We made a reservation online at 3:00 on our way to Wilmington from Vermont. We arrived tired at 6:00 to check in.  The clerk, Nicki, registered us and then told us that because of an area-wide sewer project, we could not use any water after 9:00 that evening. Why then were we were allowed to make a reservation, and why did she not contact us before we arrived so that we could make other arrangements?Although our telephone and email address were on the reservation, it wasn't her job to look, I guess. She grudgingly offered to call other hotels in the area, but since we had driven 8.5 hours and had a 7:30 dinner reservation, we declined. The bellman, who was standing at the desk, told us that the hotel had had a month's notice and that it was only the wing we were booked into that was affected. The clerk denied this. We asked for a concession on the price; she refused.  We asked her to call the manager; she refused. We went to our room frustrated and angry and changed for dinner. Before we left  I filled an ice bucket with water to wash my face, and water bottles to rinse my mouth after brushing my teeth. We got back from dinner around 9:30 to find a message that the clerk had called the manager, who "confirmed"  that the hotel had not had "specific" notice, but that we would not be charged for our room. We performed our minimal ablutions with the water we had saved, and went to bed. At 10:15 we were wakened by loud banging on the door by the contractor performing the work, shouting "Don't use the water!" Moments later the clerk called to tell us it was only our wing (the bellman was right) and offered to move us. Since it was 1ate and we were in bed, we declined. The next morning I spoke with several other customers, who were similarly inconvenienced and angry, but since they had not been as insistent as we were, were not offered a comp.
When I returned home, I called the contractor whose name was on the flyer the clerk gave us that detailed the prohibition on water use. He said the hotel had plenty of notice, and that someone had nevertheless used the water that night, which cost him thousands of dollars because he could not do the work the county had contracted  for. I called Best Western corporate to let them know that one of their hotels had knowingly booked customers into rooms with essentially no plumbing. Their response, which I had to call to find out, was that the manager's version of events was different from mine and they "don't take sides."   The manager,  Mary Taylor, had lied in several of her responses, dissembled in others, and was belligerent and indifferent in all.  Best Western simply closed the call. Best Western does not acknowledge responsibility for hotels with its name on them, and operators have carte blanche to behave as Ms. Taylor did when faced with the consequences of her own mismanagement of and failure to plan for an event she had been told to expect. Quality hotels do NOT book guests into rooms with no plumbing. Sad punchline: the bellman, the only hotel employee who told the truth and was concerned about customer service, was fired the next morning "for speaking about things of which he had no knowledge."

Note: This was our third stay in this hotel since May, since my mother is in assisted living nearby. Our previous experiences had been mediocre at best: they put fancy sheets on the beds, and fancy furniture in three or four rooms, but it's still an old motel with dated bathroom fixtures, noisy air conditioners, and thin walls. In a recently famous phrase, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.