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  • Guests will complain about anything if they think we'll cave...ugh

    The last week at the hotel has been...interesting.

    First, and this is more of a MiM, one of the huge boilers at the main property decides to start gushing water. This is after I contacted upper management about it leaking, and recommending that they get somebody to look at it before it got worse. That was over a month ago that I told them about the issue...but nobody took me seriously until last Friday (Dec 11) when water started gushing out the bottom of it. Then it was suddenly a priority. The boiler was shut off, leaving us with a grand total of one working boiler...and we had a wedding party in the next day! Surprisingly enough, there weren't any complaints from the guests. The employees in the attached spa complained but I really couldn't blame them at all.

    Then on the Wednesday (Dec 16) we had a guest lose her mind because we couldn't just take her word on having been given a gift certificate for a one-night stay. She couldn't understand why we needed the physical gift certificate - it's the way our system is set up, and we ALWAYS tells guests they have to bring their gift certificate with them when they check-in if they want to use it towards their stay. She claimed she was never told this, and felt that it was bogus that we needed it. Of course she complained that we were ruining her Christmas...ugh.

    Then tonight I had a missus go off on me because our cafe and vitality areas are closed due to COVID. I saw the notes on her reservation and I advised her that she was already notified of this over a week ago by the accommodations manager when the reservation was made. And she continued on about how she spent so much money here before last Christmas buying gift certificates only to allegedly be told that none of them are valid any more (which is utter bullshit) so the money she spent was wasted - all that would have happened is that the special package may not be available anymore and that the certificate would revert to the dollar amount paid for it and could still be used. Nope, not good enough for this lady. And to top it off, the gift certificate she was using for tonight was for a weekday hotel package and was cheaper than the weekend version of the package. I adjusted her rate to that lower amount and advised her that we normally would not have done that, that we would have simply put the dollar value of the gift card towards tonight's stay and they would have had to pay the extra.

    She said she would stay tonight but then never be back because we've supposedly screwed her over three times so far this year. As if that is going to suddenly make me say 'oh, just kidding about the cafe and vitality areas...we'll open them just for you.' Yeah, no.

    And the final story was a guest trying to tell me that the rooms we switched him to once we discovered that the heaters in his originally booked rooms weren't working were somehow not as big as the rooms he originally wanted. Uh, I've cleaned both sets of rooms - the rooms he and his party were moved to are huge in comparison to the original rooms. Plus, his booking only stated the rooms had to be together - I even reached out to the person who booked the rooms last night and nothing was said about them only wanting outside rooms with the separate entrances. I made sure to mark this on their reservation because I wasn't having it. Plus, they were not charged the full rate for the rooms they were moved to - we kept everything the same rate as the rooms we'd originally booked them into. I mean, we could easily have made them eat the added cost instead of giving them a complimentary upgrade, or we could have kept them in freezing cold rooms for the night. Dude tried to talk over me and not let me speak so I put on my best security guard voice and told him that I knew full well the sizes of the room because I have cleaned them more than once, and that if he'd prefer I could cancel his reservations and he would have to find somewhere else to go because he would not be permitted to stay with us ever again.

    Also, when it starts getting dark we lock the door leading into the lobby from outside, and we tell people this when they check-in. All our guests are given the code for the keyless lock upon check-in so they can come and go as they wish. Yes, I get that it's not the most convenient, but they should consider themselves lucky to even have that option because for the longest time when we reopened we would not leave the door unlocked at all. And we give them the door code for a reason...there is not somebody at the desk 24 hours right now, and we have after-hours contact numbers for them to call in the event of an emergency (I'm one of them as I live super close, and I get paid a minimum of 15 minutes for each after hours phone call, longer if I have to come down to the hotel to do anything).

    Anyway, the dude from the last story had left to get some food and came back with his arms full. The door was locked, and I know full well that I had told him to have the door code on him because I was locking the door when it got dark. Only to have him get shitty with me when I opened the door - 'this is why I wanted the outside rooms'. Whatever, fucko.

