Choice Hotels Consumer Reviews - Page 2

NEW JERSEY, NEW YORK -- They never did their job, left my 78 year old grandfather with a broken ac unit for over 2 weeks. He almost died. They don't care. Their whole message is to protect. My FAMILY has business in My Name for Heating and air conditioning in a small town for GENERATIONS. They are amazing to their customers MY FAMILY'S BUSSINESS. The thing is they don't live in Arizona. And these people left my grandfather with out A.C. AT 115-120 temperatures. Done with this business. Should be torn down. They failed with their message. They want money and guess what karma ain't good.

Booked 3 rooms after signing up to be member so it was member price. As they advertised they had the best price guarantee, so much for that. Found price $15.00 cheaper on Hotels website. I filled out the paperwork for the "Best Price Guarantee".

Rather than helping me and getting me the same lowest price I found on another website, I was told I would have to cancel and rebook not as a member of their club, but as any non-member and then submit form of the other company and their advertised price.

My thought was then I will just cancel and go with the other company, and I did. What a run-around and waste of time. Can we say FALSE ADVERTISING!!! I was super disappointed and now I will not use them again for booking for any of my trips.

Booked a hotel with advanced payment. I could get 25.00 off and reward points for signing up with Choice Visa. It also asked for my CC. I put in my info, it charged my CC not Choice Visa. I called both Visa and Choice member relations. They told me that there was nothing they could do. I did not get the promotion points that were guaranteed or the 25.00 discount for the reservation. No one cared. Talked to 6 people. 2 transferred me without my Choice member number or problem.

Resolution said that there is nothing that can be done to get my money or rewards points. They stated that the problem with the website not taking the card could not be corrected. That is FALSE ADVERTISEMENT! Don't waste your time with the members or Visa card. Just book it through AAA. A couple more dollars is better than the hassle and FALSE ADVERTISEMENT.

EDISON, NEW JERSEY -- I have had their service for 4 months with horrible experiences. The air conditioning went out after 3 days and they could not find a repair co. I live 10 miles from Fresno, CA., one million people. I found a company to fix the A/C. It took them two months to repay me. Three weeks later the A/C went out again. The same company fixed it. Have not been repaid in 3 months. Water leaks in laundry room reported and 3 days later they still could not get a repair company to fix it. I found one online in 10 minutes. They denied the claim. I had a water pipe broken and they said it was not covered. They are the worst company I have ever done business with.

DENVER, COLORADO -- I booked a hotel for a Tuesday night and when I called to check my reservations for the hotel they did not have me booked. It turns out Choice Hotels had booked me for Monday night and I had been charged for it but was never there. When I called to talk to Choice Hotels on the phone to resolve the issue they had me on hold for over an hour and then told me they could not help me and that they would have to talk to the IT guy to see if it was the computer system's fault or my own fault and they would get back to me in 7 business days.

When I asked what I was supposed to do for my hotel that night they said I would just have to pay for another room and they don't know if or when I would be refunded for the stay THEY booked wrong. I am very displeased with their customer service and the way they handled the call. They did not care that it was causing too many issues and they did not care they had messed up. I would recommend not booking a hotel through them!

TEXAS -- I have been a Choice Rewards member for about 10 years, and like a multitude of reviewers I have in recent years noticed the flippant attitude and/or inaptitude of Choice representatives that I have contacted when needing assistance. Most recently on August 8, 2014 I made a 3-night reservation for a room at the Comfort Inn hotel in Cedar Park, Texas between 9-12 November, 2014. Being a member of several hotel reward programs, I was used to receiving a confirmation just minutes after my reservation was accepted. But this time nothing was received.

On August 9 I emailed Choice Customer Service about not receiving a confirmation. In contrast to Choice's pledge to reply within 72 hours, I was obliged to email them several more times before receiving a response many weeks later that Choice was sending a confirmation. It never came. Between August 9 and October 15 I sent 6 email requests to Choice. As in the case of Choice's first response the next two promised to send the confirmation at once but this didn't happen. The last two email requests were emailed to the head manager of Choice Customer Service but he or she did not deigned to reply.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA -- We have been trying to use our Choice Privileges card for years and we never receive the promotions. We travel at least 3 times a month and have had issues that explained the mistakes with our account being changed by numbers added to it, our address was slightly off and even my last name was misspelled on a card they sent me so it didn't match the reservation!

