This is a long review, but read the entire thing if you are considering this hotel or have booked it already. I am hoping that this review will save someone else from the frustration and aggravation that my family and I encountered during our trip.
My family and I were traveling on our annual family vacation to Italy. Since we were going to be sight seeing most of the day, we booked hotels that were no-frills and economical; basically a room where we could shower and sleep. I had read the reviews of this hotel (which by the way also advertises itself as Pensione Sole) and although most of the review dealt with the rooms not being nice, and there were some about the cleanness of the hotel, we went ahead and booked 5 rooms. This was the biggest mistake we made and paid a big price for doing so.
We arrived at the hotel at 2:30 PM and were informed by the manager of this hotel, Guido, that there was an issue with our reservations (even though we had the confirmation from booking.com) and that he tried contacting me via e-mail to inform me about it a month prior to the trip (even though this was booked in February). According to Guido, the week we were in Florence was Fashion week, and the rate that we booked (and had confirmed reservations for) was incorrect. He stated that a month before he sent an e-mail which stated that the rate for the room should not have been 40 Euros a night and that booking.com made a mistake because it should have been 150 Euros a night....in this e-mail he asked that we please cancel our current reservation and re-reserve at the correct rate. I explained to him that I did not receive the two e-mails he claimed to have sent, and that all my e-mails get delivered to my blackberry. I check my trash mail on a weekly basis. I told him that if booking.com made a mistake, then he needed to take the issue up with them and that wasn't my responsibility and that he had no right to cancel my reservation for that. He went on to state that my reservation had not been canceled. I then told him that if they had not been canceled that he should give us our rooms. Another guy who was working at the front desk looked down (he was very uncomfortable about what was going on) and he whispered that all the rooms were already taken and the hotel was booked.
Though the entire thing Guido was offensive, and intolerable. He said that we should leave the hotel and that we were no longer his problem. He even went on to tell my mom "what do you want me to do? If you want, you can sleep in the lobby." After about an hour and a half of arguing back and forth I told him that I was going to call the police because what he was doing was illegal. When I mentioned the police, his attitude changed completely. He told me to give him some time and that he was going to find us a hotel. About 20 minutes later, he came and informed us that he had found a hotel for us and that he would pay for the taxi to get there. When I asked him where the hotel was, he became evasive. I gave him the map and told him to point to where the hotel was....it was so far away from the center of Florence that it would take about a half hour to get there. I told him this was not acceptable and that I wanted a hotel near the center of Florence.
After some more phone calls, he called me over to explain to me that he was only booking four hotel rooms because he didn't have a reservation for the fifth room. This was my cousin's room who was there with his 5 month pregnant wife and their toddler. Unfortunately there was a mix up with the printing out of hotel confirmation (which he realized because I gave him all the paperwork and he pointed out that it was for the wrong hotel) and my cousin's sister could not access her school's e-mail account to get the copies.
To make a long story short.....they had 13 adults and one child waiting for over 5 hours to fix this problem. He heat was unbearable. We didn't have anything to eat since breakfast. We kept asking if he could at least give us a room for the pregnant woman and toddler (since the baby was sleeping in the stroller and was very uncomfortable); Guido refused. He was yelling that they were on their own with the hotel room because he wasn't going to book or pay the difference for my cousin and his wife's room.
At around 7:30 PM my cousin told his wife to come downstairs to eat because she was starving. The elevator is a two person elevator (really tiny) and since she became pregnant she has a problem being in small places, so they decided to walk down the stairs (it was only one flight). As she was going down the stairs she became very dizzy and feel down the stairs face forward. She twisted her ankle and even hit herself in stomach. When this happened Guido became nervous. Instead of calling the ambulance his first call was to the owner of the hotel and their lawyer. He then went on to call the ambulance. All this while my cousin's wife was screaming from the pain. My cousin who suffers from asthma began having an asthma and panic attack from seeing his wife in that condition. Two ambulances had to come, one for my cousin and the other one for his wife.
While the entire commotion was going on, Guido began telling other guest at the hotel that my cousin's wife had purposely fallen down the stairs (like a pregnant woman would take that chance) and that my cousin was faking his asthma attack. They began laughing at the entire situation.
The end result of this hotel was....one wasted night in Florence (5 hours at the hotel and the rest of the night at the hospital). My cousin's wife fractured her ankle and the rest of her vacation was ruined. Thankfully, they said nothing happened to the baby (up to this point....it's been less than a week since this happened and now she's going to go to her regular OBGYN to check everything out because they hospital in Italy didn't even do an ultrasound, but she had felt it move normally).
At then end, the hotel barely did ANYTHING to remedy this situation. Guido paid the difference in fare for FOUR hotels rooms. He didn't give ANYTHING for my cousin's room. We even had to pay for the taxi transportation from the hospital (that was about 40 mins away from the hotel). Oh and to make matters worse, the hotel their switched us to didn't have A/C. So my cousin's wife was not only confined to a room, but she was confined to a HOT room (it was really hot in Italy in June)
I am hoping that this long review helps someone else from having their Florence vacation ruined. I know for a fact that even the people that were staying in the hotel were not having a good experience there either. In the time we were waiting to get our situation fixed (5 hours), four different guest came to complain about different things. Let's just say that the manager, Guido, treated them just as poorly as he was treating us. I would never take a chance with this place again. I will also make it a point to post this review at as many sites as possible with the hopes of saving someone else. If you have already booked a room there, CANCEL it and find another hotel. I would rather pay extra than deal with that kind of BS ever again.
BTW, according to an employee at the bar located under the hotel, they pull this kind of scheme all the time on tourist.....where they try to get more money.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