    Oh, and one final story. We've been having to shuffle around some of our long term renters due to rooms needing deep cleaning and to accommodate incoming big money contracts. We have three properties where we do the long-term rentals where the suites also have kitchenettes and access to shared laundry. Some of them are in need of updating in terms of furniture and carpet, and they've been priced accordingly in the meantime. I should also note that two of the bigger contracts has accommodation services for quarantine of their employees, which is taken very seriously here.

    Well, one of the outgoing long-term tenants (staying on the dime of their house insurance company while work was being done on their own home) started complaining about a month ago about the state of their rental suite. Their complaints are that the suite is outdated and needs new, brighter paint and furniture...even though they are leaving before the end of this month. Maintenance has been in to look at the suite several times due to the complaints these folks have been making. Seriously, there is nothing physically wrong with the place other than the colour of everything. Otherwise, it's very nicely appointed.

    Anyhow, these tenants were speaking to one of the tenants we were looking to move into a different property and managed to scare him bad enough to cause him to want to break his lease with us. One he still has at least seven months left on. These people told this poor guy that anybody who has been quarantining with us hasn't been following the rules and we have apparently done nothing to enforce this, and no amount of any of us trying to reassure this guy otherwise will change his mind. These tenants, who have never even seen the property we were going to move this guy into, filled his head with nothing but lies about this other place - this new place being attached to one of our therapeutic massage clinics, who therefore take quarantine and proper sanitation very seriously.

    My boss is wishing that we had somehow been able to get these outgoing tenants on a recording somehow with their lies because she would happily see them slapped with slander charges. I spoke to one half of the couple a few days ago about her concerns, and I asked her why she hadn't brought up any of their issues during their first month staying with us - they've been staying for the past five months. She didn't have an answer other than to suddenly complain about the furniture being busted up...uh, this is the first I'm hearing of it. And if it wasn't a problem when you first went into the suite for all we know you and your hubby have been the ones ratbagging it all this time.

    Ugh.

    When I get home I'll be helping myself to a nice glass of vodka and cranberry juice. Heavy on the vodka.

  • #2
    Any long term stays, you should take photos of the rooms before they move in.

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    • #3
      My word. Do hotels bring out the very worst in people?
      Customers should always be served . . . to the nearest great white.

      Comment


      • #4
        Kristev - Yeah. Pretty much; I imagine it's the same with AirBnB and the like, too. It's kinda like people messing up a sports stadium/other event venue, a restaurant, a park, etc. In other words, the guest isn't the one who has to clean things up, so the bad ones are much less likely to worry about what gets messed up, damaged, or even destroyed -- it's not their problem
        The GOOD guests will at least try to act like civilized human beings, though.
        "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
        "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
        "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
        "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
        "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
        "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
        Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
        "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

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        • #5
          Quoth earl colby pottinger View Post
          Any long term stays, you should take photos of the rooms before they move in.
          This is something I have suggested several times to management. All of us have cellphones that can take pictures that we can then share on our WhatsApp chat group, so why not, right?

          I worked in retail for a lot of years and I really feel like the bad customers here tend to be a little more Karen-esque than folks I dealt with during my retail years. I think part of it is that I am usually the only staff member at the front desk, and quite often the only staff on-site at that time, and the Karens feel that they can somehow get what they want if they talk to me like crap or start making threats. Only to find out that nothing they attempt works on me quite the way they had hoped. And I also document the shit out of everything at the best of times, so my boss knows that if what the guest is trying to say happened isn't in my notes that the guest is more than likely full of shite and she'll back me up every time.

          I think that's one nice difference with working in a smaller local hotel group - we aren't just numbers to the management. Sure, some of the folks in management are lacking in brains, but they are still mostly on our side. In retail, well, completely different experience.

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          • #6
            Quoth KuariKaydrith View Post
            This is something I have suggested several times to management. All of us have cellphones that can take pictures that we can then share on our WhatsApp chat group, so why not, right?
            Just sayin, I'm pretty sure you do not need permission to take pictures of empty rooms.

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