The hotels don't always put the number in to the system if they think you are getting too good of a rate for the night. I have called customer service to correct all the mistakes regularly and they do recognize that we stayed the correct amount of nights and should receive the benefit but they tell us to call back in a week because the accounts are crossed or some other excuse. I try to deal with this every once in awhile just to see if we EVER will get any benefit from this card and it is laughable what they come up with. Don't expect them to make it work for you either!

They run false ads. Currently they have a summer program advertised on TV that states if you stay two stays you receive a $50 gift card. The ad shows a woman and her husband enjoying dinner with their gift card and saying "I stayed one time and my husband stayed another and now we are enjoying dinner with our gift card." In fact this cannot happen. It turns out the SAME person must have two stays, not the wife one and her husband one.

In fact if you both stay and use one's Privilege card, but the other's credit card to pay for the room that doesn't count. They find any loophole to avoid honoring the promotion. And the woman at customer relations hung up on me. Pure false advertising. Do not fall for these promotions. And the hotels are not that nice anyway.

FAIRFIELD, NEW JERSEY -- Because of a funeral for a close relative, I made reservations for 3 rooms and recommended to other relatives your Comfort Inn in Fairfield, NJ as a place to stay, since we were all from out of the area. Your rooms were apparently recently renovated and were basically clean and overall comfortable, however there were other annoyances that just seemed to not be correctable by the staff. This also included a language barrier since it seemed that the entire staff were not too conversant in the English language and sometime it was very difficult to get them to understand.

In any event, one of the rooms did not have regular coffee or cups available to make coffee (although this is advertised as one of the amenities). The party in this room (which happened to be the widow of the deceased) notified the front desk at least twice during the 4 days they were in this room, but the situation was never corrected.
(According to the card in the room, this action alone would warrant a free stay, but we never asked for it since that was not our desire, we merely expected that corrective action would be taken as is done with most other hotel chains).

Also one of the rooms had a comment card for the guests to fill out, but upon opening this card, it was found that other guests had commented back on November 25, 2004 (again our stay was February 16, 2005 onward). I only presume that guest complaints are not taken seriously or important enough and usually are ignored. What is the purpose of these cards? The TV Guide in my room was for January 23-29. We used the room February 16 onward. One of the other rooms had a TV guide for around February 3 or so.

The mattresses on the beds were extremely hard and rather uncomfortable. We had to get a foam pad for the top of the mattress for my elderly Mother in law.

Used towels were removed from the rooms, which was fine, but they were not replaced. My room had a bottle of shampoo for the guests, but the bottles seal had been broken, so apparently this was never replaced. Used soap was removed every day and new soap replaced. If the hotel wants to save money, why don't the leave the used soap in the guest's room for the duration of their stay, unless it needs to be replaced as is done by most hotel chains.

My room key was deactivated on 2 occasions. When I asked why this would happen, I was told in broken English that I was too far away. To this day I cannot figure out what this means. Was my question misunderstood, even though I asked it a couple of times, or was this actually the thinking of the individual at the front desk. The deactivation of the room key also happened to others in our party on a couple of occasions. Is there any real explanation for this? I have never had this happen before with the other hotel chains that we have used, including former business travel.

Speaking of the front desk, on one of my visits to it, one of the 2 individuals tending the front desk station, had his head down on the desk sleeping.

The breakfast room was another situation. One day I went to get orange juice only to find out that it was empty. There was no apparent attendant available to advise. The following day, I again went to get orange juice and much to my surprise, Apple juice came out of the juice dispenser. This day there did seem to be an attendant wiping down the counter, but she was rather busy conversing in a non-English language with some apparent friends who stopped by for breakfast. I doubt that they were hotel guests.

On another occasion, one of the parties that I recommended the hotel to, tried to check in a couple of hours early, before they were to go to the funeral home, but were told that early check-in would cost an additional $10.00 (U.S. Dollars). Is this standard for all Choice Hotels? I have never run into this with other hotel chains, and never had a problem checking in early provide my room was available. Presumably the room was ready and available, since they wanted to charge the $10.00.

