I recently stayed at this hotel while I was attending Lollapalooza, the 3 day music festival in Grant Park. The location was wonderful, and while the hotel is old it wouldn't have been so bad if we didn't experience the hotel's poor customer service.
The air conditioner did not work well enough to cool the entire room. I informed the front desk, I told them we were ok with it but we wanted to let them know so they could fix it in the future. That encounter was all right.
One of the mornings a maid tried to enter the room. We had the door not disturb sign up and the chain attached. The chain stopped her from getting in and she left. Of course we were all woken up, so we went to the door and sure enough the DND sign was still in the door. She must have missed it.
There was an awful storm on Saturday which caused the festival to be evacuated. The hotel was flooded with non-guests who sought shelter in the hotel's restaurant, lounge and lobby.
After waiting up in our room for about an hour we called room service to get some dinner. We were rudely informed that room service had been discontinued until the event had passed. Ok...so guests who are paying over $200 a night to stay in your hotel are not going to receive basic hotel services because the hotel is swamped with non-paying customers. I understand this was an unprecedented, tough situation. But it was unacceptable.
I informed the manager about our problem upon check out. I believe I expressed my concerns in a non-confrontational manner, he took it personally, even though I assured him I wasn't blaming him personally. He told me there was nothing he could do for me and gave me a feedback form and said I could mail in my concerns.
I wasn't looking for money off or some future coupon, I told him I was expressing my concern so that in the future they may want to prepare for an event such as this (especially when they are well aware of the traffic that Lollapalooza brings). I would have been satisfied if he had listened to my complaints, apologized and promised me that they would look into better training their staff in the future.
So I wrote out a long letter and sent it in to the hotel with my contact information, surprise, I was never contacted.
So to sum up, for the prices they charge and for the dilapidated state of the hotel/rooms, next year I'll be trying one of the hotels next door, and I urge everyone else to do the same.
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