I recently stayed at America’s Best Inns- Portsmouth on September 2nd and 3rd. We had booked the hotel as a surprise for my friend’s bachelorette party. We had 7 girls, and 2 rooms to share between us. I called the hotel to make a reservation and was told that because I was booking TWO rooms for ONE night, and the SECOND room for only ONE night, that the transactions had to be done separately. At the time I did not think anything of it.
Upon checking in, Bob helped us immensely. He put us in rooms that were side by side(room 204 and 206), helped us figure out where to go for dinner, and even offered to call us a cab. He was unfaltering in his kindness. He also had me sign TWO pieces of paper for the TWO hotel rooms with our vehicle numbers, and my credit card info on it. However, I cannot say the same for all of your employees.
On the 2nd day, we only rented ONE room because half of the girls left. We got a call from a “Kia” at the front desk (dark hair, pregnant). She told us we had 10 minutes to pack our bags up and switch rooms. We asked WHY we had to move and we heard several different excuses from Kia:
-The room you are in was requested so you have to move (it was a standard room with a view of the adjacent room, NO ONE would have “Specially” requested it.
-It is impossible to change room numbers in the system. You will have to move because the new people are checking in, in 10 minutes.
We were very aggravated, to say the least. The four girls who were staying in room 204 for a 2nd night had A LOT of things to pack up, and especially because it was in TEN MINUTES that we were told to move. We decided to go to the front desk to try to reason with “Kia”. One of our party went down, and Kia decided to take a personal call, and turn her back on us. She said “I know they’re here now” and then hung up the phone. We can only assume that one of the maids had called Kia to let her know that she could overhear us talking (The door to our hotel room was open because we were trying to pack.) and that she knew we were upset. Kia was downright rude to us. She refused to give a detailed explanation and kept returning to her original excuse “the computer doesn’t allow me to change the room number.” She would not look at us, only at the computer, and she sighed in exasperation several times. I have NEVER been to a hotel and received this kind of treatment. She is easily one of the most negative and unkind people I’ve ever met. We asked if we could speak to her supervisor. Kia told us that no, we couldn’t, because he wasn’t in. We then said “do you have a phone number for him” and she replied that yes, she did have a phone number for him, but it would just be transferred back to her because he wasn’t there. If the theory “The customer is always right” is correct, than Kia clearly showed that she does NOT think this and that she apparently, has been made Queen of the America’s Best Inns.
We ended up swapping rooms to the first floor because we were honestly so sick of trying to get the point across to her that we rented one room for two nights, and t hat NEVER have we heard of needing to swap rooms because we had made two different reservations. We even said that we would have been okay with the swap if we had known ahead of time-then we WOULDN’T have unpacked. I don’t think I can convey to you sufficiently that we had brought A LOT of items with us. It was inconvenient that we had to move our entire luggage yet again.
The next day when it was check out time, I went to the front desk to let her know we were leaving. Since we had swapped rooms, I asked for a receipt for the NEW first floor room that we had stayed in. She then said to me in a sarcastic manner “one of your party just checked you out. I can’t give you a receipt for the room swap because you booked through hotels.com and we have a deal with them that we don’t print out receipts.” I didn’t care that hotel.com doesn’t allow them to print receipts. I had signed for rooms 204 and 206 on the first night, and got a copy of those receipts. I do not understand why I couldn’t be given a copy of the room swap.
Kia could win the “Worst Employee of the Year” Award. I am also forwarding this letter to the hotel manager to make you aware of this, considering that the name of this hotel is “America’s Best Inn’s.”
I want to let you know that I DID find the hotel itself very satisfactory. I thought the rooms were very clean, and orderly. The location was great-right off the highway, and close to the downtown area. If it wasn’t for the incident with Kia, I would have been very satisfied.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