Other annoyances, include using dry cleaning bags to line the waste baskets (or not line them at all). One room had a broken suitcase stand that could not be used.

On the day we were to check out, but before we had checked out (this was around 9:30 am) we were visiting another room and upon returning to our room, found that beds had already been stripped, towels taken, etc. I could't believe this as a final insult before we leave. Every other hotel I have stayed at over the past 40-45 years, never start preparing a room or stripping it before the guest has checked out.

All in all, I will never recommend to anyone to stay at Choice hotels. This was not a vacation stay, and all we were asking for were basic accommodations, but it seems that a lot of things need to be improved at this location. I am not communicating directly with this hotel, since it is obvious that attention would not be paid to my comments. I would certainly appreciate the courtesy of a response and explanation as to some of my questions.

RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA -- One would think that if you made a reservation with the Choice Privileges Member Reservation line that the Choice corporate offices would have on an ongoing basis checked to see if their hotels were up to par. I stayed at Econo Lodge West for a length of time on and off. With my last visit I was in a room first that a pipe burst and my clothes and belongings were soaked. I washed them and was switched to another room. Then another room a suite. I was bit about 75 times by something which turned out to be bedbugs. I was still trying to get along--I was switched temporarily to another rm in which I was bit again.

The onsite owner/manager does not speak English so he evidently did not understand that bombing the room and spraying my belongings with the store bought insecticide would not kill the bedbugs. I went back into the room did not even sleep on the bed and I was bitten many times on the sofa. I have had chemotherapy so I have a port in my chest. The bedbugs loved to suck there since it was a convenient blood source. Again I was moved--into a room next door that was an office for a security company and a maintenance service.

Very interesting setup in a hotel. I did not want to take the bugs to another hotel so I moved my body and my work into the office that had portable heaters (the unit in the wall blew the breakers), and no bed. I waited over a week for the hotel to treat the room that I was in. No response. Then I said that I called Choice Hotels. The hotel called the police and told them that I called Choice Hotels on them. How dumb is that. The hotel wanted the police officer to tell me that I have to leave the next day. That is a total waste of taxpayers money. It is like calling 911 because your fast food order was not correct.

I left the next day but I took several pictures of what was in the OFFICE. How funky is that a maintenance service, security service out of a hotel room. Do the Korean people operate the other businesses. Who is to say. But upon checking and after I called the health dept and inspections. I found out the hotel has been operated for almost two years without a lodging permit and a privilege license. The deception is ONE would think that Choice International would care about that issue. Since they too have collected money from a hotel that did not have a permit.

I have over 1200.00 in medical bills, my piece of my luggage was thrown out, my other property is still there untreated, they billed me for 9 days in a room that I was not in and did not even put THE OFFICE on the bill. Yet Choice corporate office does not feel as if they have any obligation to treat me like a valuable consumer. Their response was that Choice International is like a reservation center they do not own nor operate any hotels. Each is a franchise and they handle their own issues.

I called Choice International to make a reservation. My incorrect folio is posted under my choice privileges rewards number incorrectly, the hotel now because of me has a transitional lodging permit, no health grade has a few months to come up to code. Yet Choice corporate still lets them operate as usual...taking reservations. The health dept. told me that they shut down six rooms prior to me calling for bed bugs. One above my room. Yet the hotel does not feel obligated to reimburse me for my losses or better yet give me every dime back that I paid to them because guess what they did not have the most important documents needed to collect any money as a hotel.

I am very disappointed in Choice Hotel International. Usually large chains franchised or not would responsibly address the issue. I have emailed all of the executives about the issue --no response. What a wonderful company. You are on your own when staying at a Choice Hotel. Econolodge West, Raleigh, NC is not alone but the main problem is that the manager is from Guatemala, speaks English but in my opinion does not fully understand it yet he is the one that speaks to the onsite owners that do not speak English. They speak Korean. In America things are done a certain way. One does not ignore bedbugs. And secondly abide by the law. I am very disappointed.