Two days before we arrived from Florence, I e-mailed Kinga, the manager (possibly owner) of Navona Nice Room, to confirm our reservations. I received a reply confirming our reservation for two rooms starting Sept. 22, 2011.
We arrived at Navona Nice Room on September 22. I was greeted by the nice young man who cleans the rooms and deals with the guests. He told me that they had one of our rooms ready, but that the other room for my 79-year-old father, was not available. He said that my father would be placed for one night at "Surprising In Rome", another of their B&Bs a few blocks away.
I told the young man that this was not acceptable. I had a reservation for two rooms that Kinga had confirmed by e-mail just two days before. The young man called Kinga and put me on the phone with her. Kinga told me that my father's room was not available because the couple staying there now wanted to stay an extra night. I told her "then move that couple to "Surprising in Rome". She told me she would not move them since they were elderly. I told her that my father was elderly as well, and was nervous not staying with us for the night. We went back and forth, arguing, and finally she put her husband on the phone. He told me that there was nothing they could do. I threatened to call Venere.com to complain. He said "Go ahead, I don't care." He kept saying "This is not a tragedy." I agreed this was not a "tragedy", but that a commitment is a commitment and our reservation should be honored as promised. Clearly, they had a chance to make an extra 100 euro from the other couple, so they let them stay, not caring if we were inconvenienced.
Realizing we had no recourse, especially since we were on the phone in a foreign country and I didn't know where he or Kinga were, I agreed to take the room in the other Bed and Breakfast for the night. (I let my father take that room because the elevator worked at the other B&B, and our elevator at Navona Nice Room was out of service.) We paid for our rooms and that was it.
The next day, we moved my father into Navona Nice Room. The rest of the stay was pleasant, we never heard from Kinga or her husband again except an email to tell us that the toilet seat would be fixed as I requested (it never was). The accomodations were fine, but unfortunately, I can never recommend Navona Nice Room to anyone since they won't honor a reservation as promised.
The funny thing was, I was contacted by the booker, Venere.com to rate my stay at Navona Nice Room. I was unable to log in using the link they provided, so I logged into Venere.com from my browser. Then I found out why the link didn't work: next to our reservation at N.N.R. were the words NO SHOW. Rather than risk a bad review through Venere, Kinga told them we never showed up! So I emailed Venere the above story, AND sent them photos of us in both of our rooms to prove that we did indeed show up, and stayed the full five days.
