Nowadays I post most of my ranting and raving about bad products and services in the fediverse, but occasionally I have such a noteworthy experience that I feel the need to post it on my blog. My family’s recent stay at the EVEN Hotel in Rockville, MD, an IHG hotel, was one such experience, and not in a good way.
The IHG registration desk lied and told me there were microwaves in the rooms. There are not. [Hotel management said, when I complained afterward, that “brand standards” preclude microwaves in the rooms, so keep that in mind before booking EVEN hotels in the future.]
The IHG registration desk lied and told me there is a fixed-price buffet breakfast. There is not.
I was posing these questions before our trip to the IHG registration desk instead of the hotel front desk because when I tried to call the front desk, they didn’t answer the phone.
I was cold overnight. Waking up early one morning, I saw the thermostat set to 58° even though we set it to 64° before going to sleep. I cannot stress enough how unacceptable it is to reset a room guest’s perfectly reasonable chosen overnight setting to six degrees colder. This is not only rude, it’s also arguably illegal, since the county requires rental units to be heated to at least 68°. [Hotel management claimed that they don’t change people’s thermostats overnight and they would “investigate the thermostat in [my] room to correct any malfunction that may have occurred.”]
They only provide free coffee and tea in the lobby until 11am. After that, they charge $4 for tea, which costs them well under $1. Most decent hotels provide free coffee and tea all day, let alone not overcharging for tea. [Again, it is EVEN “brand standard” not to provide free coffee and tea all day.]
When we arrived in 40° weather the thermostat in our room was set to cool instead of heat and our room was freezing.
Our room phone didn’t work when we arrived. I had to go down to the front desk and have them send someone up to fix it.
The rooms have rolling bathroom doors. I would like to meet the hotel interior designer who started this trend and slap them silly. These doors provide absolutely no soundproofing; no normal person wants to hear the sounds other people make in the bathroom (and vice versa)! Also, these doors make noise when they are opened or closed, so it’s impossible to avoid bothering other people in the room when using the bathroom in the middle of the night. In our room in particular, the stop that prevents the door from rolling too far closed was missing, so the handle of the door kept slamming into the side of the door frame, and we were at risk of crushing our fingers between the handle and the frame every time we closed the door.
Hot water was slow to arrive all three times I showered. Providing immediate hot water is a solved problem and certainly considered standard for hotels.
The shampoo pump in the shower was broken.
The bath towels are too small, rough, and scratchy. And of course this isn’t a nice enough hotel to provide bathrobes.
The pillowcases are too small to fully cover some of the puffier pillows. No one wants their face to touch any portion of a pillow that God knows how many strangers’ faces have touched. That’s just gross.
This hotel, like far too many others, has poorly designed shower water fixtures which require tiny, tiny adjustments when attempting to change the water temperature. It is, honestly, a complete mystery to me why so many hotels have this problem. I should not have to grip the handle in fear and stare intently at it while trying to move it microscopically to avoid scalding myself.
The power outlets next to the beds were so loose that it was nearly impossible to get our chargers to stay plugged in.
There was a Philips “LivingColors” lamp in our room, but its red and blue LEDs were burnt out, so it was only able to produce faint green light.
The rooms have zero drawers. When I stay in a hotel for several days I like to actually unpack my clothes into drawers, but that’s not an option if you stay here!
The combination trash/recycling bin in the rooms is ridiculous. The legends on the interior sides of the bin indicating which side is for trash and which is for recycling are difficult to see even when the bin is empty and nearly impossible to see once you start putting in trash. Both sides of the bin are too small which means if you have any substantial amount of trash you end up just using both sides for trash and recycling is impossible.
The front desk clerk told me during checkout that I would receive an emailed receipt with final charges, but it never came.
I did notice a few good things that stood out during our stay:
- Too many hotel rooms have bathroom exhaust vents that don’t actually work. The vent in our bathroom worked well enough that even after a decent length hot shower there was still no condensation on the mirror.
- There was free WiFi with decent performance.
- The hotel has no business center, but when I had to print something out the front desk was kind enough to do it for me at no charge.
