saturday - I had a message on my phone. I listened and it was a manager saying they were sorry and I should phone. Haha. I did and it rang many many times before anyone picked up. I connected with different manager. He apologized, said he would send up a remote and give me 7000 points for my troubles. When I finally spoke with managers I mentioned that usually there are dedicated phone customer service and not the front desk who answer. They said they used to have that but decided to give that up. Big mistake. A technician came up and gave us a remote. He didn't test it and we didn't think about testing and had to leave for our evening appointment. Came back at around 10 and tried the TV. Remote didn't work. Tried to call down - You guessed it after 50+ rings gave up again. We were too tired from a very long day to go downstairs.
Sunday - next morning packed to leave and have breakfast. About 9AM. Took 20 minutes and 4 elevators to get downstairs. Each time one stopped it was too full for anyone with a rollaboard. Didn't stop for bkfst as we were on a tight time table and didn't have another 15 minutes to get down to first floor after breakfast. On my way out we expressed the remote, phone and elevator issue to front desk agent. She was very nice and gave us back one night 35K points.
Getting 35K didn't really help us get to sleep as we watch 5-10 min of TV to wind down and decompress. Would I stay at RI Times Square again? An unequivocal NO.