My wedding party booked rooms at the Embassy Suites hotel in preparation of my wedding to be held in San Diego on 6/25/10. At first everything seemed fine - nice rooms, decent location, etc. On the day of our wedding rehearsal, my 86 year old father had not shown up yet to the hotel to check in. He was driving from central California and does not have a cell phone. So, I left a message with the staff at the front desk asking them to contact me when he arrived. Well, hours passed and I never received a call. I called back several times to the front desk to make sure he had not arrived. I was given the room number he was supposed to be in and I called his room several times. No answer. Before we left for the rehearsal to be held at 4:30 p.m., I again went to the front desk, gave them my phone number, and yet again asked them to contact me when he arrived.
Our wedding party went to the rehearsal and then on to the rehearsal dinner - still no dad. We called several more times to the front desk to find out if he had arrived. At one point, I was crying on the phone with them because I was so worried about my father possibly being lost or having been hurt somehow since being late is NOT like him. Each time we called, we were told he had not checked in yet. My wedding party began calling the California Highway Patrol, AAA, relatives, friends, etc. to find out what had happened to my father. Needless to say, I was a wreck.
When we finally got back to the hotel after the rehearsal dinner, one of my best friends actually got into her car and began driving in the direction my dad would have been coming from. By the way, ten hours had passed since my father had left from home at 11:00 a.m. (for a four to five hour drive). I decided to call his room again. By this time, it is about 9:00 p.m. My father answered the phone!! He had been at the hotel for hours but had been told by staff when he checked in at 4:15ish that I had left already. No call was made to me. No phone number was given to him to call. Each time our party called the front desk to find out if he had checked in, we were told he had not. If any of you out there have gotten married or been part of a wedding recently, you know the stress of just planning this event, let alone having to deal with the emotional turmoil of something like this.
When management was contacted, they essentially took no responsibility for this and even suggested my 86 year old father somehow snuck into a room on his own without getting any keys. How he was suppossed to have done this is beyond me, but that is what the night manager, Ms. Willes, suggested. She also claimed my father actually arrived at 2:15 p.m. (impossible even though she claims it is true) and therefore it was the a.m. team's fault and not hers. She had the gall to argue with me on the phone about this on the night before my wedding. The general manager for San Diego, John Smith, actually decided to call me ON my wedding day to essentially confirm what Ms. Willes stated. Thankfully my bridesmaids handled these calls for me since there was no way I wanted my wedding day to be ruined by such lies.
Basically, this is what it comes down to: if you actually want decent customer service, don't go to this hotel. They claim to be a full service, upscale hotel, but they can't even relay simple messages. Because of their incompetence and even simple lack of compassion for another human being, my 86 year old father missed his only child's wedding rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. My mother is dead so this was a very big deal to me as well, not to mention I thought that something terrible had happened to my father. The day was RUINED. I can't recommend this hotel to anyone. I am still so angry at what they did and especially at the lies they continue to make up to cover themselves. I wish I had never stayed at this hotel and will never stay there again.
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