My wife and I stayed at Medusa for 3 nights in the executive suite during our honeymoon at the end of August 2011. After their 'newlywed discount' we paid close to 250 euros per night, and so our expectations were fairly high. There are nice things about Medusa, as many people have said. Also we were also eager to have a good time and so we were willing to politely overlook things like the mediocre sea view (mostly powerlines, half built houses, and yes, a little sea,- see photo), the lack of privacy from at jacuzzi, the fact that we had to ask twice before they fixed the room phone, the stale bread at breakfast, the plastic bottle that sat in our garden for 2 days, the embarrassingly tattered rag that they fly which was once a Canadian flag, the extra 30 euro charge for transportation, interrupting our dinner to lecture us on not pushing buttons on the jacuzzi, hanging our laundry (underwear and all) to dry in a public walkway and so on.
But we had an incident where they pushed things too far.
On our first night we brought some laundry to be cleaned. When they returned the laundry 2 days later, we noticed that it included the t-shirt of another guest, and that my wife's top was missing. Immediately I brought them the t-shirt and informed them about the missing garment. We were told that housekeeping had not delivered all our laundry and that they would bring it soon. They didn't bother checking if this was true, even though it was clear from the other guest's t-shirt that they had already made a mistake; and it wasn't true - there were no more clothes coming. If they had bothered speaking to housekeeping right away, perhaps the situation could have been easily resolved. On our third morning, when we were packing for check out, I asked again about the garment and only then did they start looking for it. I spent my last morning there running around describing it to various staff members, showing them a photo of it, and repeatedly explaining that it was not a T-shirt (it was a kind of fancy camousal/tank top thing). It wasn't a fun departure.
Ok, they made an honest mistake. It could have happened anywhere. But if you were a hotel that was planning to take 750 euros for a three night stay, and ignored their problem when they brought it to your attention, how would you respond to those guests? I was expecting an acceptance of responsibility, a sincere apology, an offer to refund the garment, and some redress for the inconvenience that they caused, e.g., comping one of our meals or waiving the transportation fee (we shared the van with another guest - it would have cost them nothing), something like that and we would have left with no bad feelings.
Instead, they did none of that, there was no proper apology and they asked us to pay them the 20 euro laundry fee (for the service of losing the shirt). Their 'plan' was to somehow get our garment back from the guest whose t-shirt we received (they had left the hotel by then) and send it to us. This seemed pretty sketchy so I wanted to talk about what they would do if they couldn't get it back, but they absolutely refused to even discuss it, they insisted that we would get it in a few days. The feeling was that they wanted us to pay and leave, treating the status of the garment as irrelevant toward the bill. I felt that if I had been louder and angrier we would have gotten a far more serious response from them, but it was our honeymoon, so I tried to stay polite.
And then. . . nothing.
Nearly two weeks later, I sent them an email asking what was going on, and they said that they had not been able to contact the other guest, and then few days later, gave a rather curt email saying that it was in fact lost. Oops.
At this point I was fairly ticked off and sent them an email saying so. It was filled with words like 'unsatisfied', 'disappointed', 'unprofessional', 'indifferent treatment' and the like. It was not especially friendly in its tone, but relatively restrained, and not at all inappropriate it the context. Far from coming forth with a real apology, they responded with a lengthy email repeatedly expressing indignation at my being 'insulting' towards their hotel. What can I say? They are a family hotel - if they weren't, this email would have deservedly gotten any normal hotel employee fired. At this point I wasn't surprised - they had our money, why should they listen to my complaint? Their main grievance with me seemed to be that I didn't complain enough at the time. . . because I didn't appear unsatisfied enough at the time they thought they could get away with giving me this shabby treatment without repercussions.
Anyway, 8 weeks and some 10 or so emails later, we finally got back the money for the lost garment.
Medusa has left a seriously bad taste in my mouth. I don't like feeling as if I'm being taken advantage of when I'm on my honeymoon. Their treatment of us - especially from check out on - was inexcusably unprofessional. It's not the place to go if you want a special memory.
- Medusa Hotel Naxos City
